Our rear gunner’s name was ‘Flash’ Gordon. He sat in the rear turret we’d built for him, sitting and sitting, only hearing the disjointed words of his crew through his headphones, hour after hour.
Flash was an actor, his turret a set of studio soundboards, his crew - the rest of the cast. This was the 1995 recording of BBC Radio 4’s adaptation of Len Deighton’s novel, Bomber. We’d built a long corridor of soundboards, putting him thirty feet from his colleagues. But it was actor Ian Peck, playing Flash, who chose never to leave his isolated post for the whole nine-hour day like the rear gunner he was playing. He only had a script and a snapshot of his girlfriend for company.
The programme - all three hours and forty minutes of it - was broadcast to the widest acclaim. Critics loved it; the public loved it; and better than all these, Bomber Command veterans -- respected it. The post bag was blush-making: ‘incredibly Moving’, ‘remarkable attention to detail’ and, broadcast as it was across an entire day, ‘thank you for ruining all my plans for Saturday and forcing me to sit by my radio right up until midnight.’
I was lucky enough to be the producer in the right place at the right time to make this programme.
I had read Len Deighton’s novel in my early twenties while grape-picking in the South of France in 1983. The book had been published 13 years previously. I can remember feeling scales falling from my eyes as I read every line. I cannot imagine there’s a reader of ‘The Flying M’ who doesn’t know the novel, but if you don’t, it is the fictionalised account of a Bomber Command raid on Germany in the summer of 1943. The British action is concentrated on the crew of Lancaster ‘O’ for Orange, pilot Sam Lambert. Sam is on the verge of a nervous and moral breakdown: his struggles with both have their climax over Germany. The German action is concentrated on two doomed lovers, nightfighter controller August Bach, and his new girlfriend, Anna-Luisa. The former must track and destroy Sam, the latter attempt to survive the bombing raid itself.
Setting down the barest bones of the Bomber also serves to remind me how wonderfully complex the book really is. If I tell you that the novel is 559 pages long in paperback, and has, as its strengths, a huge cast, an exacting documentary basis, and all the emotion, suspense and horror a thriller writer of Len Deighton’s stature can create - as well as some glimpses into the unimaginably awful - then I confess I am still only sketching it.
Let me just illustrate the method of the book by the career of a single 4000 pound ‘cookie’ bomb - an item devoid, one would have thought, of any drama in the conventional sense. But not in Deighton’s hands. (I’m about to ruin parts of the plot, so those who haven’t read the book look away now. Join us at the paragraph beginning ‘I haven’t mentioned’).
Deighton tells us how the bomb was manufactured. And from what materials. And how many similar bombs, statistically, went off. How it was transported across Britain to the airfields. And how, after an exhaustive description of the winches, cables and wires required inside a Lancaster to lift it up into the bomb bay, this particular cookie took its first life when it fell to the tarmac, crushing the armourer. We learn how the bomb - acute phrasing by Deighton, here - was not, itself, ‘harmed’. How the aircraft that takes it to Germany is surrounded in the night sky by the unravelling fates of at least ten crews. (They are followed in detail, but we learn, by extension, the sorts of fates of all the four and a half thousand men who flew on the raid.) We learn how that bomb was dropped. How it fell, with the spinner arming the delayed action fuse. And how it lands on the rubble of a house which, via mishap and accident, the aforementioned Anna-Luisa has taken shelter in the basement. And how, simultaneously, the armourer's parents are woken in Scotland by a telegram telling them of their son’s death. And his last fusing job proves successful as the cookie blows Anna-Luisa out of existence.
That’s the career of one bomb in this book: an incredible marriage of technological information, drama and poignant incident. And there are planes, mascots, flares, maps, weather reports, flak shell fragments, radar sites - even party invitations - performing a similar interwoven role. And people, masses of people.
I haven’t mentioned (welcome back) that one of the reasons Deighton’s book caused such a stir when it was published was that he chose to write about the raid from both the German and British sides. The war had been over for 25 years, but this hadn’t been enough for some. Perhaps, indeed, not enough even for myself, with a black-and-white Sunday-afternoon movie education.
So I came to the book confident of another ‘633 Squadron’. I got something completely different. Vivid, heartstopping, revelatory, unremitting blow by awful blow, the single day marched on, an inexorable machine consuming buildings, aircraft, men, women and children.
Sitting as I was after a long day grape-picking back in 1983 I can still remember my gasps of dismay as Deighton’s blend of fact and fiction enveloped me utterly. Convinced I had read a classic, I began to demolish all Deighton’s other books, and also those of Martin Middlebrook, Max Hastings, Alfred Price, Jack Currie, Pip Beck et al. I returned from France to start work as a Studio Manager for BBC World Service.
Night shifts are slightly hallucinatory affairs. I was staring glassily at the studio clock at 4 a.m. one morning and idly thought that this was the sort of time crews could be returning from raids deep into Germany, feeling a lot worse than I was. And in just a few seconds I had the idea of a continuous nine hour radio drama from eight in the evening to five in the morning. So all I’d have to do was borrow a radio network for the relevant period and away we’d go. At that time, only Radio 2 went through the night. I didn’t think that was much of an obstacle. Such is the brashness of the new boy.
Two things then happened in double quick time. Promoted, I got a job as a producer on BBC Radio 1. Stupidly, I also convinced myself that Bomber was, in fact, a television project. So for the next eight years I led a schizophrenic lifestyle. By day I was a pop fan in a fantastically enjoyable and silly job. By night I was an immensely serious TV producer manqué amassing technical research for this project that never seemed to quite go away. It surprised me - because I was young and foolish, but it won’t surprise you a bit - that TV felt it would rather not give hours of airtime and production money to some twit who worked as Steve Wright in the Afternoon’s producer, often named on air as ‘Happening Boy’. This job was in itself a strange fate, because I’d gone into pop radio wanting to work with my hero John Peel. My plan was to produce a session by an up and coming band for his show, perceive that they were the next Beatles, offer to manage them and make my fortune.
Selling and reselling my ‘back burner’ project to friends over the years - still the best way of refining a programme idea - I heard one advising me vigorously to avoid television in whose undergrowth he was working. Why not radio? That which was obvious to others finally became obvious to me.
I approached Jeremy Howe, a senior producer in the BBC Radio Drama department. Imagine the conversation from his perspective: a hyperactive, skittish Radio 1 producer, probably on drugs, with not a second of radio drama to his name, wanting to take over his network.
By this time, I’d refined the idea, and decided that it was best to grace drama-friendly Radio 4 with my offering. They were only on-air up to midnight, so I’d had to come up with a raid that took off at 1800 and was back by 2400. I’d been to the Public Records Office and seen raid timings - specifically one to Duisburg in February 1943 - that meant I could timeshift Deighton’s raid on Krefeld, also in the Ruhr, to these new times. All this took longer than you might imagine. Working the differences to contemporary GMT, and period BST, BDST and the German CET and GST took a headscratching forever.
I’d also realised that my best chance lay in using existing radio drama slots: 1430 to 1600 could cover the briefings, night flying tests and an introduction to all the cast and all their interweaving stories. We could borrow 10 minutes (from ‘Weekend PM’ I think it was), at 1740-1750 to hear the take-off. 1950 to 2120 was the standard evening drama slot: it could take in the two waves of the raid. And 2330-2400, well, for one week we could borrow that from ‘Yesterday in Parliament’ or whatever it was and hear the bombers getting back to Britain. Or being shot down close to home. Plus the after-effects of the raid in Germany.
Jeremy Howe said he’d think about it. What he did was remarkable, in hindsight. He went away, read the book, and discussed it with Michael Green, controller of Radio 4. As far as I know, he didn’t discuss it with anyone else than that worthy. Michael Green approved it within a month. These days such a process would take at least a year and God knows how many people to approve it.
I haven’t worked full time at the BBC for years now so maybe they still have the attachment system in place. It was a God-send to me. The principle was that my parent department - Radio 1 - would loan me free of charge to Radio 4, where I might acquire valuable experience to the benefit of all. An enlightened policy, and my golden opportunity - thank you Johnny Beerling, Controller Radio 1 and Chris Lycett, my direct boss.
Jeremy Howe then did me another huge favour: he appointed Adrian Bean as director and Joe Dunlop as adaptor. Radio dramas rarely have a producer as such, but Jeremy could see even at this stage that three and a half hours of drama was going to need several hands to the pump and I obviously knew my stuff. Jeremy must also have known an idea flourishes best in the hands of its originator.
Joe went away to work on a first draft. If you know the book or the play, you will be surprised that we opted to do the afternoon play focussed uniquely on the British and the evening on the Germans. It doesn’t sound possible now, does it, but I have that draft somewhere to prove it. Luckily we soon saw how we were missing far too many subtle tricks doing it that way and reverted to the model in the book.
I was spending a lot of time at this point checking the facts in the book. Well, that was a complete waste of time: Len’s facts were ruthlessly correct. For dramatic purposes, the raid in the book actually misses its intended target, Krefeld in the Ruhr. However, Len had used every detail - bomb loads, routes, markers, everything - from a real raid which hit Krefeld on 22/23 June 1943, (and AIR66/666 is a good starting point if you want to read up on this in the PRO.) You can also experience the strange emotion of reading something you know a writer of Len Deighton’s stature has also spent hours poring over.
Len had set his raid on June 31st: as he said in the prologue to the novel, there was never a thirty-first day of June in 1943 or any other year. I wanted to reflect this idea somehow - I can’t put my finger on it quite, but it seemed to help make the raid mythic in the sense that it represented every raid and no raid at the same time. The news came through that we were scheduled for transmission on Saturday 18th February 1995. I decided to stick with the date, and stick with the day, but change the year: that gave me Saturday 18th February 1943. I can’t remember what day it actually fell on, but it wasn’t Saturday. I therefore had my mythical date just like Len’s.
In September 1994, I went over the road from Radio 1’s knockabout offices to the edifice of Broadcasting House. There had always been an atmosphere that Radio 1 was the ‘naughty boys club’: we were not allowed inside the real BBC, don’t y’know. I got a new assistant, Sally Braben.
Until new scripts arrived from Joe I had nothing to do. I thought it best not to confirm any impressions in Radio 4 of their feckless pop brethren. I had contacted Doug Radcliffe of the Bomber Command Association. I offered to take him out to lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand - I thought it appropriate for such a grand fellow. He quickly suggested a pint and a sandwich in the pub next door, ‘The Coal Hole’.
I was nervous. Here I was, about to make a programme that mentioned Lack of Moral Fibre. And creepback. And, crucially, attempted to show the effects of the bombs dropped by Doug’s comrades. I didn’t know what to expect: perhaps he would be furious that yet another jumped-up media twit wanted to rake over an old story.
This view was naïve in the extreme. Apart from the fact that Doug has appreciated and debated all those issues many times, his attitude was to assist anyone who wanted to honestly try to tell the story. Especially as I wanted to talk to aircrew as a way of doing it. He immediately recommended a number of veterans he was willing to contact on my behalf. This was excellent news. I decided to create a series of tapes recorded by each of the crew members of a Lancaster to give to the actors who would be playing those roles.
So began one of the most fulfilling periods in my working life. I was welcomed into homes all over the country to speak to some of the most remarkable people on earth. I would put my jacket and tie on, and was obviously regarded as ‘a nice young man from the BBC’. Charming wives made me tea and sandwiches.
I would sit fiddling with the kit as I wondered how to broach the more controversial elements of the story, convinced my experience with Doug Radcliffe was a one-off. But no one had anything to hide: there wasn’t a single occasion when I felt I couldn’t ask whatever I wanted to. I was grateful for my ten years spent reading up on the subject: often the interviewee and I would have a highly enjoyable diversion into the obscurest points of detail. The overall outcome, though, was a remarkable sound archive - well over thirty hours of first-person narratives tackling every issue and operational detail. My thanks go to one and all of RAF Bomber Command - I’m proud to have met you.
As the days passed I began to get a clearer sense of the responsibility that rested on my shoulders to get this thing as good as possible. Joe submitted his scripts at about the time Jeremy went off to be a big noise in TV and his place was taken by Marilyn Imrie.
It was obvious that we were going to need vibrant sound effects - ‘FX’ in radio-speak. The BBC’s old library external recordings of a Lancaster (in mono) were never going to get us vividly inside our bomber - and now I knew at least thirty veterans who wouldn‘t hesitate to tell me if they caught me using a recording of something else. Five years before, using my Radio 1 job to further all things aviation, I had made a Battle of Britain 50th anniversary show. Broadcast in the regular Simon Bates morning slot, Simon and I had been made welcome at RAF Coningsby, and unbelievably, given a flight in the BBMF Lancaster as a platform to observe a Spitfire and Hurricane. This meant I had a contact - Caroline Hogg, PRO at Coningsby. She came through for me again. Spectacularly.
By this time a sound engineer had been allocated to the programme: Mike Etherden. He and I went up to the station with two different jobs in mind: his in the air and mine on the ground. He positioned three tape machines in different parts of the aircraft: we correctly surmised, as it turned out, that the engine noises at the pilot’s position and the rear gunners, say, would be very different.
Leaving Mike to the flight of his life, I stood with another tape machine on the hard standing as each Merlin was brought to life. This was to be an extremely valuable recording we used over and over again. I then raced in a borrowed Land Rover to the centre of the airfield to record the take off. There are times in your life when you have to get a recording right, and this was one of them. The technology teases you somewhat: you hear it in your headphones on as you make the recording, surrounded by the actual sound itself. You pray it comes out OK on the tape: after all, you’ve had to make an educated guess about the recording level. Too quiet? Or the worst problem of all - so loud so it distorts? I didn’t know until I listened back to the tape.
An otherwise silent day is changed utterly as the four roaring Merlins power up into the air from extreme left to extreme right. That spine-tingling recording, tweaked aurally to make it a bit different on each occasion, was a keynote authentic sound of the production. You can hear it in all its glory at the very end of the production. The internal recordings, so ably made by Mike, also enabled us to shift from position to position in the Lancaster, giving us a chance to steer the around the plane. The wireless op’s position right by the port inner: full roar. Rear gunner seventy feet from the engines: a duller roar mixed in with the slipstream.
The interviews with aircrew were about to change with a trip to Germany - I was intrigued by the help I got from British aircrew to track down their Luftwaffe opposite numbers. I was accruing yards of tape for every actor to listen to, and it was good stuff: I began to harbour ambitions that we should have a big documentary played on the day that could use the material. But some pieces were so moving and profound I found I was playing them to colleagues in the Drama department. Something stirred in my brain. Naïve as I was, I didn’t know I was effectively going to create a docudrama method that is now a staple of this genre around the world (my apologies if I am treading on the creative toes of some precursor of this method I haven’t heard about.)
Let’s take a scene involving a nightfighter vectoring onto a bomber. Len had written many masterful, suspenseful scenes on this subject, and Joe had adapted them brilliantly. At the same time, I had the interviews with veteran radio operators telling us about doing this for real. Normally you’d play the documentary, then the drama, or the other way round. My innovation was to run them simultaneously, which made the true-life voices effectively narrate the drama. It was a breakthrough.
Of course, it was director Adrian Bean and sound editor Roger Danes who made this happen in the edit suite - brilliantly realising the technique beyond my best imaginings. But there was an emotional spin-off that no-one could have predicted: the young voices played a drama of hunters and hunted, killers and victims. The old voices, however, seemed united through their very age, and at some sort of peace or reconciliation or sorrow. It was very powerful, and very hard to explain. But I think it is one of the reasons that Bomber is held in such regard.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve brought the Germans in without really introducing them. I had started out on the whole Bomber project with the naïve idea that mentioning Germans (a sort of bizarre twist on Basil Fawlty, this) would, in some way, annoy BC veterans. Not a bit of it. It was a member of BC who put me onto the German nightfighter pilots and crew. I found appropriate civilians myself by calling Krefeld’s town archive.
The whole four day German experience was very revealing in ways I hadn’t bargained on. And not just in the interviews.
It was the first time I’d ever been to Germany, and I’d unknowingly set myself a huge task - the first interviewee was in Hamburg, the last on the Austrian border. The driving was absolutely shattering - but BBC budgets are very tight, not least on foreign trips. I did, however, get to see the sheer size of the nation that we had hoped to conquer from the air.
If you haven’t been, the place is massive. When it is not drear-black with industry, it is rolling fields of industrialised agriculture. So tearing along the autobahns was something of an education in itself: I had a sense of the difficulty of subjugating somewhere so resource-filled purely from the air, and a strong feel for the bravery and commitment of anyone who escaped from a POW camp and then had to tramp for miles across this landscape.
I’d been greeted so hospitably in Britain by ex-aircrew I was ready for the genteel behaviour of that generation in Germany. I was not, however, prepared for two strong emotional reactions. The first was to meeting men who had shot down and killed large numbers of young allied aircrew. Perhaps my inability to experience a shift in my value system was a remnant of all the years spent in playgrounds in the 60’s with the clear cut goodies and baddies roles given to the Brits and the Jerries respectively. But it’s true: I could be chilled to shake the hands of men who had pressed the firing button on so many young Allied aircrew.
And the second unexpected reaction was also connected to that handshake. If one shakes the hand of a decorated Luftwaffe officer, one is shaking hands with someone who has shaken hands with Hitler. I am looking at my right hand now: I am one handshake away from a blight on humanity. I’m still not sure how that makes me feel.
Mine hosts in Germany and Austria were wonderfully informative and helpful. They were nightfighter controllers, pilots, radio operators, TENO men, RAD girls and civilians. I got the distinct feeling that they were still coming to terms with something which I have subsequently read about: the idea that they deserved to be bombed for being part of the Nazi state. It’s come up in the recent writings of WG Sebald, but I was fascinated to hear it for myself.
Back in the UK the recording dates loomed ever closer. I was feeling a tightness in my chest as I heard Adrian’s suggestions for casting. One of the strange phenomena of casting is that the final person who fills a role seems to have been born into it, however many alternative actors were mooted for the slot. I thought Adrian would have a particularly awkward job casting as our recording dates were between Christmas and New Year. I had not bargained on the acting economy. So perilous is their employment situation, they accept work wherever and whenever, and if people were in London they were perfectly happy to come in and do the job.
Some names I knew: Frank Windsor as AVM Sir Arthur Harris. Tom Baker - Doctor Who as far as I was concerned - as the narrator. But I have to admit the vast majority were total strangers. I also readily admit they were brilliant choices.
Some were able to come with me and actually get into ‘S’-Sugar at Hendon and many thanks to the Museum for this. It was a fascinating contrast with the living, breathing creature owned by the BBMF. The impact on the young actors was immense and I was delighted. Not so happy were the visitors to the Museum that day who saw us go in the airframe and then discovered that they couldn’t join in!
Joe, Adrian and I then met up to go through the script. We all have agendas for big meetings and I had hit on a number of ideas for emphasising the ‘as-live’ nature of the project. The obvious one was the raid commencing on time at 2030. A more subtle one was a time check in the briefing room at 1558. We needed to go through the script to ensure we were hitting these points. But what actually happened was far more extensive.
These were the two most important meetings of the project, extending deep into the night after a lunchtime start on both occasions. I was back from Germany by now, so had a working knowledge of every interview. Adrian was working hard on casting and recording logistics, and Joe was wrestling the final parts of the plot into the huge structure. What we achieved in the meetings was remarkable: every single line was checked for factual accuracy, any anachronisms, dramatic weight, juxtaposition with factual material, the whole nine yards. It was also the kind of meeting where all problems, big or small, are solved on the spot. Textbooks off the shelves, diagrams deciphered, histories consulted. Nothing was ‘to be checked later’. It meant we left those marathon sessions severely addicted to coffee but with completely working scripts. It was also the first occasion we had come together as a team. I had been nervous that - seems bizarre now, but it is true - that these two men would ruin my baby. But those two days bonded us together, as well as allowing us to taste some of the excitement again at working on such a potentially ground-breaking project.
Christmas zoomed up to meet us and we prepared for the first day of recording at the huge BBC Drama studios in Maida Vale: the day after Boxing Day, 1994.
I went over early, carrying bags of books and videos, as well as one of Tamiya’s 1/48 scale Lancaster bombers. The cab driver chose not to comment. I went to the green room, the place where actors relax between takes and apparently demolish The Times crossword in three minutes flat. I put out every bit of research material I had and then pinned up a Michelin map of northern Europe, marking the route to and from the target in the red leader tape they use on reel-to-reel tape machines. I then waited for the actors to arrive.
We were soon ready for a readthrough of the first part. Adrian wasn’t really rehearsing as such at this moment. He wanted the cast to settle in, so he let them take a run at a big part of the script to see how it played. He also explained how the veteran’s stories would dovetail into the action. We broke for coffee and then started a long and highly practical session with Tom Baker, recording all his narrations in one long take. Every time I hear Bomber I’m struck by the appositeness of his tone for every situation, especially as I know it was separately recorded. This can only come from his ability as an actor to feel the rest of the scene off the printed page and then play his part accordingly. A remarkable piece of work.
I may have dressed the green room but the sound engineers - called studio managers in BBC parlance, as we know - had also dressed the studio. There was a place for the bomber aimer to lie, wireless op to sit, all surrounded by sound baffling to create the right acoustic for their place in the aircraft. And tucked away, down an isolating corridor of soundproof studio dividers was poor Ian Peck, playing that tail gunner, 'Flash' Gordon.
We recorded for nine days straight, without even knocking off early for New Year’s Eve. The actors, possibly responding to the annual curious atmosphere between Christmas and the New Year anyway, capitalised on it by being particularly intense in their absorption of information. Although I’d supplied many hours of war films made in the 1950’s on video to the green room (The Dam Busters, for example), I asked the cast to concentrate more on the films from the actual war years like In Which We Serve, The Way to the Stars, Millions Like Us. I felt these were more of an aid to understanding the period, as were the copies of genuine training manuals, Picture Posts and the like.
It’s invidious to single out any individual moment, because if you’ve heard the programme you’ll know the cumulative effect and ensemble playing is one of it’s greatest strengths.
We had a definite sense of some of the horror of what we were recreating, as well as a sense that we were turning in an honest and decent job.
I recall Adrian’s interpretation of the scene when a crew is shot down. Oh how I would have sailed in with all the bombast and trauma I could extract from the actors. I thought he played it too cold: but when the ten or so contributions were cut together, it was a masterpiece. It is still the most requested piece of the programme.
I definitely recall the strain on Joe the adaptor’s face when the hospital was being burnt down, and the old patients were trapped on the top floor, moaning with fear. Joe had had no option to write this down in the script as ‘Ooooh, aaah’, and he was petrified someone would notice how similar this was to the then topical football chant ‘Ooooh, aaah, Cantona’ and the precious mood would be lost. It didn’t happen.
I remember Emma Chambers and Sam West’s bedroom scenes. It was funny how other cast members made themselves scarce even though the two actors were full clothed and not even touching one another. Moreover, they had an FX SM there to tug and pull a stunt blanket next to the microphone.
I’m not sure how Adrian and Joe put up with me, but we were still up for batting questions back and forth about detail and interpretation. In the evenings I stayed behind at the studio to edit the sixty hours or so of interviews.
These were beginning to get a powerful life of their own, especially now I was hearing the dialogue during the day and realising how intelligent use of the archive could counterpoint what was happening, as well as explain technicalities and give information. Back to that nightfighter/ground controller example I used earlier; now I had the foreground action as well as the interviews, Wolfgang Falk, veteran southern area nightfighter controller, could describe the use of the codeword for contact - "Pauke Pauke", just as the fictional von Lowenherz, in the cockpit, played by Dominic Rickards, could respond with "Kettledrums kettledrums".
As I said, the sessions lasted for nine days - that’s roughly half and hour of broadcast material recorded per day. TV manages a couple of minutes. The movies - far less. Radio drama - Britain’s bargain asset.
The recording came to an end, with the cast and crew looking dreadful after such solid, airless and fluorescently-lit work. Not to mention the wonders of BBC canteen food. And all that coffee.
We fell back exhausted. Adrian and Roger had to start editing in just a few days, and I started a big publicity campaign. It may seem strange to an outsider, but the BBC needs to be motivated from within to get it to promote a programme and really ‘own it’ as theirs. The reason isn’t indifference; in fact it is the complete opposite. The standard of Radio 4’s output is so extraordinarily high – that most weeks that you really need to hammer away to make anyone take notice.
I also had far greater ambitions for the programme on air, all stemming from my original idea of the broadcast lasting for a continuous period on Radio 2. I decided to approach all the programmes transmitting that day and ask them to include a Bomber element. For example, the music request show in the late evening turned itself to wartime music. The travel show - ‘Breakaway’ - sent me off to the Mohne Dam to record a piece about Second World War tourism. And the science show did an interview with Len Deighton on the technical aspects of the aircraft. Trying to edit Len down - possibly the most complex yet precise speaker I have ever met, a demon with his subclauses and meticulously organised arguments - to anything like the two minutes a programme needs must have been a complete nightmare.
Joe also hatched an original idea - once again, my apologies if it had in fact been done before, but I don’t think it had. He wrote monologues by the characters to be played as mini-trailers for use in the week leading up to the broadcast. I coupled this with an idea still hanging around from the Radio 2 world-domination era: I got some particularly punchy clips from the veterans that we’d been unable to use elsewhere, and then parcelled them up as timed bulletins for use at all the news junctions throughout the day.
There is a surreal omerta in the BBC that it isn’t very decent to promote one’s own shows. I was from Radio 1 so I hadn’t got clue how to be quiet about anything. I tarted myself around any show that would have me - I think I got the programme a mention on nearly every BBC network. One interview was back in the World Service building where I had dreamt the whole thing up in the first place. A mere ten years on - quick in terms of production from initial idea to broadcast, I can assure you.
We were now on the ramp up to transmission date. There’s an old BBC joke that when you see the programme listed in the Radio Times you’d better get a move on ‘cos it is definitely going to happen. Adrian and Roger had a final cut they wanted to play, and we staged it uninterrupted back in Maida Vale for Len Deighton - and for Marilyn Imrie. Len was nothing but complementary. I don’t think I had the courage to ask Marilyn what she thought. During the recording phase I’d learnt that she had lost her father in the War. He’d been in Bomber Command.
We also had a launch at the Imperial War Museum, chronically under-attended by the press for whose benefit it had been put on. Len was there, though, which made it worthwhile. A small triumphant moment - being photographed with Len and Samuel West in front of the Lancaster nose section on the first floor. I also temporarily replaced the recording that plays in the Halifax walkthrough nose with dialogue from the play.
Radio is rarely reviewed in the papers, just previewed. Some journalists had actually listened to it, and were powerfully in favour, but it was scary to see so many quotes from my own press release turn up in the other’s copy. But what was really odd was a canard that seemed to come from nowhere, but turn up everywhere - that the raid would have gone on after midnight, but this fact had been ignored to make the production work. As explained above, this wasn’t the case: the timings came from the Duisburg raid. But this story - with many and varied guesses as to when the raid would have ended - 0230, 0400 and so on, popped up all over.
The show was finally broadcast. I’d just moved into a new flat, and I listened to the whole thing throughout the day on a tranny in various rooms as I unpacked. At midnight I opened a bottle of Riesling given to me by a civilian caught in the bombing of Krefeld. I drank the whole damn thing at the one sitting.
Monday morning in the office. I had about a week to tidy things up and go back to my hutch over the road. The phone rang: it was John Peel. Was it really me, he asked? That bloke from Radio One - that bloke he saw in the corridors - was it really him who had produced this incredible programme? I don’t need to tell you the thrill that gave me. Peel went on to say how much the noise of the bombers took him back to his childhood, how striking the drama was etcetera etcetera, but I have to admit his main theme was his surprise that I had had a hand in the production. Ah well. There you go.
The wind-down on this production was joyful. Not many producers are blessed with a hit of such depth and merit, and it was no hardship to read the letters that came in. First, the complaints. There was one, often repeated: didn’t we know that the 18th February hadn’t fallen on a Saturday in 1943? The image of a succession of very British eggheads having that fact at their fingertips was fascinating. Someone also claimed the colour of a wine used in one scene was wrong (it wasn’t).
There were a smattering of letters written in angry capitals. I’ll spare you what they said, but I sincerely believe they said more about the writers than the programme. That was it on the complaint front. More complex were the passionate letters of support: most heartening were the ones that appreciated Adrian’s directorial tone, Joe’s care with the original material, and the support for the time-shift idea which people loved, and the use of the veteran’s voices, which got the very highest praise. The best letters of all were from Bomber Command veterans. They weren’t keen on the character of Flt Lt Sweet, but everything else was ‘on the top line’.
Have I said my thanks to them? Even if I have, I’ll say it again.
I went on to become a freelance TV and Radio producer, and have now become a writer. Every play I put up for consideration by the BBC Radio Drama department is always turned down - in a lovely way, obviously - accompanied for a plea that I might come up with another Bomber.
I hope to come up with some wonderful stuff in the future - but another Bomber? - I don’t think so.