The New ITV & BBC Weather Thread

IIRC he was the duty 'non broadcast' forecaster and stopped at TVC once it all kicked off.

Presumably he was the one interviewed as the Met Office (or more likely the chief broadcast weatherman Bill Giles) thought Michael Fish had taken enough bad press for one day.

I've often wondered why they never interviewed him on a DTL from the weather studio, with a graphic behind him ready to hand, but I guess with the chaotic nature of the morning, a quick PSC in the weather office was all they could do under the circumstances.

I'm fairly certain they used to make interviewees look off-camera sometimes, so it looked as if they were looking towards the presenter. I'm not sure if this is something that happened on the One O'Clock news but I have seen it in clips of other news broadcasts using that odd technique so possibly that was why the whole set-up looks so odd?

I read a great interview with Michael Fish earlier. His anecdote was that Ian was serious in the office as a senior meteorologist preparing the bulletins, but as soon as he got on camera, he turned into the cuddly character that we loved him for.

Michael said this in the excellent report on last nights Ten with David Sillitoe. Covered everything from Spitting Image to 1987.

That was indeed a lovely package from David Sillitoe.

As for DTL interviews looking off camera, I've seen that in quite a few clips from the era. It looks very odd now.

I thought that Ian had been duty forecaster at the London Weather Centre, as in Met Office rather than BBC's weather office, hence the comment in that clip about not telling contacting the ambulance service, which would hardly have been the BBC's responsibility.

I suspect in those days, had he been at TV Centre they would have got him into the news studio rather than as a DTL.

I wonder if the looking off camera thing was because an interviewee would never be looking straight down the lens in any other type of interviewee, and frightened-rabbit-in-headlights can be uncomfortable viewing. Or just because you couldn't put a CRT monitor with reverse vision (or off-air) anywhere close enough to the camera - if they would have bothered to do so.

Michael Buerk was also notable as being unusually harsh, almost Paxman-esque, unless that was what he was always like in those days.

It's funny how back in those days all the BBC weather team tended to be old blokes, or at least blokes that seemed old, although probably weren't. None of the youngsters like Thomaz and the high % of women you get now.

People like Jim Bacon, John Kettley and Francis Wilson were all in their early to mid 30s in that era. Michael Fish would only have been in his early 40s.

Interesting fact... Ian always done the weather shoe-less in his socks.

This is according to this excerpt from Breakfast Time from one Christmas that's been recently uploaded to YouTube.

That interview was for me the low point in Buerk's journalistic career. An unpleasant mixture of arrogance, and forced ignorance regarding the limits (back then) of weather forecasting



As said, age range hasn't really changed, it's probably your perception. When I was a teenager, some pop stars seemed to me to be ancient, 40 years on, some of them having been passing away, and some are only the next 'age decade' to me

To be fair a lot of journalists ask questions they already know the answers to because the viewers will expect those questions to be asked.

Every journalist should know that answer before they ask the question - apart from a certain Mr Levy