The Continuity Booth
BBC West
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Jenni worked as a continuity announcer for BBC TV presentation between 1978 and 1980. She also did some freelance announcing and newsreading (in-vision) for the BBC in Bristol (1979) and Norwich (1980). Later she read the news for LBC/IRN and presented programmes for BBC Radio Sussex. Jenni returned to acting and now works as an actress/voice-over artist in London and at home via ISDN.
(Real name Michael Manning). Michael was a BBC Radio 4 announcer from 1973 to 1974. During 1975, he worked as a news reader/announcer at the BBC World Service. He later moved to BBC Bristol as a radio/TV announcer followed by spells in London, Southampton, Manchester and Plymouth. From 1980 until 1984, he was a BBC TV network announcer.
Michael died tragically young in a car accident on April 18 1984.
In September 2010, Jeff Coote, a former colleague of Mike's, contacted us: "Although it is very difficult for me to write this, I think that it is important to record the information once and for all so that people know and understand what happened on that sad day. Mike was on his way from his flat in Heather Court, Montpelier Terrace to spend a couple of days with me and my wife in Ruislip when he had the accident. His friend Ross (he was a VT editor on 'BBC Breakfast Time') was driving them in his Mini on the A23 from Brighton. An old man had stopped in a lay-by (just north of the junction with the A281) intending to cross the dual carriageway to visit a friend. He started to cross in front of an articulated lorry just as Ross and Mike were overtaking. Their car was pushed across the central reservation (nothing more than a raised kerb in those days) and hit a car coming in the opposite direction (I met the driver at the inquest, who had suffered serious permanent injuries but survived). Apparently Ross fell across Mike's lap (probably died on impact) which caused him to be extremely upset. According to people who helped at the scene of the accident, Mike was sitting on the grass bank and talking while waiting for the ambulance.
"I still don't know why he died and there seemed to be some confusion about where he was taken after the accident as his mother wasn't sure which hospital to go to. My wife and I visited her in Brighton for some years afterwards but I don’t think she ever really recovered from the loss. I never knew anything about Mike’s father.
"Mike was going to be the godfather to my eldest son Christopher.
"Together, Mike and I tried to move BBC continuity from the staid Radio 4-ish style (long periods - i.e., more than half a second - of silence and black) of presentation to something (cuts between slides and symbols and programmes with no pauses but still with some style) which held the viewers attention, to try to match the programmes that Michael Grade was having enormous success (and viewing figures) with at the time. By the time Mike died, I think we had quite some success with the support of the more ambitious network editors, such as Martin Everard, and BBC One has never been the same since."
