The Great 'Blue Peter Garden Quiz' results

If you took note of the Great 'Blue Peter Garden Quiz' announced in a recent GTC email, you probably realised quite quickly that this was a brazen attempt to publicise the new GTC Digital Archive and to encourage members to dive into their photo albums and offer up archive material!

In case you think there is no urgency to digitise our pictures, just look at the amount of fading showing in my original scan (left)!

If you have any material for the archive, please contact our Digital Curator Simon Curtis on: digital.curator@gtc.org.uk

Here are the answers - the picture is fairly routine, but it is nevertheless able to tell us something about our history.

• First, and possibly foremost, many of you assumed the camera was the legendary EMI 2001, but it was a Link 110 - the 2001 was a bit older, MUCH bigger and MUCH heavier!
• Of course, a heavy camera on a tripod is unmanoeuvrable as well as being potentially lethal, hence the Kestrel dolly for a mounting, even though the camera probably wasn't going to move on shot.
• Those of you who were too young to work with the legendary floor manager Derek Kibble should have been watching Blue Peter after school and may have recognised Simon Groom and Goldie - but I was less than certain until a consensus of informed entrants confirmed my recollections.
• There is little chance of knowing the exact date unless it is on back of the picture - in this case 1 April 1980. The two winners were both near with 1979. The garden was in use from 1974 until 2011, when it was moved ‘brick by brick' to its current location.
• The garden and the show have gone to Salford - but you could have guessed that!
• Why on earth did they do it like that? Lightweight cameras were only just becoming available, and if there was one it would have been on the little scaffolding tower out of shot. Portable recorders weren't available at Television Centre, for political and cost considerations, but there were convenient multicore camera cables running around the building back to the studios (you can just see the adaptor from TV36 to G101 at the back of the Kestrel). Probably later in the day the garden would have been used for a live item.

The Winners!

Most of you decided to hedge your bets by answering by being both over and under 40, so I have decided to award two prizes in open competition. Both winning entrants had very similar answers except for the under 40s tiebreaker: ‘Why on earth did they do it like that?'

• Martin Hawkins wins second prize with: ‘Because we knew no better!'

• Anne Mitchell wins first prize because she hit the right note of hazy nostalgia with: ‘Because they could, and it was fun!'