I have known Bob – on and off – for decades since we all worked in Late Night Line Up. Then he was a young lad with great aspirations and I recall him making his Appleby Horse Fair film. It was fairly fraught I recall but he seemed to get on well with all the gypsies and produced a really splendid piece which caught the atmosphere of the occasion brilliantly. His other films were also very personal and individualistic.
When Bob made his films for Late Night Line Up he joined a small band of film makers who did away with presenter-based films (as per Alan Whicker, etc) and abandoned using commentary altogether so that the pictures and actual real life sound told the story. A method used by the great Granda TV documentary maker Denis Mitchell. It was more difficult to tell the story but when done properly was much more effective. Bob had all this down to a T.
I lost sight of him for several years when I went to the documentary department – and he became (among other things, I understand) a sound recordist. So we were thrilled to make Bob’s acquaintance again when Gloria Wood reintroduced him to the old Late Night Liner types who met every three months or so for a lunch in Hammersmith or Shepherd’s Bush – long after the programme came off the air. These lunches went on for several years and it was great to see the old faces once again – like Mike Dean, Tony Bilbow, Mike Appleton who did The Old Grey Whistle Test, Tony Wheeler from Australia , Joan Bakewell and Andrew Gosling who film edited a lot of the films and later joined the show as a director. Sometimes as many as twenty five ex-colleagues turned up! In our time we were a bit if a risk-taking bunch and Bob fitted into all that very well. We worked for a department that was quite out on a limb within the BBC. In name: Presentation. But there were echoes of the Edinburgh Fringe about it. Our efforts were frequently scrutinised by the BBC bosses who met once a week (at “Programme Review”) to discuss their various departments programmes. Line Up was composed of mavericks on and off the screen. But our efforts were supported by Rowan Ayers the editor of the nightly show – and we owed much to David Attenborough who defended us from people like Bill Cotton (Head of Llight Entertainment) who would have preferred to have had us all banned.
Late Night Line up shaped our way of thinking for the future – and I suspect Bob was quite influenced by working on it too.
He showed the horse fair film a couple of years ago at the Waverley Festival and invited me to show a couple of my efforts from the past – which Stewart Orr kindly restored for me. He had changed quite a bit – was mellower and very kind and helpful to Enid and me (suffering then from the effects of chemo therapy). He made us feel so welcome – our trip was a really happy one – and a welcome diversion from my situation.
So Enid and I will really miss Bob – he was a real one-off. A great character with a good heart.
Bob Edwards 1945-2016 