The programme was on-air from two o’clock to six, four hours of high-octane adrenalin. If things went wrong and off-script, as they usually did at some point during the afternoon, then we just had to carry on regardless. The thing about live television was that mistakes were history as soon as you made them, there was nothing you could do to unmake the error. There was no saying ‘Let’s do that again’ as you might in a recorded programme where you could do it over and over until it was perfect.
In all, there were three race meetings taking place that afternoon, with Hamilton being broadcast on the other satellite network. Even though a race took place only every half hour at each course, the times were staggered so that across the three meetings a race was due to start every ten minutes from ten past two until five thirty, which was fine as long as all of them went off roughly on time.
If a horse got loose or lost a shoe on the way to the start, or if a stirrup leather or bridle broke, the delay could throw out the whole schedule, resulting in races at different courses running simultaneously. And that gave the producer a big headache.
Added to the actual broadcasting of the races were interviews with winning trainers and jockeys, trophy presentations, video footage of prior races of the main participants, as well as comments from the paddock presenters. And somewhere there also had to be found the time to fit in a set number of advertisement breaks and promos for future race days.
Manic it was not, but it was full-on nevertheless, and everyone would breathe a collective sigh of relief come three minutes to six o’clock when the production assistant would finally say ‘Shut-up’ into everyone’s ears, meaning the show was over and we were off-air.
Derek called the production meeting to order. ‘There’s to be a minute’s silence here at Windsor in memory of Clare Shillingford.’ Everyone in the scanner instinctively turned round to glance at me. ‘It will be before the first race at two twenty-five, after the horses have gone out onto the course. There will be a loud beep over the public address to start and also to finish the minute. Iain, do the introduction please but don’t talk during the minute, your mike will stay live. During it we will show the flag on the grandstand, which is flying at half mast, and then slowly fade to a picture of Clare after forty seconds. If we are on schedule it should come comfortably after the first from Leicester. If there’s a delay at Leicester and the silence occurs during their race, we will record the silence here at Windsor and play it back as if live immediately after. Iain, your cue to speak will be the second beep, and we’ll go pretty much straight to an ad break after a few words. Understand?’ Iain nodded. ‘And full silence please, everyone, for the whole minute, not even any talk-back.’
Talk-back was what played continually into everyone’s ear through an earpiece on a curly wire like those worn by secret service agents. The producer, his assistant and the director would all speak, giving cues to presenters, or instructions to cameramen and the vision mixer, or counting down time while the video clips were shown or ad breaks transmitted.
One became used to listening to all the chatter but picking up only the material that was relevant to you. The art of great presenting was to absorb and react to the talk-back while speaking live on-air at the same time. Only the very best could carry on an interview, listening and responding to their interviewee’s answers, and, at the same time, take in the appropriate information on the talk-back.
Derek went through the rest of the planned running order, sharing out the jobs to be done and detailing all the many expected ‘Astons’, the captions that are overlaid onto the pictures to give the viewers information, be it betting prices, horses’ and jockeys’ names, details of non-runners, and so on, and so on. It was the full-time job of two staff at the back of the scanner to type the Astons and have them ready whenever the producer called for them.
And then there were the video clips of prior races to be annotated and spoken about, all of which would be recorded before the programme went on-air so that the clips, or VTs, were stored and ready to broadcast. VT stood for video tape and the term was still used even though, these days, the recordings were stored not on tape but on a computer hard drive.
The magic of television allowed two complete race afternoons, one from Leicester and the other from Windsor, to be fitted into the time of just one of them.
By careful use of VTs, the runners could be shown in the parade ring while they were really on their way to the start. Interviews with trainers at Windsor might be recorded while races from Leicester were being run, then played back at a time when the trainers would have been unavailable and busy saddling their horses.
Often the only things that were ‘live’ in the whole broadcast were the races themselves, and that was a ‘must-do’ rule. The rest didn’t matter. Interviews recorded after the first race might be shown later in the afternoon if time permitted, or dropped altogether if no slot could be found. Everything was timed and cut to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle around the immovable races, filling up four hours of television that then seemed to whizz past in a flash.
I spent the first part of the afternoon in the scanner, sitting behind Derek and getting an unfamiliar view of the production as he marshalled his troops at the two racecourses, slotting everything together like a dry-stone waller taking irregular-sized segments and fashioning them to form a coherent and solid structure. It was an art, and Derek was one of the best.
Immediately after the third race at Windsor, I ventured out from the dark cavern of the scanner into the bright Berkshire sunlight.
As I walked across to the parade ring through the fairly meagre Monday afternoon crowd, it became apparent to me that the bereavement of others can be a disorienting and distressing experience for some. No end of people, including some I knew quite well, averted their eyes and hurried away as if they didn’t want to burst some imaginary grief-bubble that surrounded me. Even those who did talk to me seemed uncomfortable in doing so.
I think it was the concept of suicide rather than just of death that created the embarrassment. Somehow taking one’s own life has a greater stigma than even taking someone else’s.
I was beginning to wish I hadn’t left the comfort and security of the scanner but I was a man on a mission — I was looking for Geoff Grubb, the trainer of Scusami, who had a runner in the fourth.
‘Good God, Mark. What are you doing here?’ said a man, grabbing me by the arm as I was walking by. ‘I thought you’d be at Oxted.’
It was my cousin, Brendan Shillingford, the one who trained in my grandfather’s old yard in Newmarket.
‘I’m working with RacingTV. At least, I’m meant to be, but I don’t really know myself what I’m doing here. I just had to get away from the rest of the family.’
Brendan nodded. He knew all about his relations.
‘I spoke to both James and Stephen yesterday at Uncle Joe’s. They said things were pretty awful. What a bloody business.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘A real bugger.’
‘Any news yet on a funeral?’
‘Not as yet,’ I said. ‘The police have to agree. The inquest was only opened and adjourned this morning.’
‘Police?’ Brendan asked. ‘Why are they involved?’
‘Something about all sudden deaths having to be investigated. They released a statement yesterday saying that there were no suspicious circumstances so I don’t suppose we’ll have to wait too long. The coroner may have already said we can go ahead. I just haven’t heard yet.’