I've
told this story elsewhere, but that never
stopped anyone else. On 3 June 1990 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime
Minister, took part in a phone-in for the BBC World Service, answering
questions from phoners-in from all over the world. I was allocated as
the Studio Manager (operating the mixing desk) for this event. As you
can imagine we all took it very seriously - I spent all morning
checking every connection, phone line and microphone, and we had the
full police presence and sniffer dogs routine before she came in, and
so on.
Some years later the producer wrote in the Guardian newspaper that 'we
in the cubicle' could see the realisation dawning on her that the whole
world was listening to her every word: he concluded that the boost that
this gave to her ego resulted in her leaving the World Service alone at
a time when she was attacking other parts of the BBC. I wouldn't know
about that - and I had my hands full just keeping the programme running
smoothly, so I hardly heard a word she said.
I should explain that World Service programmes run to a very tight
schedule because of some transmitters joining and leaving as the peak
listening hours move round the planet: transmissions start and finish
to the second, and over-running is impossible. I don't know whether
anyone explained this to her: possibly not. Or possibly they did and
she didn't listen.
The programme was supposed to finish at 45 seconds to 4 p.m.: five
seconds before this Oliver Scott, the presenter, wrapped up neatly -
and then the wretched woman tried to get the last word ('..and might I
just say...' or something like that). This left me with three seconds
to decide what to do: so I fell back on Engineering training and the
rule book and took her off the air, mid-sentence, at the exact finish
time.
Everyone in the cubicle looked a bit worried, and she looked a bit
thunderous just for a moment, but it passed over: and to be fair no-one
ever suggested that I should have done something different. (Had I let
her go on some transmitters would have cut her anyway: and there might
have been an automated signature tune crashing over her a few seconds
later for all I knew, so things could have got a lot messier.)
I had to write a log, of course ('Prime Minister pot-cut to prevent an
over-run' - standard formula: 'pot-cut' means shutting the fader
rapidly): where it said 'What action should be taken to prevent this
happening again?' I wrote 'General Election'. (I didn't anticipate a
palace revolution - and evidently neither did she).
So I may be the only person ever to silence Margaret Thatcher.
Links:
The
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
have published a
transcript of the phone-in (the
questions are summarised but her answers are complete).