Drivers only next week
Page 6
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
WHAT could be construed as a genuine effort by BBC TV to correct wrong impressions of road transport formed after the Brass Tacks programme "Heavy Metal" will go out on BBC2 on July 22.
The programme "A Moment to Talk", is a fifteen minute interview with drivers from the haulage company C. Butt of Northampton.
The producer, Philip Donnellan, says "The road haulage industry has got a bad reputation — people talk of constant noise, collapsing roads, villages and towns paralysed, old buildings shaken to bits. And a lot of it is true. And a lot of the sins of the haulage contractors rub off on their drivers. People look on them as pirates, thundering from one part of the country to another, in their juggernauts with no thought for the hapless motorist — and in addition making enormous sums 'on the side'.
The biggest hope the drivers have for the programme is that it will put the public right about some of the things they, the drivers, have to struggle against.
The conversation was filmed in the drivers' rest-room at Butts depot, Spencerbridge Road, Northampton.
The producer agrees that a 15minute programme "can't do much straight preaching." That's not the intention he says. He invited the drivers to talk to each other as fellow-professionals, to compare notes while the camera evesdropped. They talked for about 50 minutes altogether.
Following the heavily biased Brass Tacks programme, Mr Alistair Milne, Director General of the BBC TV received heavy mail on the subject. We at CM joined in the correspondence. Mr Milne promised to act. We believe he now has.