Wise Words for You

by Clive Haddrell Cert Ed MIfL BBC Medical Drama 'Casualty 'it's been 28 years in production and still going strong. How did I get involved? When I was a training officer for the Avon Ambulance Service NHS Trust, the BBC came to see about hiring our ambulances for what we thought was going to be an of episode about a night shift at A & E Department. We thought wrong! During the filming it soon became apparent to the BBC the role of paramedic had not been researched and their skills and knowledge were not taken into account, yet alone actors driving ambulances on the public highway displaying blue lights. Oh my God I thought! I looked upon this is a golden opportunity to educate people on the role of the ambulance service and the skills of its staff, in those days technicians, paramedics, control room staff and procedures. Having become aware of the complexities of our role I was invited to a meeting with the then boss of the programme Geraint Morris where I ...

Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) requires the ambulance service call handler to ask you a systematized series of key questions. These questions allow the system to categorize the call by the chief complaint (What is wrong with the patient). The 999 call is then automatically categorized as to the level of response by the ambulance service.   Guidelines when making 999 Call You will be asked the following: 1. Case Entry  ¬- Telephone number and location of incident.                         The Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD) will ask you to verify these to ensure they                        have the correct  information and  an ambulance can be dispatched at this point in        ...

Like all Brits, I love an underdog – so a part of me always loved Colin Baker's Doctor. I used to put his bad ratings, bad reviews and eventual sacking down to the mendacity of the BBC and a couple of production glitches that could've been ironed out with more time. But then, in the course of researching this blog, I re-watched the serial Timelash and realised I was wrong. The sets are bad, the acting is bad, the script stinks, the effects are laughable and – most importantly – Colin's Doctor is simply unlovable. Timelash, by the way, is an anagram of Lamesh*t. Why did Colin get the part? Well, John Nathan Turner – the eccentric producer of the show – met him at a wedding and thought he was quite amusing. So he offered him the role. Error #1: don't hand out to jobs to random people you once shared a finger buffet with. Error #2: don't give your new actor a costume that makes the viewer want to throw up. Seriously, the Sixth Doctor's costume was not only an ug...

The story of Eighties Doctor Who isn't really about Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. It's the story of how the producer, John Nathan Turner, killed the show with bad taste. It all began in the last season of Tom Baker's stint when JNT (as fans knew him) was hired to shake things up. Some of his decisions were good (more hard science, no more K-9); others set a cheap and nasty tone from which the show never quite recovered. Music produced on a tinny synthesizer, a disco-themed opening, and a "uniform" for each Doctor that they never took off (it must've stunk). The latter pointed to JNT's obsession with marketing: the collars branded with question marks and obviously designed to be repackaged as fancy dress costumes. This meant that when poor Peter Davison landed the role, he had to spend three years dressed as a cricketer. Although only 29, Davison was a household name before he took the part, thanks to a couple of years spent putting h...

Ask anyone over thirty to describe Doctor Who and they'll probably say "a man with big hair in a scarf". That's because Tom Baker played the role for seven years and established himself in the minds of every child of the Cold War as  the  Doctor. Frankly, by the end of his time he'd outstayed his welcome – he was phoning his performance in from Gallifrey. But Baker was undoubtedly the most charismatic individual to ever play the part. He was also the one with the most notches on his bedpost. Maybe this is a good opportunity to correct the popular myth. There was a lot of dross made under Tom Baker. Consider the awful Horns of Nimon: 90 minutes that might be better spent watching paint dry while pulling out your own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. A two dimension re-write of the Minotaur story, it features the Doctor and his companion Romana battling a race of half-men-half-bulls in platform shoes who come off like the gay chorus to a freudian nightmare dream...

Velvet smoking jackets, hovercrafts, Venusian karate, neutron flows, bouffant hair, angry civil servants, insulted Brigadiers, giggling popsies and crystals from Metebelis III. Yes, we're into the telefantastic world of Jon Pertwee. That Pertwee's performance as the Doctor would turn out to be the most serious of all was a revelation to the TV critics. For he wasn't a very serious actor. The descendant of French aristocrats, he was expelled from two schools and thrown out of RADA for writing rude things on the toilet walls. He served in the navy and reached a high rank in partying; on one occasion he woke up with a tattoo on his arm and couldn't remember how he came to get it. Pertwee's early career was dominated by comedy roles that made the most of his rubbery features and ability to affect silly voices. So when he landed the part of the Doctor it was tempting to continue the farcical style of the Troughton years. But Pertwee insisted on playing it straight – a...

The first thing you notice about the Second Doctor is that Beatle haircut. Britain was going through a revolution in the late 1960s – the shagadelic summer of Pan when literally everyone was having sex with everyone else – and some of the swing found its way into the Tardis. Out went the Edwardian grandeur of William Hartnell and the bourgeois intellectualism of his companions (Ian and Barbara, all cardigans and history textbooks). In came a cosmic hobo with companions dressed by Carnaby Street. Patrick Troughton, aka Doctor #2, was born in 1920 and enjoyed a prolific career as a character actor before being invited to pilot the Tardis. It's reported that his predecessor, Bill Hartnell, said, "There's only one man in England who can take over, and that's Patrick Troughton!" Whether that's true or not, history tends to be written with crystal clear retrospect, and people forget how uncertain things were at the time. The show's producers were taking a bi...

So, the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who's first episode is approaching. To mark the occasion, here's the first in an 11-part series of tributes to the men who've travelled in the fourth dimension… Everybody has a favourite Doctor, but the only real Doctor was William Hartnell. No one else came close to matching his authority and scariness. He was genuinely alien. Hartnell the man was born in poverty to a single mother in 1908. His career took off in the 1940s, playing hard men and soldiers in cop shows and sitcoms. He was spotted by producer Verity Lambert playing a rugby talent scout in This Sporting Life and offered a part in a new sci-fi show called Doctor Who in 1963. Bill was reluctant at first to work on a mere kids programme – but it turned out to be rather more special than that. The genius of that early series was that it was pitched perfectly between children and adults; it's a testament to how much more "adult" children were treated back then....

The Night Riviera, operated by First Great Western, runs on the route from London Paddington to Penzance and viceversa every night except Saturday evening. On its way it also serves Exeter, Plymouth, Liskeard, Bodmin Parkway, Par, Truro and St Erth, amongst others. Besides taking you to beautiful Devon and Cornwall overnight the train also offers a cheap and fairly comfortable option to spend the night instead of staying at a London hostel for all old-school Interrail cheapskates: London Paddington dep: 2345 (2350 on Sundays) Plymouth arr: 0514 (0535 on Monday mornings) Plymouth dep: 0553 (0540 on Saturdays) London Paddington arr: 0900 (0921 on Saturdays) In fact, you don’t have to get up that early in Plymouth since scheduled departure of the Night Riviera to Penzance is only at 0543. If you want to sleep just a little longer, you could also consider this option: London Paddington dep: 2345 (2350 on Sundays) Liskeard arr: 0607 Liskeard dep: 0626 (Mon-Fri only) London Padd...

THE bodies of three teenage air cadets, two boys and a girl, were found last night after an RAF helicopter plunged into a lake in North Wales during a training flight. The three, from the East Lancashire wing of the Air Training Corps, were aboard a Wessex helicopter from RAF Valley on Anglesey. The helicopter's rear rotor failed. Four other people aboard the aircraft -- three male RAF crew and a fourth cadet, a 16-year-old girl -- managed to free themselves after it crashed into Llyn Padarn, a lake by the Snowdonia holiday town of Llanberis. As scores of holidaymakers watched from the lakeside, the helicopter sank in a matter of seconds with the three cadets trapped inside. Police divers began searching the lake soon after the mid-afternoon crash and located the helicopter in 70ft of water by 7pm. The first body was brought ashore an hour later and the others soon after. The four survivors were brought to the shore by canoeists taking part in water sports on the lake...

Thirteen people lost their lives and hundreds were stranded as a result of the floods that hit Tewkesbury in July 2007. It was some of the worst flooding ever recorded in Britain. In the summer of 2007 Gloucestershire suffered one of the worst emergencies ever seen in the county due to extensive flooding. The summer of 2007 was one of the wettest on record. Heavy rainfall at the end of June led to flooding in some areas in Gloucestershire, both from surface water overloading the drainage systems and very high water levels in main rivers and brooks. But during July, rains were even heavier. On 20th July, two months‟ rain fell in just 14 hours resulting in two emergencies–widespread flooding and tap water shortages affecting 350,000 people. It is estimated that the flooding and water crisis cost the county of Gloucestershire £50 million. Other facts include:-  5,000 homes and businesses were flooded.  80% of properties were affected were overwhelmed by flash flo...

What does the DUALSHOCK 4 controller’s Share button do? The DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller features a dedicated Share button that enables players to save, distribute and share recorded gameplay video, captured gameplay screenshots, and livestream gameplay footage in real time. Is PlayStation Plus required to use the Share button? No. You will be able to share gameplay videos, screenshots, and perform game livestreams without a PlayStation Plus membership. Where can I share my game content using Share? PS4 players can share game video on Facebook, game screenshots via Facebook and Twitter, and gameplay livestreams via Ustream and Twitch. How can I promote my shared content from the PS4 system? You can distribute recorded gameplay video to Facebook. For gameplay livestreams, you can post the livestream’s URL to Twitter and Facebook just when the livestream begins. Does the PS4 system always record all gameplay? Yes, the PS4 system constantly records gameplay footage automatical...