BBC1 Hospital Watch 1991 Live Talkback Cockup

To mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS, an appropriate video from my archive.

This is the start of an episode of Hospital Watch, the BBC's live medical show of 1991 where Sarah Greene follows the goings-on in Hammersmith Hospital, a programme known for its theme tune, "La Serinissima (Venice In Peril)" by Gian Piero Reverberi's Italian chamber music project Rondo Veneziano, remixed by electronic music duo DNA in 1990. In this edition, however, someone forgot to turn the director's mike off, and we hear the production gallery's talkback over the titles. Surprisingly, the 10-second countdown to Sarah's first link is in tune to the music! Sarah, always the professional, is far from being thrown from this problem, as she links from the hospital's children's ward.

It turns out I was lucky to get this cockup, as I wasn't really recording this programme, I was recording the previous show, an episode of The Reluctant Cook, where Manx chef Kevin Woodford helps celebrities to cook meals. In the episode I taped, Woodford was helping out actor, comedian and DJ Craig Charles cooking a meal for an agent Charles was hoping to sign up with. (SPOILER ALERT: The agent phoned to say she couldn't arrive, so Woodford and Charles ate the meal themselves.) If there's interest in the show and if YouTube's copyright bots will allow it, I may seek out the tape and grab and upload the show in question.

"Dip sound and cue Sarah!"