Once again, an ace reporter from STOIC left the warmth of the college TV studio to investigate events in London. November isn’t the best month for things to happen outside and the Lord Mayor’s Show is an example of that. Back in November 1980 Newsbreak reporter Grant Richmond ventured outside into central London to see what was happening. City and Guilds were there, and some of the shots were clearly taken from on top of their float.
And yes, these were still the days some 39 years ago, of black and white.
Whilst transferring more of the STOIC videotape archive into digital, I found this interview. It’s one that I had forgotten all about and is with Lord Flowers, then Rector, recorded 39 years ago in the TV Studio in October 1980. He had, a few days earlier, given his address at Commemoration Day. In that address, for the very first time, an appeal had been made to alumni for a covenant from each student of £20 a year for a total of five years. He had explained that this would assist the college with approximately a quarter of a million pounds a year. Just before you’ll see this interview there is a brief sequence actually shot during that speech at the Royal Albert Hall. This is actually the very first time a Commemoration Day had been videotaped, so it’s unique for that alone.
Here, he is talking with Mike Prosser both a presenter and a past chairman of STOIC.
October is the time of the year when clubs and societies have stalls and events to entice new students to join them. All around the country universities are seeing the same thing happen during freshers week and Imperial is no different.
Luckily, we have a brief record of some of what was happening, because STOIC reported on the fair for the their news programme NEWSBREAK. It looked like a fine sunny day, which for October is a blessing. Grant Richmond, ace reporter, ventured to both the Union Quad and Queens Tower Lawn to speak to some of the freshers. Mike Prosser is heard on the introduction, which shows things like abseiling down the union building! Incidentally, Grant now lives in far north Queensland, Australia. And, were YOU one of those interviewed in this video?
This video is from the digitisation of the STOIC videotape archives, which I’m currently undertaking.
An update, that you will also see below in the comments, is from Bill Durodie. He tells me that the person being interviewed, at the one minute mark, is Phil Greenstreet who was in RCS, he now lives in the USA. I hope he might be able to see this video from when he was a student at Imperial! Thanks Bill.
On the 8 October 1980 edition of STOIC’s Newsbreak programme, they featured the Imperial College Boat Club. Still in the days of black and white, reporter Jim Donaldson ventured down the road to the Putney Boathouse. From the top of the building Jim reported on what he was seeing and we get to watch the then novices going out onto the water. Maybe you were one of them?
This is yet another video rescued during the ongoing project to digitise the archive of STOIC and has not been seen since first broadcast 39 years ago.
For a thankfully brief period, 39 years ago, in May 1980, life in and around Imperial College changed. This was due to the now famous Iranian Embassy siege that took place in Princes Gate. The main concern for Imperial College was the fact that in Northside of Princes Gardens the buildings of: Weeks Hall, Garden Hall, Sports Centre and more, all backed onto the embassy building. I recall students from Weeks Hall telling me that they had to keep all windows closed and covered and to stay away from the windows at all times.
That week’s copy of Felix the student newspaper seemed to be somewhat concerned that the Rag Fete would have to be relocated to the Queens Lawn rather than Princes Gardens as planned. They also included a photo of a police marksman somewhere behind the embassy, probably in the rear gardens of college property and that there was also one of the roof of Weeks Hall. There was also mention of at least one Imperial student being arrested.
Clearly this was news for both Felix and in particular for STOIC. With the aide of their trusty portable camera and recorder they ventured off to report of what was happening. Thanks to the current digitisation of the STOIC videotape archive I found all three location reports and saved them. These reports were such hot news that they had to be fitted in prior to and after, the showing of the weekly news programme NewsBreak at lunch time and in the evening. Mike Prosser was continuity voice-over that day and introduced the clips.
A popular venue in college was Stan’s Bar located in Southside. In 1980, alterations were taking place and in the 8 OCtober 1980 edition of STOIC’s news programme Newsbreak there was a location report. The bar remained in place until the time of demolition of the entire Southside building. If you take a look at the video I shot on 30 June 2005 (during the last week of Southside) you will see the bar towards the end being cleared out and closed up.
I notice that there was also a campaign run to “save the bar”. In the end, the bar was (sort of) relocated in the new Eastside building. And very modern it looked too. Certainly it’s not as dark as Stan’s Bar could be. There’s the odd reference to dark corners in this video report. Being below street level probably didn’t help with lighting, but maybe that’s what students wanted? Perhaps you were standing at the bar when this video was shot in 1980?
Today we have a Flashback to 33 years ago. On the 26 April 1986 the Imperial College Student Union held their annual Rag Fete. That year it was opened by TVam’s Anne Diamond. STOIC was there to capture the event and to chat to Anne Diamond and also, the then Rector, Sir Eric Ash. STOIC broadcast this video on Thursday 1 May 1986.
In June 2006 The Duke of Edinburgh put on a hard hat and boots to watch students building their own versions of engineering landmarks.
The engineering students from Civil Engineering were taking part in Constructionarium, an annual event in which groups had just five days to tackle a challenging project, such as creating a seven metre high version of the world’s tallest vehicular bridge, the Millau viaduct in Southern France.
The event was designed to give students hands-on experience of engineering in a realistic environment. The projects took place on a two hectare section of a Norfolk site which is used for training specialist construction trade workers such as scaffolders and steeplejacks. The site, in Bircham Newton, was owned by the National Construction College.
Prince Philip visited on the students’ last day and saw the projects in their final stages. He was given a tour of the different projects underway, and watched as students pulled a replica oil rig to the middle of a lake and stabilised it. The TV Studio (by then called Media Services) was on hand to capture the event.
Well here we are in 2019 and the 10th year of the Video Archive Blog. The first real blog of the year is coming up next and that will be a bigger than usual read too.
I’m still finding interesting video gems to post and there are masses of new videotapes to be viewed and digitised during 2019. I just have to get to them and sort them out. Assisting me now is the original card index files started by STOIC the student TV service (right). Amazingly, their original archive has more ‘college’ events than the TV Studio’s own archive. STOIC covered just about anything and anywhere, to fill the news programmes. There are interviews with college personnel and administration that I never had the opportunity to record myself. They also captured and covered more college events than I did, so these are true archive gems.
By now you’re thinking ‘why didn’t the TV Studio cover these things rather than the students?”. Well, the answer is simple, I wasn’t allowed to. We had a remit to charge for any work we did in the college TV studio, so unless someone was paying me, I couldn’t do the work! It’s sad to know that the only coverage of some important and unique college events are only on STOIC tapes. So, fortunately those tapes are now held safely and, as I mentioned previously, I also have access to the two-draw card index that I’m now slowly scanning into digital.
Scanning the cards is somewhat time consuming as there is no easy way to be able to autoscan them. I’m scanning them in batches of four on a flatbed scanner and creating continuous PDF files of each batch of A through to Z. I’ve got as far as “N” at this time! If you click on the photo that I took (left) you can see that even this particular card I’m holding shows an interesting 1980 interview with Prof Anderson about the UROP project. I seem to recall that it stood for Undergraduate Research OPportunities. There are no other such interviews, so this is also unique. How long before you’ll get to see it remains unknown, but keep watching as I go into year TEN…
Once more we delve into the days of black and white TV with this 1979 interview with the then forthcoming “The Phoenix” editor Steve Marshall. “The Phoenix”, we are told, was originally started in 1887 by the former student of the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science) H.G.Wells. From 2012, here is a brief history of the magazine by Charles Thomas.
As hard as I try I cannot seem to find any web pages relating to “The Phoenix”, so is it still running I wonder? If you can help find a web site and maybe an on-line edition then please comment and I’ll happily update this page.
