Public Relations Officer (a supplement)

Public Relations Officer – a Supplement!


The human memory is a fickle faculty that grows more and more fickle with advancing age. How extraordinary that a fortnight ago, when I was recalling my time as Tendring Council’s first PRO, I remembered the incident of the repentant shop-lifter, and that of the anxious Bulgarian mother, but had temporally forgotten what was certainly the most colourful episode of my entire local government career; an occasion that culminated in my being seen by tens of thousands of viewers singing in a choir on a popular tv programme!

I could have simply rewritten my original ‘chapter’, inserting this incident (how simple and easy a computer makes this nowadays!) into it. It was not a story that could be told briefly though and I thought that it would have unbalanced what I had already written. So – I have made it a supplement to ‘Public Relations Officer 1973 – 1980’, intended to be read at the end of that chapter of my life.

It was in the spring, and during Tendring Council’s interregnum. Chief Executive Mr Harwood had, sadly, died and Mr Painter had yet to be appointed in his place. It must therefore have been early in 1979. Acting Chief Executive was easy-going Mr Tom Moonlight, formerly Harwich’s Town Clerk and since local government’s 1974 reorganisation, Secretary and Legal Officer of the new District Council.

My office phone rang. It was someone from the BBC Television Centre. One of the directors of Esther Rantzen’s popular tv show That’s Life would like to see me about the possible inclusion of Tendring District Council in a tv programme. It would be to the credit of the council, he assured me. Would I be available the next day if he came down to Clacton?

I was, at that time, one of a small minority of people who had never watched That’s Life. I knew that it was very popular though and decided that it could at least do no harm to see this man from the BBC. I said that I’d be free all the afternoon and that, if they’d let me know which train he was coming on, I’d meet him at Clacton Station. I mentioned it to Mr Moonlight, who had watched the show, and he said he’d like to know what was proposed.

The director proved to be a pleasant and businesslike young man. I met him off his train and drove him to my office at Weeley. He outlined what the producers of ‘That’s Life’ had in mind.

It seemed that the toilet door of one of our council houses in Frinton was ill fitting and wouldn’t close properly. The tenant’s wife had written about it to the council’s works department. To make sure that her complaint received the early attention that it deserved she worded her letter in rhyming verse. It certainly achieved its purpose. The foreman of the works department was something of a humorist. He wrote back in similar verse, telling her when the necessary work would be done.

The good lady very much appreciated this and sent both rhymes to Esther Rantzen whom she thought might appreciate it too. She did. She set her team to the task of expanding the two letters into a song, to be sung as a duet by two small choirs!

It was hoped that the Council would be prepared to provide those two choirs, one of four carpenters or other workmen, and the other of eight council officials; the choirs to perform on location at the site of the council house in Frinton and in the Council Chamber.

On one day the ‘choirs’ would have to travel up to London to the BBC Television Centre to sing for recording under studio conditions. The following day a camera crew would go with the ‘choirs’ first to Frinton and then to Weeley, to sing their pieces again. This time the singing would not be recorded but the action would be filmed. The sound, recorded the previous day, would be added to the pictures later at the studio. What the director wanted me to do was to find the members of each choir, arrange for them to have paid leave for two days while they worked for the BBC, get them all up to the Television Centre when required and, on the following day, make sure that the ‘workmen’ were available at Frinton and the ‘officials’ at Weeley. He also wanted to be able to use the Council Chamber at Weeley in the afternoon. ‘That will be ideal for our purpose’ he said.

Goodness – it wasn’t much to ask! Certainly a lot more than I had the authority to offer! I took the director along the corridor from my office to see Mr Moonlight, acting chief executive. We told him the story. I said that I was pretty certain that I could find volunteers for the two choirs, and make sure that they got to London safely but obviously I couldn’t arrange for them to have paid time off work, nor could I authorise the use of the Council Chamber.

I fancy that both Mr Ramsden and his successor Mr Painter would have vetoed the whole idea out of hand. Mr Moonlight thought about it. What were the words of the song? They were read out to us. They certainly weren’t great poetry but they rhymed and they scanned. They were not in any way critical of the council and they were amusing without being offensive. After nearly thirty years I have forgotten most of them but for some reason one verse, to be sung by the workmen, has stuck in my memory:

Dear tenant, there’s been a t’do,
About trouble you’ve had with your loo.
Never mind, do not fuss,
Though there’s just four of us,
We are carpenters, strong, tough and true!


It was, of course, in limerick form and it was to be sung to the tune that I think of as being ‘the limerick song’. It is impossible to describe a tune in words. I had heard the limerick song only in the army, but I think it is probably sometimes to be heard in the kind of pub that ‘nice people’ would never frequent, and at the kind of party for which they would decline an invitation! It’s really a precursor of karaoke. The ‘lead’ singer has a repertoire of half a dozen or more limericks that he sings one after the other. After each limerick the audience roar out the chorus ‘That was a sweet little song. Sing us another one, do’. By this time, especially if the alcohol is flowing freely, there will be others happy to contribute limericks, getting less and less printable as the time passes. You have never heard of it? Good, you haven’t missed much. Enough to say that it has a simple and memorable melody that virtually anyone can manage. There was nothing unprintable or offensive about the lyric for which I was asked to find a choir.

Mr Moonlight said, ‘I don’t see why not. Better see what others think about it though’. He phoned the Chairman of the Council and his fellow Chief Officers. They were happy about it if he was. Provided that I could find the volunteers for the choirs it could go ahead.

It wasn’t too difficult to find volunteers. A free trip to London, a visit to the Television Centre and a free lunch at the staff canteen – an opportunity perhaps to see in the flesh the folk one saw every day on the small screen; it was an almost irresistible bait. One of the ‘officials’ dropped out at the last minute. He had some lame excuse but I think it was just cold feet. The BBC had specifically asked for, and been promised, eight choristers. I had intended to be ‘just the organiser’ but I was also first reserve so I had to step in and join the choir.

It was quite an experience. We had to catch an early train and be at the Centre by 9.30. In the studio we sang our verses over, and over, and over again, until the director decided that we were just exactly right and were recorded. We finished at about 12.30. We were then invited to a free lunch at the BBC canteen and were free to go home how and whenever we liked. I declined the lunch as I had promised – if I had time – to look in at the offices of Do-it-yourself magazine for a chat with the editor!

The next day the ‘workmen’ and I met the film crew in Frinton at 10.00 a.m. There was some filming of the lady whose amateur poem had triggered all this activity, and the workmen’s choir performed again for the camera, singing among other poetic gems, the four-line verse that I have remembered over the years. The ‘workmen’s’ choir’s filming was finished by lunchtime.

I had a ploughman’s lunch with the director, his young lady assistant, and the camera man, at The Essex Skipper and we then repaired to Weeley for the afternoon’s filming of the ‘officials’ choir in the Council Chamber. It did take all the afternoon too. I reckon that there must have been times when Mr Moonlight, hearing our not-very-melodious voices belting out the words of our ‘limerick song’ for the umpteenth ‘take’, must have wished that he had never granted that permission. The director wanted our hands, our heads, our facial expressions – everything about each one of us – exactly right, before he was satisfied. In the end, for the few minutes required, he turned each one of us into a professional actor.

It ended at last. As the film crew packed up, the director thanked us all and promised that we’d all be told when ‘our’ programme would be transmitted and would be given tickets to be at the studio on that occasion. That was a promise that was not kept – though I don’t believe that it was the director’s fault. One Saturday afternoon a few weeks later I had a phone call from the BBC. An emergency had arisen and they were going to have to transmit ‘our programme’ the next day. There wasn’t time to arrange for free tickets but they’d gladly let all of us have free tickets for any other ‘That’s Life’ show in the future.

I didn’t bother to take up that offer though I believe some members of the two choirs did, and enjoyed themselves. I did phone everybody though to let them know we’d be ‘on air’ the next day. Heather and I watched it. It was long before we had a video recorder so I have no record of it.

It was fun to watch. I think that it did something to counter the popular belief that all council employees are humourless morons and that all council officers are pompous ‘stuffed shirts’ devoid of imagination and human feeling. Tendring Council came out as an authority that listened to its tenants and kept their houses in repair.

Was it all worth it? Perhaps it was, just possibly. All that hard work and (on my part) worry for two whole days, was compressed into just four, possibly five, minutes!