Janet Radley spent her Friday afternoons at BBC covered in Correctine to create cue sheets
Cue sheets were the pieces of paper used in broadcasting, with a list of the timings of events and the links between commentators.
Now, in my retirement, Friday afternoons are much like any other. But when I was working at the BBC in the 1960s, they were the low point of the week, something to be endured before the lure of the weekend and all that swinging London had to offer.
For a production secretary in Outside Broadcasts, the fun side of the job was sharing an office with sports commentators Brian Johnston, Raymond Baxter and Rex Alston, and generally looking after them. But Friday afternoons saw me immersed in preparing cue sheets for weekend sports coverage.
I was reminded of this when my granddaughter talked recently about a visit we once had to a rural life museum where, intrigued by an old Imperial typewriter, she asked ‘Where’s the delete button?’ Where, indeed.
The dreaded cue sheets were typed on to a stencil. The ribbon of the manual typewriter was disengaged so that the keys punctured the skin of the stencil, which was then rolled on to a Roneo machine, its perforated heading corresponding to metal pins on the machine. Ink from the drum penetrated the typed stencil, so that when the handle was turned, a printed version emerged. Too much ink and the whole thing smudged.
But then the phone would ring: ‘Weather foul, racing at Kempton Park abandoned.’ Or ‘Cue to the Oval now 3.30.’ The only way to make the changes was to obliterate the original typed cue sheet. This was achieved with a pinkish fluid, Correctine, which could be painted over the lines to be altered and, when dry, re-typed on. More than one change, though, and the stencil began to look like a doily, too fragile to withstand the rigours of the Roneo. That meant starting all over again.
And all this was against the clock. I could not begin until the schedules had been finalised, which was usually mid- afternoon, and the final set of cue sheets had to be taken over to Egton House, in Langham Street, in time for Radio Newsreel’s live round-up of weekend sport. (Egton House was demolished in 2003 to make way for the new wing of Broadcasting House.) I still remember the clack of my stilettos as I hurried down the steps, hoping I’d made it in time.
The delete button and the ability to cut, paste and print were unheard-of then. They would have transformed my cue sheets – and my Friday afternoons at the Beeb.
