PERSONAL REMINISCENCES I joined the BBC as a Woman Operator in August 1941 when they were taking on women to replace men who had been called up, in the Engineering Division. After a course in Maida Vale and Daventry, I was sent to Brookman's Park where I was for three years. I then spent a year in the Research Department in Balham, but then asked for transfer to the Recording Department where I worked on the World Service, then at 200 Oxford Street. I spent another three years there before applying in 1948 for a job in television at Alexandra Palace. There I started as a Gramophone Operator, subsequently becoming a Vision Mixer - there was no credits for us in those days! I remember playing the music and effects for Justice with Richard Attenborough, directed by Harold Clayton; and Vision Mixing for a drama, directed by George More O'Farrell; several by the Irish Director, Fred O'Donovan, who always arranged for each act of his production's to be covered by one camera! Also several by Eric Fawcett and Michael Barry. We also did many Picture Page programmes, and I remember also doing the very first Jacques Cousteau programme from Studio B at Ally Pally, and a programme on the moon, with Patrick Moore, when the cameras were on the balcony outside, taking shots of the moon. There were of course many variety programmes, directed by Richard Afton, who always smoked cigars during rehearsals and transmission, which meant one's clothes reeked for days afterwards, and Café Continental directed by Henry Caldwell. Not long after Lime Grove opened, I was transferred there where we worked on the first Panorama, at that time I remember John Freeman - whom I subsequently met, as British High Commissioner, in New Delhi - as presenter, but I also remember Richard Dimbleby, whom I believe presented a Panorama from Ally Pally, on 1st April, in which there were shots of spaghetti growing on trees! I remember vision mixing Tosca and The Girl From the Golden West, directed by George Foa, and was vision mixing a sports programme (Spotsview), the day Roger Bannister, Chrs Chataway and Chris Brasher ran the under-four minute mile. Paul Fox was in the control room and kept ringing up to find out if the race had been run, and when it had, all three participants came to Lime Grove to appear in the programme. I remember six programmes of ballet, which were performed in Ally Pally, directed by Christian Simpson, who also directed Amahl and the Night Visitors, again from A.P. as far as I can remember. When commercial television started I was offered the post of Vision Mixer with the camera crew I had worked with in the BBC, by ATV and was with them from 1955 to 1957, doing the vision mixing for Peter Brooke, when he directed Hamlet, which was our first 'prestige' programme. We also had In The News, directed by John Irwin, which came from the Wood Green Empire on Sundays, about 2pm. In those days - the early days- it must be remembered there was no telerecording, so a Sunday evening play, which was repeated on Thursday evening, had to be done again live! They were indeed very exciting days, and I do not think working in television these days can be as enjoyable and satisfying as then. Moments of stress of course - if one made a mistake it went out on the air, seen by all the viewers. Some Directors - I remember Dennis Vace in particular - always had a complicated sequence in his plays, and if vision mixing, one could not help remembering the page it came on, and developing 'a buzzing in the ears' as one got nearer! Kay Madan Mohan (nee Boardley)