This thread about Freewheelers has some information about the loss of Southern tapes:
missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/9327?page=4 , principally this from Simon Winters:
"The loss dates from the period when Meridian TV got rid of it's Southern TV collection in 2004-5, a period during which many Southern TV series and episodes disappeared. Other Southern programmes were actively junked by Southern Star in the following years, after being deemed unmarketable by them.
Unfortunately, Southern Star failed to donate the junked tapes to either Wessex, the BFI or Kaleidoscope.They all went into the skip in the past 15 years, proving that some junking carries on today.
Southern Star no longer exists, thankfully. It was bought by Endemol and ceased to exist in 2009. Endemol had nothing to do with the junking."
So maybe it wasn't Endemol, though it definitely seems a lot went, whoever did the junking. I was very surprised when I saw how few editions of How survived.
By coincidence, I've been looking at the series myself over the last few days, so I'll just put these TV Times articles from 1967 here, in case they are of interest:
TV Times 18th Feb 1967
SECRETS OF HOW
By Stewart Knowles
It could be a small guillotine or some sort of automatic bread-slicer. Either way, the blade of the knife looks nasty.
I am invited to place my hand into a wooden slot. Fortunately, the apparatus is not large enough to take my head.
My fingers, I am assured, will come to no harm but, as the handle of the knife is pressed down sharply, I shut my eyes. Feeling nothing, I look. The blade is resting harmlessly beneath my fingers and everything about me is still intact.
The gadget was made for an edition of the Thursday programme How to demonstrate how the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. It demonstrated equally well how big a coward I am.
It wasn’t until I was shown the back of the model that I realised there really had been no danger. There are two knife blades.
When the handle is depressed, the top blade disappears and another rises from below. But it happens so quickly it look as if the blade is going clean through your hand.
I went behind the How scenes to find out the who, what and why of the ingenious models used in the series. My demonstrator was studio carpenter Denny Rowlands, who makes them in his spare time.
It is the first interview I have conducted amid clouds of steam. Denny showed me the model me made to illustrate how a steam turbine works and, apart from the steam it produced, it was a good example of necessity being the mother of invention…
He made the boiler from a large fruit tin from the canteen. He fitted in the to an oil can filler cap. The “fire” to heat the water and produce the steam was a meths burner used on picnics.
A small brass tube directed the steam on the 12-bladed fan-wheel cut out of a metal film can and mounted on pieces of a ballpoint pen.
“This shows a simple steam turbine engine,” said Denny, who spent 15 years in the aircraft industry before joining ITV as a carpenter nearly nine years ago.
“One of the fascinating things about model making is the way you can make use of oddments and materials.”
To show how hot air rises, Denny made a balloon from paper used to wrap bread.
When asked by Jack Hargreaves, a member of the How team, to make a large, exploding pie to illustrate the nursery rhyme about four-and-twenty blackbirds, he used a dustbin lid as his shaping form.
Then he made the pie, almost 2ft. in diameter, from plywood, hardboard and plastic. It flies open as a series of eight triangular “slices” but, instead of the traditional blackbirds, they use doves.
Denny gets puzzling requests…
“When Jack Hargreaves asked me to make a model of a ha-ha, I thought he was kidding,” said Denny. “But a ha-ha is a sunken wall used by people with large country houses to keep out grazing animals without restricting their view.”
Probably the most unusual model Denny has been asked to make was an example of perhaps the world’s first slot machine…used in Ancient Egypt outside temples to dispense holy water.
A heavy coin put in a slot at the top depresses a lever which raises an outlet valve to release a small quantity of liquid. Denny even cast the coins himself – from lead.
“I found it fascinating to follow in the footsteps of men who had made the original something like 2,000 years ago,” said Denny.
It closely resembles the original – the model being based on a drawing obtained from the British Museum – and actually works. But I doubt if the Egyptians thought of using a metal baking tin for collecting the used coins!
For the last four years, Denny, part-carpenter, part model maker, part inventor, has been going to evening classes to study sculpture and drawing.
If your picture of a carpenter is of a man enchanted by the smell of the wood and the feel of the grain…over to Denny Rowlands:
“I don’t particularly like working with wood for its own sake. I like using more unusual materials. I am a great believer in new methods and new ideas.
“Once I have made a model I lose interest. When it is done - it is done. I do not get attached to the things. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment, rather than the sense of possession.”
TV Times 18th March 1967
HOW’S THAT!
by Stewart Knowles
The How team’s job is to answer questions of fact…how does a lock work? How strong is an egg? How old are slot machines?
They are all factual questions. But how about some questions to find out about the feelings of the team – Bunty James, Jack Hargreaves, Jon Miller and Fred Dinenage, who present the Thursday programme and conduct the experiments?
Here are some of the questions I put to them. To find out how they answered, see the end of the article.
1…How do you feel about small children?
(a) Under a year…UGH! I cannot stand them until I can communicate with them. Then I find them interesting
(b) I love them. I would like about five of my own. I think they are far more interesting, entertaining and more fun than many adults.
(c) They are their mother’s business until they are six. At that point fathers begin to be important. When my daughter was seven, I decided I was talking to a human being.
(d) I have never felt so inadequate as I sometimes to now I am a parent. You realise your interests are often in direct conflict with the child’s and striking a balance is tricky.
2…about fast driving?
(a) I do not like it. I like to speed in the air and on the sea. But not on the road.
(b) It frightens me to death. I think 70 m.p.h. is fast enough.
(c) Strongly in favour of good driving whatever the speed.
(d) Terrified. The fastest I have driven my own car was 85 m.p.h. Never again!
3…about birthdays?
(a) A nuisance. If you want to celebrate why wait for a special occasion?
(b) They are a nuisance – other people’s – because it is a job trying to remember them. They are better when you are a kid.
(c) Important up to 21.
(d) It is a day like any other.
4…about mini-skirts?
(a) I prefer them knee length.
(b) I do not like them. They make girls with bad legs look worse.
(c) But they are nice for the men. The greater the revelation, the more protected the man is from possible disillusionment.
(d) Great – on the girl that can wear them. But you have to be 17 – and reed-slim.
5…about edible snails?
(a) No, no, no. I do not feel anything – except revulsion.
(b) I hate snails. I had an unfortunate experience in How a few weeks ago when I had to eat one for the first time. It has put me off for life.
(c) I like them – but the flavour is all in the garlic sauce.
(d) I would like to try them.
ANSWERS
All the “a” replies were given by Jon Miller; “b” by Fred Dinenage; “c” by Jack Hargreaves; “b” by Bunty James.
TV Times 22nd April 1967
Life in a world of GADGETS
by Stewart Knowles
When working properly, it goes along the floor on small wheels and stops when you whistle.
And if it hadn’t been for me, this gadget, the creation of Jon Miller of the How programme, might have spent the rest of its days known prosaically as a “sound sensitivity device.”
Believing that this is no name for something that stops when you whistle it, I suggested “Toby” after a tortoise I once had that refused to do anything else.
Jon Miller, animal lover, marine naturalist, traveler, fish collector and gadget fancier – seen regularly in ITV’s Thursday series How – approved.
“Why not?” he said, making some intricate adjustment to the thing’s innards. “Much easier than sound sensitivity device. It’s a little gadget which combines electronics and mechanics. It should stop when you whistle and start again after a 10-second pause. At the moment it is a bit erratic.”
I had called on Jon Miller at Middleton-on-Sea, near Bognor Regis, a part of Sussex Jon has lived in for most of his life.
His house, which Jon adapted to his own needs, makes a statement about its owner. Bedrooms are for sleeping in; living rooms are for looking out of. Jon is a practical, rational man.
And the house is a sort of dividing line between a man’s worlds. Look one way and the sea is on his doorstep, because the house is on the beach.
This is the unchanging world that provides Jon with much of his living. Here he can collect the baby plaice and black bream, the carbs and the codling that he supplies to zoos and universities.
On the landward side of the house is his workshop, a world of gadgets…a place where he gives practical form to many intriguing questions he provides for the How series.
And there is the lawn…where he can try out his hovercraft. Jon wanted to know how a hovercraft works, so he made one. It is just under 3ft. long, fashioned from balsa wood and a length of garden hose, and powered by a small model aero-engine. It hovers half an inch above the grass.
Jon’s fascination with gadgets is demonstrated every week in How.
His dual interest in animals and machinery have come together as both a living and a way of life. How satisfied is he with his lot?
“Very,” said Jon. “But there are plenty of How questions still to be answered…plenty of things I’d still like to do. If they ever want the over-40’s up there, I’d like to be shot into space. I’d like to walk about in space…to see how it feels.”
TV Times 10-16th June 1967
HOW passes the family test
By Stewart Knowles
Thursday’s How will come, as usual, from a modern, well-equipped television studio in Southampton.
But not until after it has been discussed, tested, analysed, criticised and generally mulled-over in the low-ceilinged, oak-beamed living room of a 16th-century Hampshire farmhouse.
Here, each weekend, a panel of five viewer-critics meet to consider many of the ideas that make How one of the most fascinating facts-and-fun programmes on the air.
They take their work seriously, and not every potential “how” idea gets through. Some are thrown out for being too dull. Others, after a practical demonstration, are discarded as “not visual enough.”
Every so often, a member of the panel will suggest an idea and, immediately, it is tried and tested. One of the How critics has recently discovered the knack of standing on one leg, and is apt to demonstrate “how” at the drop of a script.
But he’s the youngest. Come to think of it, at five, Christopher Dickeson is probably the youngest TV critic in Britain.
Chairman of the panel is, of course, Wendy Dickeson who, as well as being the other members’ mother, is the full time researcher who sifts through the hundreds of “how” questions sent in by viewers. She presents programme director Angus Wright with a working script and running order for his approval.
That is when the Dickeson family have given the whole thing the once-over. Christopher, with his 16-year old brother, Robert, and three sisters, Carol (17), Helen (13) and nine-year old Ann, not only represent the viewers - they have first crack at a lot of the “hows” by trying out recipes, making gadgets and conducting scientific experiments on the dining-room table.
Wendy told me: “On the programme we get through about 18 ‘hows’ each week. We aim at a balance between information and entertainment and like to make sure each week Fred Dinenage gets a funny one.
“He enjoys being an entertainer, so I’ve had him jumping over gates, climbing up ropes, getting into a hammock and trying out a trampoline.
“Jon Miller, our gadget man, usually provides four ‘hows’ of his own which are in some way mechanical. I think up three and the rest are submitted.
“I am not very mechanically-minded, so my ‘hows’ tend to be the sort of things that crop up at home…like how to freshen up a loaf of bread that is going stale.”
Wendy, a journalist who began her career when she was 16 on Girls’ Own Paper and graduated three years later to Woman’s Own, is married to freelance writer and designer, ex-Fleet Street journalist Geoffrey Dickeson.
Daughter Carol brings experience of television to bear on their weekly critical discussion because she once appeared on an edition of How to model a paper dress a viewer had submitted.
For the programme, Carol has made a Japanese kite shaped like a fish and suggested a “how” on a primitive method of printing dress material called tie-dying.
Helen thought of “How do you make paper jewels?” and made a set of ear-rings, rings and bracelets from papier-mâché, which were shown on the programme.
Ann, a great animal lover, thought viewers would like to know how a horse is shoed, so a film demonstrating this art was shown on the programme.
“I like the ‘hows’ that Fred does best,” said Ann. “Because sometimes they go wrong!”
Bobby, not much interested in dress-making or ear-rings, has the more mechanical ideas. When he suggested “How do you make a stink bomb?” he made one at home from iron filings and sulphur and all the windows had to be left open for hours.
Said Wendy: “We like the programme to be unpredictable. There has to be an element of surprise…and an element of laughter. Fred Dinenage, for instance, is invariably surprised if one of his experiments works out successfully. But if it goes wrong it is always amusing.”
Carol, who likes to wear many of her mother’s with-it clothes, added: “If a child can learn something while being entertained, this is surely a good idea.”
Christopher was back to standing on one leg, but before I left, he did suggest a rather good “how”…
“How,” he asked, “do you get down from the back of an elephant?”
Which raised another question. How do you explain to a five-year-old the difficulties involved in getting a fully-grown elephant into a television studio?
