Stupid Rubbish by Dave Jeffery
-
We don’t see edges do we Nancy?
I never met Rory in person. I spoke to him regularly on the phone, indeed sometimes I even spoke to his lovely Mum on the phone. However a phone friendship with Rory was richer than most of the in-person friendships I’ve ever had. And we would talk for hours when phoning between Wales and Hungary…
-
1968 In Colour
One of the nice things about writing a blog is that readers will often respond with information or pictures that add more to the subjects that you have been writing on. I have recently written blog posts about BBC Network symbols that incorporate the Olympic rings, and BBC “polo mint” clocks and as a result…
-
Eight’s A Wish
It’s been a hot summer, so I’ve certainly had a lot of wear out of my t-shirts. However, I had to retire a few worn-out shirts recently and due to uncertainty around my employment I didn’t replace them. Magpie was Thames Television’s answer to the BBC’s flagship children’s magazine programme Blue Peter. It came from…
-
Mark a Polo
This post covers several of my favourite subjects, so it will ramble all over the place. Apologies for that, but here we go… Sticking some kind of disc over the centre of an onscreen clock mechanism is a very practical solution to hiding the rather ugly screw that holds the hands in place. You could…
-
Wrestle Poodles and Win!
BBC Television, right from the very beginning, were always keen on outside broadcast television “firsts”. They wanted to break every limitation they perceived to be on what television could technically achieve. Therefore first live broadcast from the Alexandra Palace gardens/Wimbledon/Lords/the Olympics/a hovercraft/Concorde/the Old Man of Hoy/France/the USA/Narnia would guarantee television coverage. Growing up as a…
-
Whirled Off Sport
Another bit of revision to remind me of stuff I used to know how to do. There were two Olympic events held in 1972; the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan and the ill-fated summer Olympics held in Munich, West Germany. These would have been the first Olympics shown in colour on BBC1, although the 1968…
-
Prospero of the great globe itself
A diary of my return to the world of typography, for the first time in many, many years. Just before the first edition of Wogan, on 7pm the 18th February 1985, BBC1 introduced it’s first computer generated symbol. It was called the Computer Originated World or COW. Of course BBC2 had already had a computer…
-
Getting Shirty
I don’t spend an awful lot on clothes, as they don’t interest me much. My wife makes fun of me because I wear everything until it utterly wears out, and I am quite happy to sew things or fix broken zip fasteners in order to make things last longer. I almost exclusively wear work-wear from…
-
Presents Continuous
Explaining how I recreated the ABC Weekend Television start-up from the morning of Christmas Eve 1967.
-
A Maze in Telly
How I arranged the 4-Square Maze theme for an orchestra in MuseScore 4.
-
Remember the name
A look back at some bits and bobs I did as a favour for the late, and much missed, Rob Milburn.
-
A Christmas Card
Explanation of how I created a Trumptonshire/BBC Presentation themed Christmas card for David Harper.