Big Breakfast abseiling incident - cameraman drops camera

Google's got me nowhere on this one, so I thought I'd ask the experts. I remember seeing an episode of The Big Breakfast that had an OB of people abseiling off a building (might have been Richard Bacon on location), and at one point the cameraman and presenter were both dangling from the edge of the roof when the cameraman dropped the camera. I remember seeing the building go spinning past and the ground coming up to meet it, at which point (obviously) pictures were lost.

I remember thinking the presenters back in the house (again, not sure, but I think it was Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van Outen) took it very calmly considering they didn't know whether it was only the camera that had been smashed to pieces. Later on they took a call from the OB presenter who, as I recall, only referred to "technical problems".

Does anyone else remember this? If not, I'll start taking the tablets again.

David

I used to watch The Big Breakfast everyday, I don't remember this incident ever happening or being included in any of the hundreds of highlight packages they produced for various things over the years. It would surely be on YouTube now too.

Could you have dreamt it?

I'm starting to wonder...

It would be best to ask here:
http://bowlocks.10.forumer.com/index.php
Home of the big breakfast superfans. They'll be able to answer this for you.

But let us know what the answer is as well, of course.

I was just thinking though. The Big Breakfast did only use one camera on their OBs but surely for something like this they would have used two and we would have switched to the other one. Also, just because a camera was smashed, we should have still heard the sound and the OB presenter would have probably said what had happened.

I still think you dreamt it of course.

Without meaning to be rude, this sounds like the stuff of dreams. I find this concept ludicrous and I'll explain why.

Going on the basis TV cameras and their transmission gubbings and everything like that literally cost a small fortune (plus the fact the bloke on Treasure Hunt who ran around filming Anneka Rice regularly hung his camera outside the helicopter from much greater heights and said camera never broke), great lengths would surely have been gone to to ensure an expensive camera couldn't have fallen like this.

Plus of course the entire vision of watching what a falling camera's seeing going out on live TV is probably not the sort of thing you should really be seeing while you eat cornflakes. Did Big Breakfast use any "wireless cameras" (for want of a better term) during it's run? I'm sure they were all wired, even running round knocking on people's doors at 7:30am, retracing steps you could clearly see a cable. If that's the case a camera couldn't have fallen to its death as either the vision/audio cable would stop it or you'd grab it ASAP.

On that basis, I can only conclude you've most likely dreamt this up. I wouldn't worry about having dreamed it up, happens to everybody at some point. The worst ones are where you become totally convinced about your fabrication and you can find nothing to prove it.

Is it a bit sad that I've registered especially just to reply to this..?! Anyway...

I remember the abseiling incident - it was during Zoe and Mark's days on The BB in 1996. Richard Orford was on the OB, abseiling with Noel Edmonds and, as you say, the camera was dropped. They cut back to the house not knowing if anything serious had happened. Zoe filled by referring to the fact it was Jerry the cameraman's birthday, so it was lucky he hadn't just fallen to his doom! Richard and Noel were on the phone towards the end of the show to let everyone know what had happened.

I'll go back to being a silent observer now..!

Thanks kev - my faith in my own sanity is (on this matter at least) restored

Seems odd that a backup camera wouldn't have been on hand?

That would have cost money!!

Only incident I can recall with a camera was Rob (or Sean) going up in a helicopter and not being very well!

On another unrelated incident, I recall The BB going off air for a time on St Patrick's Day 1993 and Chris Evans blaming it on a leprechaun.

humble Pie Neil

sounds like it did happen, would have thought they'd strap the camera on somehow