Post by Alan Hayes on Feb 22, 2018 0:21:27 GMT
It's not every day that I get the chance to go to a television or film studio, so when I do it's always a rare old treat. This evening my wife Alys and I went along to London Studios on London's Southbank for a presentation and discussion about TV archiving.
Now, "London Studios" means nothing to me, but of course the building itself is well-known to me and people of my generation as The London Weekend Television (or LWT) Tower. It was used all the time on LWT (London's weekend broadcaster from 1968 to 2002 when it was subsumed into the ITV brand), appearing as a photographic background on their continuity announcements, and even in some of their programmes such as the wonderful comedy sketch show End of Part One.
I'd been there two or three times in the '80s to see sitcoms recorded there (it was useful to be a friend of one of the cameramen, who occasionally got me tickets!), and I have always associated it in my mind with Catweazle, which was of course a London Weekend International production (LWI being the international arm of LWT).
I was thinking while I was there, "somewhere, in one of the offices here, someone commissioned Catweazle in 1968/9 - Richard Carpenter probably came here to strike the deal"... and then I got home and did a bit of research...
...and found that the LWT Tower was built between 1969 and 1972, so Catweazle was finished before the tower was!
The moral of this story is to do your research before rather than after the event...
Have any members any other Catweazle near misses to relate? For instance, did you find a water tower which you were convinced was Catweazle's... but which wasn't?
Now, "London Studios" means nothing to me, but of course the building itself is well-known to me and people of my generation as The London Weekend Television (or LWT) Tower. It was used all the time on LWT (London's weekend broadcaster from 1968 to 2002 when it was subsumed into the ITV brand), appearing as a photographic background on their continuity announcements, and even in some of their programmes such as the wonderful comedy sketch show End of Part One.
I'd been there two or three times in the '80s to see sitcoms recorded there (it was useful to be a friend of one of the cameramen, who occasionally got me tickets!), and I have always associated it in my mind with Catweazle, which was of course a London Weekend International production (LWI being the international arm of LWT).
I was thinking while I was there, "somewhere, in one of the offices here, someone commissioned Catweazle in 1968/9 - Richard Carpenter probably came here to strike the deal"... and then I got home and did a bit of research...
...and found that the LWT Tower was built between 1969 and 1972, so Catweazle was finished before the tower was!
The moral of this story is to do your research before rather than after the event...
Have any members any other Catweazle near misses to relate? For instance, did you find a water tower which you were convinced was Catweazle's... but which wasn't?
