Have you been on TV as a guest, contestant on in the audience?

[Worthingite]

I was part of a schools TV programme called Landmarks that was filmed in 1992. A couple of years later we were learning about the Tudors at secondary school, History teacher pops a video in, and for the next 5 years.....merciless humiliation.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

I sort of just fell into the Ultimate Golden Ticket of working for the BBC (1977-1980) for just about all of the punk era. Just a boring old low level IT job, but gave me far closer access to everything I cared about than I ever deserved. TOTP was severely restricted access limited to about 80 audience members who were severely threatened - poor kids! - with being thrown out if they didn't clap the acts loudly enough. As a genuine BBC staff member I could apply for TOTP tickets through the ticket unit, or just get matey with security guards or get smuggled in by bands I knew, like The Piranhas. All three options worked. On one occasion I got in via a friend of a friend by carrying an empty guitar case for The Gordon Giltrap Band. Sake! Me and me bruv were in the TOTP studio when The Jam made their first appearance doing In The City (thats me blondie bruv pogoing in front of the camera for most of the clip). On the downside you could be trapped in the TOTP studio while Elkie Brooks did SEVEN takes of Lilac Wine. But the REAL Golden Ticket was The Old Grey Whistle Test. No crowds, no security, just a hippie lackey saying hey man you can come in just stay behind the camera. Saw The Ramones there. And the Adverts. And Blondie. And smuggled in as guests two of the 15 year old kiddies (Einer and Ausger) who we met in a pub and who would go on to be half of the Sugarcubes. We all went up on the roof of the BBC Club and sat around having a beer with Jim Steinman and half of Meatloaf. Bob Geldof read the review of the first Boomtown Rats album out of my copy of Sounds while his g/f Paula Yates sat on the opposite side of the table showing exactly what she wasn't wearing under her leapardskin mini-skirt. David Bowie tapped me on the shoulder with the words 'Excuse me lads, you wanted an autograph?' Special time, special place, extremely jammy bastid to have been able to be even the smallest part of it.

 

[Durlston]

I was on Floyd on Food when they recorded a programme from HMS Raleigh. I was doing my Leading Cooks course, and the programme focused on disaster relief training.
When Floyd died, I was on one of the clips again on the News.
I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but he was an arse

On BBC2 now.

Can't believe he said to his assistant "She's a pheasant plucker".

"Not always easy to say".

 

[Saladpack Seagull]

I appeared in two programmes about Simon Weston,the Welsh Guardsman badly injured in the Falklands War, both filmed at the Military Hospital where I worked. The first time all you could see of me was my back disappearing through a door, but the second one gave me about thirty seconds on camera during a Resettlement interview (which actually lasted two and a half hours!). Apart from that I was (again briefly!) on Does He Take Sugar, a BBC radio programme concerned with disability, again with my Army Resettlement hat on. Prior to all of that, I was in the This Is Your Life audience with the first Mrs Saladpack when wrestler Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) was featured.