Possibly the most memorable figure on the production side - it was a Current Affairs project - was the late Mary Keene, pictured left in a post PPB Bar visit. Other names were Bob Marsland, Richard 'Dick' Francis, Tam Fry and Alex Saward.

Sadly, we currently have no specific pictures of the area during a 'mission' - if anyone out there does, please let me know - but the operation was based around the VT1 corridor and was usually centered on VT9, 10, 11 & 12. The picture below, although from the Montreal Olympics overnights in 1976, gives some idea of the machines involved.

The Lift Story. I think this was on one of the later missions (14/15). We were doing inserts into BBC1 & 2 during the evening and, after the evening meal reliefs had been completed, there was an hour to the next TX. It was suggested that we repaired to the Bar and we all, PAs included, went to the fourth floor. In plenty of time (honest!) we all crammed into the South Hall lift and pressed basement. The lift headed south at a high rate of knots and shuddered to a halt - but, the doors wouldn't open!
After much emergency telephoning (explaining that we were getting near TX time) a person levered the doors open from outside, which revealed we were partly in the sub-basement (obviously too heavy). We all climbed up and out and rushed into VT where, with seconds to go, the phones were ringing and there was somewhat of a panic in progress.

The Absconding PA. (Mick Goodenough, I think, might remember this one as well). Again, I think this was 14 or 15. By now network interest was less than before and there weren't wall to wall programmes prior to the launch which, in this case, was scheduled for late evening. James Burke was in the US and doing voice overs on the NASA feed. We were having to replug the sound to remove "..... for those of you watching on BBC2" type of comments. Some tension was building and we had a (relatively) new PA in charge - he went on to become somewhat famous in later life. TX time arrived and the PA, who had been fielding quite a bit of verbage from the gallery, suddenly said "...... that's it, I can't do any more!" and retired to the bar, leaving the VT crew on their own with a one hour TX only seconds away! To compound the situation, the blasted rocket wasn't due to fly for quite a bit and there was no feed from the US. So, to pass the time, we searched through the logs and played in various shots of rockets steaming away on the launch pad, cueing James Burke on the four wire to talk over the shots, until the feed came in and the launch took place.