Chapter 83: Clinton victorious
Includes my time in the USA during the 1992 presidential election, plus personal stories.
I was asked to fly to the USA for a week, primarily to go to New York to look at a computer system we are thinking of buying for World Service Television. [We didn’t buy it.] But as the meeting was just two days after the American elections, it was decided that I should go first to Washington to help out with the coverage of that event.
So, a week after Rosemary got back from Australia, I was off to Washington, wearing my old “fixer’s” hat. It was good fun. My role chiefly was to liaise with the team producing the special programme for BBC domestic television and for the World Service Television team back in London. It was nowhere near as stressful as in my days in radio. Television is far too complicated and high-tech to allow the likes of me to go lashing various bits of equipment to telephones and broadcasting cables.
It was extremely interesting being able to not just monitor the programme as it was being transmitted around two-thirds of the world, but to listen to all the conversations going on between the various members of the production team pulling all the various strands together. It was the first time I had ever worked with David Dimbleby, Britain’s top TV anchorman. It was amazing to see how easy he made it look, while behind the scenes near-chaos prevailed.
By the way, just in case you were on holiday on Mars, the election was won by Bill Clinton.
The weather in Washington was unexpectedly warm, which was a problem as I had brought mostly winter clothes. It rained throughout the day before the election, but election day itself was a glorious day with cloudless skies, topped off with a spectacular sunset.
I am writing this bit of the letter on the Metroliner train from Washington to New York. It’s my third trip on this train in recent years. I enjoy it very much. It takes just under three hours, not much longer than going by plane, if you take into account the time spent travelling to and from the airports.
It is a dull day with rain on and off, but I am still enjoying the architecture and the last of the autumn scenery. My ticket included breakfast, which was a plate of sausages and pancakes filled with Blueberry sauce, plus juice and coffee. A challenging change from bacon and eggs and toast.
November 6 1992
A very successful afternoon’s work in New York. I had lunch at the United Nations with our correspondent, Jon Leyne, and met some of the people responsible for the UN’s television facilities. [Jon died of brain cancer after being posted to Cairo.] Later in the day I went to the BBC Bureau in 5th Avenue for a chat and a few drinks with our North America Business Correspondent, Richard Quest, and an independent producer who makes quite a few films for us. I had a fabulous snack meal at a Japanese diner across the road from my hotel. For $10, I had a beer and a huge bowl of soup of scallops, prawns, noodles and vegetables. There was no need to have anything else; the soup was a full meal in itself. Then it was off to bed for an early night.
November 7 1992
Today I was joined by the Head of World Service Resources, Tony Troughton, who’d flown in from San Diego, where he had been looking at some new satellite equipment. We went to New York 1, an all-news television station opened just a month ago. It was technically a most impressive operation, from which we were able to pick up lots of useful tips on a new news computer system. [Tony died of bowel cancer in November 2025.]
Tony had never been to New York, so we made a diversion up the Empire State Building -- the nearest I came to doing any tourism on this trip. Though it is no longer the tallest building in the city, it still provides a most spectacular view.
After lunch it was back to the BBC Bureau, then to the UN for some negotiations for a room in which to build a TV studio. That done, we headed out to JFK Airport for the trip home.
This trip I travelled by British Airways which is one of the airlines carrying World Service Television News. It is a source of pride seeing our bulletins on the aircraft, but it makes me grind my teeth to see how much the quality of the pictures and sound track are degraded by the poor playback equipment on the planes. The overnight return to London took six and a half hours, compared with eight hours the other way. This was mainly because we had a tail wind of more than 100mph.
Other news from a letter to the family in Australia, dated November 13 1992
NEW NEWSROOM
The new World Service TV newsroom was completed on time. It was wonderful to see it all come together after so many months of planning and negotiation. Everyone seems very happy with it. I now have to start thinking about the next newsroom when we grow out of this one, in about a year or so.
CUTLERY CHALLENGE
Harley is back in Nottingham after his summer break, during which he did a variety of jobs. One of these was work as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. It was not a job that came naturally within Harley’s skill range. For a start, he could never remember how to lay out the cutlery, something of a handicap for a waiter. The job was for just two days, and at the end of this period both Harley and the restaurant owner were relieved that it wasn’t any longer.
STAR SIGHTING
We recently had guests from New Zealand staying with us. We got on extremely well with them and one evening I showed them around BBC Television Centre. On the way out through Main Reception, a tall American walked by carrying a very large suitcase. He greeted his chauffeur with the words: “I think you had better let me carry this; it will be too heavy for you”. Which was a remark to be expected from Christopher Reeve, the actor best known for his role as Superman.
Extracts from a letter dated December 3 1992
THE YEARS PASS BY
Another year has ticked away. Harley is almost 22, Niall is 19, Rosemary will be giving 50 a serious nudge before long and I am firmly into middle age at 55.
ROSEMARY’S MIXED 12 MONTHS
As with all years, 1992 has been a mix of ups and downs. It has been a sad year for Rosemary with a total of three urgent trips to Australia because of her ailing Dad, who finally died in October. Her business, London Home-to-Home, has been very sluggish because of the international recession in the travel trade, but at least it has survived. She is optimistic that it will pick up significantly next year, but she doesn’t expect an early return to the heady boom years experienced in the mid-1980s.
HARLEY’S EDUCATION
Harley is at Nottingham University reading linguistics and mathematics. He seems to be enjoying himself most of the time but is worried that the linguistics department is being run down because of cuts in the money available for higher education. He now shares a house with five other students and enjoys this much better than having a tiny room in a block of flats. The house is quite large but is hardly an estate agent’s dream property. Not that this worries Harley and his mates. It is only boring old fogeys like Rosemary and me who worry about the finer points of home maintenance and decoration.
NIALL’S BREAK
Niall is having a year’s break from his education. He has had some casual work, but most of that was in a factory doing extraordinarily boring and badly paid jobs. Like Australia, work is in very short supply. He is unsure exactly what he wants to do, which is not surprising for a teenager. In addition to his art, he is very keen on music and fills much of his day with his guitar and synthetiser recording songs on his four-track recorder. He wants to form a band but is having trouble finding imaginative musicians with an interest in his kind of music. He stays pretty cheerful, but frankly I wouldn’t want to be 19 again for anything.
MY YEAR
I was appointed News Development Editor for BBC World Service Television and have had a tremendously rewarding time, designing and overseeing the construction of a new newsroom and a whole range of other interesting projects. WSTV is expanding at a staggering rate. We are now across almost all of Asia, all of Europe, all of Africa, a fair chunk of the Middle East, and all of Canada. We should be available in Australia within the next couple of months. The latest audience figures show that we have a regular audience of well over 20 million in Asia alone and that wherever we are operating we are beating CNN hands down. CNN aren’t taking it meekly, so I guess we are going to have some terrific battles ahead.
Finally from another letter to the family in Australia:
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
We had a German woman staying in our loft flat at the end of an English language course. One evening we invited her to join us for dinner, then to watch a French film on TV. The film turned out to be pretty raunchy, and seemed especially so with English sub-titles. The woman kept asking us to explain what certain words meant., e.g. “I’ve got a hard on”. Then later: “What is meant by ‘having a screw’?”. Rosemary attempted to explain as delicately as possible, to which our German guest replied “Oh I see. You mean a fuck!”
That’s all for this chapter.
Other chapters of can be found HERE.