I have been reading about the history of the British Telecom Tower, and this reminds me of one of my favourite anecdotes, of which I have a number, from my time working for British Telecom. At the beginning of 1984 I joined the about-to-be privatised BT as a junior manager. My first job was in the 150-strong Corporate Relations Department (CRD), which housed the press office, exhibitions, corporate hospitality and various in-house publications (including the unlovely Telecom Today, inevitably referred to generally as Telecom Toady). I found myself in CRD Administration, and one of my tasks was to write the minutes for both the weekly departmental meeting of the senior managers, held every Tuesday, and the smaller press cuttings meetings on the other weekdays. This began before we were all crammed into the spanking new British Telecom Centre in Newgate Street, and I would walk across from our now-demolished office on the corner of Watling Street and New Change to where the nobs were ensconced in rather more comfy quarters in the also now-demolished 2-12 Gresham Street.
The Tuesday meetings were chaired by the Director of Corporate
Relations, a rather bland man who was not often to be seen, but the press
cuttings meetings were chaired by his deputy, Ivor Mills, a genial and
well-regarded figure in the department.
Ivor, often just referred to as ‘DDCR’, had been an ITN newsreader in
the 1960s and 70s, and was always ready with an anecdote about his time there,
which he clearly looked back on with nostalgia.
I quite enjoyed the press cuttings meetings because I heard a lot of
gossip, much of it indiscreet, and it gave me a chance to sit in Ivor’s
secretary’s office to write the minutes, which for some reason often took quite
a time.
The press office was the hub of the department and was full of
characters, a peculiar mixture of old hacks inherited from the Post Office (BT
had only emerged as a separate entity from the Post Office in 1981) and
tired-looking graduates who always seemed fed up, as if they had come badly
down in the world. The former possessed
a surfeit of self-esteem while the latter I always felt possessed a deficit,
for which they compensated by looking down on anybody who didn’t work in the
press office. The Senior Broadcast
Officer once found himself the subject of a story in Private Eye because he had taken a female journalist from a
national paper to lunch where, by her account, he had got drunk, complimented
her on her “outstanding attributes”, and ordered an extra bottle of wine on his
expense account to take back to the office.
Long liquid lunches were frequent, and the press office, adhering to traditional
Fleet Street ways, was often sparsely staffed well into the afternoon.
The senior press officers had extra lines installed at home to deal with
urgent enquiries, and they could choose whichever telephone they liked. The Senior Technical Press Officer said he
wanted a hands-free instrument so that he could take calls while preparing
vegetables, which raised the question how many journalists he expected to speak
to with a knife in one hand and a carrot in the other. In any case, there was a nice little flat
nearby which was set aside for the use of a rota of night-time duty officers to
take out-of-hours calls, which I’m sure came in very useful. It was all a bit of a gravy train, soon to
hit the buffers of privatisation.
So what is the link between ex-ITN’s Ivor Mills and the BT Tower? For quite a long time a helicopter shot of
the revolving section at the top of the tower featured in the opening credits
of ITN‘s nightly ‘News at Ten’ bulletins, which was excellent free publicity. Then in 1985, after privatisation, the
company decided to add a ‘British Telecom’ logo to the top of the building. The matter of the suddenly out-of-date News
at Ten footage was raised at a meeting and it was suggested that ITN should be
asked to reshoot the tower, including the logo.
Ivor said he would get in touch with his contacts to expedite the
matter. There was no doubt among the
senior BT executives present that this was a mere formality. Ivor did his stuff, and ITN redid the opening
credits – dropping the tower shot altogether.
So much for DDCR’s influence. I
sat there, as I often did, wondering how these hotshots could justify their
salaries and generous share deals yet be so ineffectual.
Later I moved from Admin to CRD’s corporate exhibitions unit, where the
travel was fairly frequent and I was able to enjoy some decent meals on
expenses myself, so I was no longer involved in press cuttings meetings. BT Tower had been closed to the public for
security reasons in 1980, following the 1971 bombing by either the IRA or the
Angry Brigade – opinion is divided on which of them was responsible – but the
restaurant section re-opened for corporate functions in the late 1980s, albeit
with tight security, including metal detectors.
I went up to the revolving restaurant, renamed the Tower Suite, with my
children in 1990, by which time I was working in BT’s International
division. We were given certificates to
commemorate the building’s 25th anniversary, and I am indebted to
Keith Ruffles for providing a scan of his copy, showing the tower sporting the classic
dot-dash logo.
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| BT Tower Silver Anniversary Certificate |
Ivor sadly died in 1996 at the early age of 66, and his obituary in the Independent was written by John Egan, another CRD senior manager who knew him well. Egan acknowledged Ivor’s bonhomie, but paid him rather a backhanded compliment by starting with: “Ivor Mills in his prime was a good-looking fellow.” And past his prime, John? Ivor is buried in Highgate Cemetery, and his marker bears the appropriate, if slightly cryptic, inscription:
IVOR MILLS
Journalist, Broadcaster,
Musician
1929-1996
Happy memories
of lunch and laughter
Farewell Old Bush
Update 17 January 2021:
It’s 35 years since I had to
deal with this motley crew so there seems little point withholding their names,
and I present them here for the benefit of future historians tracking the
misfortunes of BT through the 1980s.
Supposedly all these people were journalists: they certainly occupied a
large room referred to without irony as the press office, surveyed like a
princeling from one end by Senior Press Officer Richard Czartoryski, but it
would have been hard to imagine the bulk of them surviving the cut and thrust
of the real world.
The editor of Telecom Today and the riveting BT Gazette (official notices and job
adverts, a publication I scanned eagerly each week, and not for the notices)
was the amiable Ted Dutton. You just
knew he had started as a cub reporter on a provincial paper 25 years before and
this was his big break in the industry.
The Senior Technical Press
Officer who thought up the stupid reason for having a hands-free telephone was
the self-important Derek Willson (‘that’s with two lls’). He seemed to know a lot less than did his
deputy Andy Emmerson, a nice chap who actually liked the subject, and who,
post-BT, went on to write books about telephones and other aspects of
technology.
The role of the Senior
Broadcast Officer wasn’t actually broadcasting but arranging interviews on TV
and radio, and trying to make sure they said nice things about BT, one of those
hope-over-experience things which made no difference whatsoever. As the job title suggests, he had a deputy,
and as with the technical side it was the deputy, Peter Clarke, who did most of
the actual work, writing literate press releases.
The Senior Broadcast Officer
who endeared himself to the female journalist so much she shopped him to Private Eye was Terry Doughty, a jowly
man who always looked like he’d just rolled in after a heavy night on the town. When his name was published in the Eye he, to employ a very apt phrase,
didn’t have a leg to stand on, yet the fallout was probably at most a quiet
chat with Ivor Mills and a request to be more careful in future. Terry thought it was all rather funny, but
then for these time-servers it was a bit of an old boys’ club and, based on the
evidence, clubbability was prized more highly than talent.
Update 25 November 2023:
A full decade after sharing
my memories of vintage British Telecom Corporate Relations, I was contacted by
someone who had also worked in CRD, after I left so we never met. We did, however, know some of the same
people. He reminded me of another
Doughty remark in the Private Eye article which I’d forgotten – he
invited the journalist with the outstanding attributes to ‘sit on my face
later.’ My informant added that Doughty
was finally sacked after allegedly commenting on the size of Michael Grade’s
secretary’s chest to her face.
Presumably having to deal with Grade’s ire (and Grade was influential,
so it was a serious issue), and perhaps tired of his antics generally, the BT
big guns decided enough was enough. And
who could blame them.
So what of his post-BT
career? Here I’m fairly sure someone was
pulling my correspondent’s leg, as he claimed Doughty went on to work first for
the Salvation Army and then at a girls’ school.
It seems hard to believe that either would employ him, though I can
imagine him enjoying being surrounded by nubile young ladies. He would have had to keep his mouth shut,
something I doubt would have been easy for him.
But the teetotal Salvation Army?
It seems highly unlikely, but it would be hilarious if he did.
Doughty was not alone in
being careless. I was told another
senior CRD manager, whom I’ll refrain from naming as he was one of the few I
actually liked, was caught out by a tabloid, probably the Sunday People,
meriting the headline “’Bollocks to BT’, says boozy phone chief.” It seems we were in agreement holding that
opinion, but one does detect a theme.
Were they all alcoholics? I
remember working late once and going into Ivor’s office where I found him and
his heads of division sitting around chatting, glass in hand. The room reeked of booze. I expect what passes for BT’s corporate
relations department these days is a more sober place with fewer ‘characters’,
thank goodness.
Update 26 October 2024
My reminiscences about BT’s
Corporate Relations have elicited a further email from someone who worked in
hospitality at the BT Tower and remembers the old days, though I don’t believe
we met. My correspondent adds bits of
information that are new to me and help to round out the portrait of a
long-gone era.
Unsurprisingly, Terry Doughty
would invite her to come round and try his ‘casting couch’, though one assumes
this was more a running joke than in expectation of success. Apparently a drinks trolley would arrive in
the press office during the late morning, which I didn’t know as by then I had
written my press cuttings minutes and departed to do some actual work. It’s no wonder BT’s media relations weren’t
particularly effective.
The anecdote which really
amused me involved Ivor Mills at the Tower.
Descending in the lift, he would get the occupants into a huddle and say
loudly in his best BBC newsreader’s delivery, “All those who aren’t poofters
tap dance,” upon which everyone would tap dance, or at least attempt some kind
of approximation, until the lift reached the ground floor. The extraversion and political incorrectness
sum up those Big Bang, big braces times, and Ivor’s personality, beautifully.
My informant may possibly have helped to solve the small mystery of the words “Farewell Old Bush.” I had wondered if it was him saying goodbye to his favourite pub, but that seemed unlikely. Ivor was, I learn, particularly fond of Bushmills whiskey. The cemetery administrators frowning on overt references to alcohol, could it be the inscription was a smuggled reference to something that gave Ivor joy, and hinting at the regret of losing such a valued drinking companion? Who knows.
