Memoryshare

21 December 1988 was was the night of our office Christmas party at BBC Radio  Cumbria - and it was a night to remember.  My shift would normally have ended at ten that evening but we were all rushing for an early finish. My task was to throw a breakfast show together for the following morning and I was nearly done.  We brought in a freelance newsreader, Bert Houston from Dumfries, to read the news bulletins until midnight, and by quarter past seven, only he, I and a cleaner called Grace were not putting our coats on.

A call came through for Bert, and I passed him the phone.  He took a few notes, and turned to me. 
"Martin, could you do my shift tonight?"
I was at that point living on my own in Carlisle - my family was in Barrow and I was commuting on a weekly basis.  I knew Bert wouldn't pull out for no reason - apart from anything else as a freelance, shift payments were a key part of his income.   I agreed - and asked him why.
"That call was from a pal - he says he thinks a military jet has crashed onto a petrol station in Lockerbie."

That much is clear in my memory - much of the rest is a blur.   I was fairly new in the BBC then, and a lot of the routines of dealing with a big story in this big corporation were still a mystery.  I rang London newsroom, and they heard as I rang that a jumbo jet was missing.  I set about trying to find out what I could, and to keep hourly bulletins going.   Remember that for Carlisle, this was almost a local story - for Barrow, a big car crash on Dalton Road would need to be in the bulletins somewhere too.   And the phones were starting to ring.

There were six or seven lines into the newsroom.  At first it was other parts of the BBC, getting the wheels of coverage turning.  Then it was the regional reporters of national newspapers - did they really have to work late on a cold windy evening just before Christmas?   Then the international calls started.  Within a few moments, every phone in the office was ringing off the hook.  Grace, the cleaner, came in to be my switchboard, putting off all but the most urgent.

Bert had one of those early brick-sized mobile phones and around eight he got through for the first and last time.  I switched him through to a studio line to record a report.  Bert, a reporter of huge experience, can normally do these things off the top of his head.  He struggled, with several false starts, before he found a way in - from memory, "Lockerbie tonight is a scene of chaos and horror……"   The report led the TV nine o'clock news.

There are always moments of comedy.  The news editor then was a lady called Pat Little, and she was quickly back from the party, still in a strappy little black dress.  However, having changed at work she still had her day clothes in a carrier bag - she stuck her head in and said she'd be with me in a minute.

Next through was Andy Whysall.  He was far too far away for the normal communications from the radio car to work, so he used a Storno, the sort of radio which crackles and where you normally say "over" at the end of each message.  The BBC rule was that it was never used for broadcast, indeed, it should have been technically impossible.   There was some imaginative replugging, and we broke the rule.   Andy said he was parked in the A74, next to a flaming crater, surrounded by burned-out cars and with no idea whether there was anyone in them.

Most of the newsroom staff had now abandoned the party, and there was plenty of help, although we still struggled to get the measure of this terrible event.   Soon after midnight I finished the last bulletin of the night and headed out to interview ambulance crews who'd been sent from Carlisle to Scotland. 

The shock was clear in their voices.   Andy and Carole came back with lengthy interviews from people who'd seen the flaming wreckage fall from the sky. I played it down a line to London - chillingly, throughout, you could hear a clamour of two-tone sirens.   

National network reporters from Scotland and Manchester were coming into the office to file their reports - the way that a reporter can go almost immediately on air via a satellite from a van with disaster in the background was still science fiction then. 

We sketched out a breakfast show that was still coming together, dominated of course by this dreadful atrocity.  Normally, the early producer and presenter would find out what they were doing from a handover note.  At around five o'clock the morning of December 22nd, 1988, we gave them a verbal briefing.