Iain Betson

A bit about me: Less about radiation, more about radio

Nuclear Bombs to Radio Studios

Apart from two years building nuclear missiles at a research centre that resembled a 1950's  bus garage, and signing the Official Secrets Act as a result,  (If there is a war it means we can shoot you." laughingly said the HR person to Iain on his first day.) Iain Betson has spent his entire career in the broadcast and professional AV industries.

A desire to leave defence-based work led, after two serious attempts with a third, frankly bizarre, interview in between, "I'm not sure why you are here to be honest, as we don't recruit at this time of year" said the mystified BBC interviewer "Well you invited me in. I didn't just knock on the studio door.", to being engaged as a trainee BBC radio studio support engineer at a staff grade of 2N. "At your real interview" said the mystified interviewer, offering a tip, "Tell them w you want to work in radio, else they will send you to some dead-end place like TV news engineering."  

Radio, the "senior service”, was the only place I wanted to work. In accordance with my wishes, I started my first day at the BBC, in January 1988 at Evesham railway station, along with about 50 other trainees. In a scene resembling the first day a Hogwarts, we boarded the BBC green & grey liveried coach to take us to the Engineering Training Department (ETD) at Wood Norton. 

It was here my first contact with the WTBS was made.

The 1980`'s was a busy period for training broadcast technical  staff at Wood Norton, On site, as well as BBC people from every department: fader pushers, camera gunners, spanner monkeys like Iain, plus bods with premature baldness due to working with transmitters,  there were people from overseas broadcasters and even the "enemy", ITV.  World class BBC training was doing its bit for UK foreign trade and the licence payer. 

And that gave ETD a problem: A shortage of teaching space. 

But there was a solution: Underneath a prefabricated wooden classroom block called Bredon Wing was a solid concrete bunker, with thick blast doors, instead of the 20-minute fire doors Bredon Wing had, and within, a large open plan area ideal for imparting the skills of broadcast engineering to a class of 30 trainees.

So, past the steel doors and down the metal stairs the class clattered...

Everyone Loves a Secret

Who doesn't love a secret? That feeling of superiority when we are safe in the knowledge, we know something more than the person next to us. 

"This is interesting! Where are we going?" they asked as they descended the steps.  But on entering an open plan area it was a bit of an anti-climax. No cryogenically frozen Daleks, no clue as the whereabouts of the secret tunnel between Broadcasting House and the Bakerloo Line.: Just desks.

But it was enough to pique interest. During training and later as a local radio engineer there was exposure to this strange BBC thing called "Deferred Facilities". Iain worked in the Broadcasting House Control Room where on the Manager's desk sat the red phone to Whitehall. Under it the safe with the BBC War Book within. There were regular tests of the DF transmission lines to do and later discovering, a transmitter site, where they ended up.

It all added to this interest in a hidden-in-plain-sight BBC radio service few would talk about.  

The picture? From the radio studio engineering intake, taken outside the Hall at Wood Norton on a snowy January morning in 1988. 

My Ears Prick Up

Fast forward 20 years and a chance call from a Cold War aficionado enquiring if I would like to by a tape recorder led to a whole new direction, of which this website is part of that. 

Asking where the tape machine was located, I was told. "In a bunker"

And the rest, as they say...

"...our object should be to avoid a situation where certain engineers appear regularly in the main control room for the sole purpose of testing the WTBS links...Let us not forget about the sizeable number of communists working in Broadcasting House."

Cabinet Office briefing Memo to the BBC - January 1975