Staff making visits to interesting places is a mainstay of the DISTRICT NEWS features in Martins Bank Magazine. As well as the many trips at home and abroad organised by the bank and various groups of staff, Martins Bank’s employees also get out and about - looking at people, places and organisations in their local area. Thus we arrive at January 1963, to find that members of South Western District Office AND Bristol Trustee Department are lucky enough to have been invited to tour the state of the art Bristol studios of Television Wales and West, their local ITV Company. They watch a quiz show being made, and have a good look at the amazing equipment that provides a dual televsion service to Wales and the West of England. It is worth noting here, that less than two years after this visit, TWW’s Wales studio complex at Pontcanna Farm in Cardiff is completed at a cost of £380,000, and it boasts the most up to date TV technology in Europe…

Taro Deg (Try for Ten) …

At the invitation of Mr. Guy Thomas, of Television Wales and West, a party from South Western District Office and Bristol Trustee Department spent an interesting evening at the TWW Studio Centre in Bristol on January 23rd. The first port of call was the main studio where the visitors formed part of the audience for a recording of the quiz programme “Try for Ten”. A careful choice of seat enabled the proceedings to be watched both 'live' and on the monitor screens in the control room. After the recording Mr. Thomas took us 'behind the cameras' to show what happened to the picture between leaving the studio and appearing on the viewers' screens at home. The studio itself was ingeniously designed to allow virtually any type of programme to be produced with the aid of an almost infinite combination of lights and scenery. In the adjoining control rooms the layman had the feeling of being inside Pegasus, such was the bewildering array of racks of electronic equipment, control desks and monitor screens. Although the Bristol Studio Centre is used as a “sub-branch” to the main centre at Cardiff, it is fully equipped with all the latest cameras, film scanners and recording gear.

A special feature is that, when required, the entire equipment can be dismantled in an incredibly short time and set up in two vehicles to become a mobile Outside Broadcast unit. The present building has been in operation for little more than two years and one of the most interesting things to be seen today is the original studio which was devised from a disused garage at the back of the site. This studio is now used only for news programmes and is remote-controlled from the main building, the newsreader being completely on his own during transmissions. The tour ended with a visit to the Conference Room, reminiscent of the Board Room at Head Office, and the small, comfortably furnished viewing room, where advertisers are shown the finished advertising features prior to their being broadcast. We are grateful to Mr. Thomas, and to Mr. Peter G. Jones and Mr. A. R. Harris of Bristol Trustee Department, for their efforts in arranging a very interesting and enjoyable evening.

Meanwhile, over at the BBC…

Less than a year before the Bank’s South-Western Staff visit TWW, Mr K Harris-Hughes, Manager at Cardiff St Mary Street Branch is invited onto BBC Wales to discuss – in Welsh – the possible fears that the public might have that their £1 notes would become worthless after the current issue was withdrawn by the Bank of England at the end of May 1962. Mr Harris-Hughes is a very popular and trusted local figure, and he is also asked to record an interview on the same subject to be broadcast on Welsh radio. He then records further interviews for televison in both English and Welsh – all this in the space of one day! You can read more about the versatility of Martins Bank’s Welsh speaking staff on our CARDIFF ST MARY STREET page.

M