Bernard Bibby, wine bottler

Bernard Bibby is one of the men who, on that memorable night of September 22, 1955 when ATV first went on the air, [jointly with Associated-Rediffusion; they began their own transmissions on Saturday 24 – Ed] kept his fingers crossed and hoped that the “string and sealing wax” improvisations would survive.

He had joined the company from the BBC in June, as deputy to Terence McNamara [sic – name given as Macnamara in his staff profile in an earlier edition], and had to tackle the tremendous task of getting things to work at Wood Green. In 10 weeks he and his colleagues did what it would have taken about 18 months to do back at the BBC.

“Everyone worked like blazes to get Wood Green equipped properly for the opening night’s show ‘Channel Nine’” he says. “The equipment arrived in bits and pieces. Sometimes it wasn’t addressed to us at all but we grabbed it. I doubt if any of us got more than three hours sleep a night in the week before the start of programmes”.

Now, having left engineering to become Production Facilities Controller with the Elstree, Foley Street, Highbury and Wood Green studios to deal with Mr Bibby usually gets a normal night’s rest. But there are still plenty of tough problems to be solved every week. At 37, he is responsible for everything that goes into the studios apart from the electronics.

Bernard Bibby has always been interested in making things work. As a boy in North West Lancashire he dabbled in radio sets, motor bikes, cine-projectors and anything electrical or mechanical.

Some time later Bernard turned his talent to motor bikes and in 1948 he was roaring around the famous Isle of Man circuit touching 115 miles an hour on his Norton as a competitor in the Junior Tourist Trophy Race.

Nowadays he finds time for more relaxing hobbies in his lovely home high on the Hog’s Back in Surrey. It is a converted stable block and a good deal of the conversion he is doing himself including the digging of a wine cellar, which has a certain amount of fame in ATV, not to mention popularity, and a swimming pool in the garden.

In the cellar he keeps more than 1,000 bottles of wine and just now he’s very pleased with some ’57 and ’59 burgundies and clarets which he bottled himself. They’ll be fully matured in about 10 years time, but, as visitors to Little Down know, there are plenty of other wines there which taste very good at present.

Bottling wine, keeping bees and playing the harpsichord are amongst the ways in which Bernard Bibby relaxes away from television. His interest in wine came when, in his own words, he “got fed up with drinking the beer served up by the pubs soon after the war”. His interest in the harpsichord came through a fascination with 16th and 17th century music. He has two — both Kirckmans.

Mr Bibby has spent all his working life in radio or television. He joined the BBC in 1948 to work in the Recording Department. He was in London, Manchester, Bristol and Bangor at various periods and met his wife in the BBC’s Recording section. When television re-started after the war Mr Bibby went to Alexandra Palace on “racks”.

Then came the move to Lime Grove where Mr Bibby became a Technical Operations Manager. He occupied this post until joining ATV at Regent House when the early staff were being recruited.