Photos by Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission.
Peter Poole was the sound recordist on this location film shoot for the network series ‘Top Sailing’, broadcast between 1980-83, and produced at Pebble Mill. The photos include cameraman Steve Saunderson, with the beard, with the other person probably being producer Jeremy Pallant. These photos were taken about 1983 in Lymington. Peter developed the photos himself in the Pebble Mill processing lab.
‘Top Sailing’ was a factual series about various aspects of yachting, looking at stories like ‘The Admiral’s Cup’. Different episodes were presented by different sailing enthusiasts including: Martin Muncaster, Donny Macleod, Iain Cuthbertson, Anthony Churchill, Bob Fisher, Patrick Mower, Suzanne Danielle. Clive Gardener was an editor on the series.
Having film edited the Top Sailing episode in series 2 with Michael & Richard Bentine, Donny MacLeod and Mike Peyton, Creek Crawler Extraordinary (Creek Crawling), I set up the Top Sailing entry in IMDb in May 2007 so the programme could be included. However, at the time I had no record of other episodes’ transmission dates and so the page has remained singular for years.
I later chatted with Michael Bentine on the telephone and sent him a VHS copy of the programme, with which he was very pleased, and we kept up our contact until shortly before his untimely death.
Others have kindly set up all the Farming and Top Gear individual programmes on IMDb but no one has seemed to know anything about Top Sailing, which was equally prolific in its day! So, until last week, the series has remained remembered by only one single episode.
At long last, the Radio Times entries have become available online and so I’ve now been able to reconstruct the complete series. In my mind can still see the corridor leading to and the open door leading into the Pebble Mill Film Unit cutting room where the films were created. There was one ‘cheat’, which I think was a case of budgetary survival because it wasn’t cheap for the filming team to travel to and stay at the locations required, whereby ‘series’ 4 in 1982 comprised episodes previously broadcast. There was also a series that only comprised one special in August 1983, perhaps also arising from budgetary considerations, against BBC economics of the day?
The reason for writing now is to request Peter Poole, who I well remember working with, to add what names he can positively and accurately recall from his work on the series to the specific episodes concerned. Also to ask if anyone in touch with the film camera, film sound and sound dubbing technicians who may have been involved with the series wouldn’t mind asking them to add their names to the episodes with which they were involved.
I shall try and contact Peter directly through ex-BBC colleagues as it would be very good to get back in touch with Nigel Pardoe-Matthews again, with whom I worked on the second series.
Thanks to Peter for the photo of the new sound transfer suite where I spent many hours sat wearing headphones, listening to BBC sound effects records. This was for selecting the tracks which Peter would then copy to 16mm sepmag for the tracklays of everything from short documentaries to full-length Play for Todays. Our worst experience was getting the television clip sound transferred at the right speed so it would sync up with the pictures in A Cotswold Death (1982) by Tony Bicat. Someone made me a transfer to VHS of the finished film and I think the TV sound was still out of sync then – so it must have been the PAG equipment and high-temperature effects on the electronic control systems in the film dubbing theatre which defeated Peter’s and my attempts to get it right!
PS. I edited, but I didn’t present!