Thursday August 7, 1975

'On the air' in the wards

IT IS a moot point who gets the most enjoyment out of Humberside's Hospital Broadcasting Service, those who listen to it or those who operate it.

Mind you, one has to be a glutton for work to join this outfit. One has to have a sensitive but controllable nervous system, a skilful pair of hands, a warm, clear, but not 'posh' voice, and an inexhaustible supply of patience and resilience.

One must, in short, be rather like the character Kipling had in mind when he wrote his poem, 'If'... the sort that can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same, who can make a heap of his winnings, lose it, and start again, or see the things he's worked for broken, and stoop and built them up with worn-out tools... and all the rest of it.

For the service has led to a somewhat pillar to - post existence since it's formation in 1960, and has occupied no fewer than five different studio's, three in the Hessle Road area, one near the pier in Wellington Street, and its present one in the Hull Red Cross building at 98, Beverley Road.

The roots

This final location seems highly appropriate, since both bodies are devoted, among other things, to assisting the hospitals in their care of the physical, mental and spiritual welfare of patients, and it is to be hoped that the wanderings of the HBS have now ceased.

When I saw the efforts which are being made to turn a suite of very ordinary, frankly rather dilapidated rooms in a Victorian town house into a modern broadcast studio, using 99 per cent amateur labour, I realised just how much grit and determination Mr Ken Fulstow and his team must have had to take on such an enterprise.

The roots of hospital broadcasting go right back to the 1930's. But in its present form it is thought to have begun as a football commentary service in the West Country in 1947.

This type of service was started in Hull in 1952, and still exists as a separate entity. But, whereas other sports services branched out into various forms of programme, here the two are run by different bodies.

In 1960, Mr Fulstow, of 17, Lowfield Road, Anlaby, formed a tape recording club with hospital broadcasting as one of its aims. A hospital message service was inaugurated in September that year and the full broadcasting service got underway the following July.

Expansion planned

To start with, the HBS was allocated only one hour a fortnight. After a trial period of three months this was increased to one hour a week, and after several years of what Ken describes as 'Pestering the department,' to two and a half and then to eight hours.

Eventually, it achieved a regular weekly schedule of 25 hours a week, and although this had to be cut back drastically while the team were gradually moving their equipment from Wellington Street to Beverley Road, a process which has taken 12 months, it is now slowly but surely climbing back.

It s because of this planned expansion that Ken and his wife Audrey, whose amusing domestic exchanges are well known to hospital patients through their record-request and other broadcasts, have recently been recruiting and training new members, and one evening recently I was able to meet three 'rookies'. Mrs Winn Brown, Mrs Clarice Marsden and Mr Vince Meekin.

Winn and Clarice both have grown-up families. Clarice, a widow with two sons, works in a canteen during the day but finds that spare time hangs rather heavily, and thought she would like to help bring pleasure and comfort to people in hospital.

Winn, who has herself spent sometime as a hospital patient, works by day at the Humberside Health Authority's headquarters in Anlaby. And she has so infected her son with her enthusiasm for hospital broadcasting that he has now taken it up in London, where he is working.

Vince contacted the HBS through a newspaper advertisement. He thought his experience, as a part-time 'jockey' in a mobile disco might be useful; by day, he works for a shipping firm.

1,000 records

When trained, these three will join the 28-strong team who have faithfully kept the service going through all its ups and downs of the past 15 years.

They will learn to operate the £480 audio-mixer ('we would like two more, if we could get the money,' said Ken) take their turn at the Mike and turntables, go round the hospitals taking requests and arranging for messages to be recorded and sent anywhere in the world, conduct interviews and record 'Outside Broadcasts' for transmission over the network, find their way around the service's collection of more than 1,000 records... and between times they will help with the construction and fitting operations which are still needed.

'Apart from connecting the mains electricity and telephone, we have done everything ourselves.' said Ken proudly. This has included fitting special sound proof walls and putting triple glazing on windows... proof against everything but police and ambulance sirens and two stroke motorcycles!

Link-ups

'I am not a technician... I only know which knobs to press.' said Ken modestly, as he demonstrated three different kinds of portable tape-recorder to the volunteers and described their advantages and weaknesses.

The rewards of the job, he added, were many. It gives him an opportunity of meeting every kind of person from dame Anna Neagle to the Bay City Rollers and from Acker Bilk to a dear old lady of nearly 100 who recorded a message for her son in the USA.

It takes him all sorts of places, from stately homes to approved schools and from psychiatric hospitals to ships, oilrigs, helicopters... you name it.

And it provides link-ups with other hospital broadcasting services as far away as New Zealand and India. But essentially, he stressed, the work appealed because it was strictly local, a personal service to the people of Hull, especially those who were patients in the five hospitals covered, Hull Royal Infirmary, Sutton Infirmary, Kingston General, Castle Hill and Westwood.

'Apart from laying down a few basic principles, watching for irritating speech mannerisms and that sort of thing, I want these new recruits to develop their own personalities, to be themselves,' said Ken.