Ex-radar man takes over admin post

BERNARD BLAKEMORE, 47, has joined our Midlands staff as Administrative Assistant to Mr Philip Dortd. He replaces Bob Morrison who has left to join his family business.

Mr Blakemore thus renews a wartime association with our Midlands Controller — a wartime Group Captain — under whom he served as a squadron leader employed on radar defences with 60 Group at Leighton Buzzard.

Our new Midlands executive is also an engineer. He has spent most of his life in the technical field of radio, electronics and television.

After serving his apprenticeship with Rediffusion Ltd. [aka Broadcast Relay Services, providers of wired radio services – Ed] he joined the BBC’s Engineering Department in 1937. Two years later, on the outbreak of war, he was one of four BBC technicians selected to work on radar development at the Air Ministry Research Establishment at Bawdsey, near Ipswich.

After his spell at Leighton Buzzard he spent some time at the Air Ministry and was then posted to Delhi as Wing Commander, Chief Radar Officer. On demobilisation, he returned to the BBC and was then appointed Deputy Station Director and Chief Engineer of Radio SEAC in Ceylon.

Here, he first made contact with the programme side of radio and the staff included a number of young men who have since made big reputations for themselves on both TV channels.

“Three of our announcers were McDonald Hobley, David Jacobs and Desmond Carrington of ‘Emergency – Ward 10′”, he told me, “Hobley and Carrington were army captains. David Jacobs was a chief petty officer in the navy”.

After a year in Ceylon, Mr Blakemore returned to England to look after family affairs and later took up an appointment as an executive engineer with the Lancashire Dynamo Electronics Products Ltd where he has been for the last four and a half years.

During this period, his firm sent him to Moscow for a month — “But I don’t think I’d like to work there” he says.

A former Wolverhampton councillor, he is now a member of Tettenhall, Staffs, council where he lives with his family of three daughters — Rosemary, 9, Felicity, 7, and Veronica, 5.

“I’ve always wanted to get back into the executive side of radio and television” he told me. “So, when the chance came to join ATV I was naturally very pleased”.