Life's What You Make It

by Phillip Schofield

  ‘Absolutely, yes,’ was my obvious reply. Since childhood, as I’ve mentioned, I’d had a fascination with aircraft, and this was one of those incredible ‘money can’t buy’ opportunities that I was not going to miss.

  I had no idea it would end in disaster.

  Every summer in Cornwall, the Schofield family drove to St Mawgan for the airshow. It was one of the highlights of our summer. The Red Arrows were always the stars of the show, but we also loved the Vulcan Bomber, because when it was being built and still highly classified, my mum was involved in printing up all the top-secret information on it. My grandad also shaped many of the copper pipes in the bomb bay. When the Vulcan soared overhead, it felt like the screaming roar could pull your soul out of your ears.

  One of the other treats of the day was watching the Nimrod fly overhead. St Mawgan was a military base with a runway long enough for Concorde to land. In the sixties and seventies it was home to a squadron of Shackleton long-range maritime patrol aircraft. The droning noise that the Shackleton made was the best sound ever! They were replaced by Nimrods and, because of my job, way off in the future, Dad, Tim and I would get to go on a top-secret patrol out in the Atlantic on board a Nimrod to find a rogue Soviet fishing boat.

  After seeing them so many times as a child, now I would get to fly with the Arrows. That was an unexpected dream come true.

  The crew and I drove to their base at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, where my training began. Firstly, I was told how to operate the Martin Baker ejector seat in an emergency. The Red One pilot at the time was Squadron Leader Tim Miller. I would be flying with him. He pointed out that in an emergency he would say, ‘Eject, eject, eject,’ and on the third ‘eject’ he would be gone, up and out of the red Hawk jet. I could, he said, choose to stay in the plane and attempt to land it. If I was successful, I would be an RAF hero. However, he suggested that if he couldn’t land it, it would be unlikely that I could. I agreed to follow him out of the plane in the unlikely event of a disaster.

  About to experience my Red Arrow shakedown flight.

  After the briefing, I felt confident that I could safely attach and detach myself from the seat and eject if I needed to. Next came the shakedown flight. This was Tim and me in Red One going through the manoeuvres that I could expect in a full-on display. Months before, a journalist who wanted to write a piece on the team had visited them. He had been taken out over the North Sea to experience the thrill of aerobatics. He panicked and, for no understandable reason, the pilot heard an almighty bang and the journalist was gone from behind him. Without warning, he had ejected. Other than a very expensive shattered canopy, no one was hurt. The moment the seat separates from the jet, a tracker beacon is activated, so the hapless journo was quickly found by a search-and-rescue helicopter, bobbing in the North Sea. I clearly understood the importance of a shakedown. An idiot ejecting during a display was something no one wanted to witness.

  The closest I ever got to Top Gun.

  It was orgasmic! Tim put the plane, me, my nerves and my stomach through our paces and I was ecstatic with undiluted joy and awe. We rolled, we dived, we twisted, we spun and we turned.

  The pilot and any passengers have to wear a special jumpsuit to counteract the high gravitational forces – ‘pulling Gs’. It inflates when necessary and exerts pressure on the legs to stop the blood from leaving the brain and gathering in the lower extremities. When we hit 7Gs, I was happy to be wearing it. Otherwise, I would certainly have passed out.

  ‘Right,’ said Tim in clipped tones over the radio. ‘You’ve passed the shakedown. Let’s have some fun.’

  He dived the streaking red Hawk jet down to ground level. We followed the twisting track of the North Yorkshire Railway as it wound through the beautifully rugged scenery. As it flashed past, we snapped left and right to avoid the rocky terrain on either side. At the end, he pulled back on the stick and we went vertical, straight up like a launching rocket, up to the perfect, fluffy cumulus clouds. He gave me my instructions.

  ‘It’s your turn to fly now. I want you to imagine that these clouds are as hard as the hills below. Fly around them, through the gaps. Think, if we go into a cloud, you’ll kill us … You have control.’

  ‘I have control,’ I replied, attempting to sound cool.

  I gingerly moved the joystick left and right, missing the gaps and flying through the clouds.

  Every time it went misty white around us Tim shouted, ‘Dead!’

  ‘Dead!’

  ‘Dead again!’

  I was being too careful, too cautious. He had had enough of my fannying around.

  ‘You will never get this opportunity again. You will not break it. Now fly the bloody thing.’

  That was all I needed. So began the most exciting twenty minutes of my entire life. I snapped the stick left and right and we darted through the gaps: round, over, under. I saw the clouds as solid objects as we tore through the sky, a tiny red dart weaving through huge, white, bubbling clouds. I didn’t kill us again and my exhilaration almost made me cry with emotional triumph.

  The next day was the display. To make sure of coverage from all angles, the usual nine red Hawks of the display team were joined by a tenth, an identical jet equipped with cameras. Our camera crew positioned themselves about halfway down the runway. All ten Red Arrow planes positioned themselves perfectly in formation at the end of the runway. We started to roll. I have no idea what went wrong.

  We gently lifted off. The wheels retracted and, at that exact moment, the jet behind me and to my right got out of position, dropping back as I watched. The pilot overcompensated and the plane leapt towards us. The nose of the jet was so close to the cockpit I gasped and pulled my right arm in beside me. The pilot overcompensated again by pulling back on the power. It all happened so fast. The jet dropped back but lost height and slapped back down without wheels on to the runway, where the diesel tanks filled with fuel and the dye for the trademark coloured smoke ignited in a fireball. The pilot ejected. As the wheels had been retracted, the stricken Red Arrow briefly slid down the runway, leaving a fiery trail behind it, then veered off into the grass, to where the crew were filming. Some of the other jets had briefly scattered to get out of the way. What the hell had I just witnessed?

  Over the radio, to the pilots under his command, Tim was incredible. Calmly, he said, ‘Battle formation,’ and the nine planes regrouped. We performed a circuit of the airfield. The runway was damaged, so returning to base was impossible. We were diverting to RAF Conningsby. If he was calm over the radio to his team, he was anything but in the cockpit, with just me to hear. He was absolutely steaming with fury, his language varied and ripe in the extreme. I wasn’t really listening as I was distraught about the crew. Were they okay? How was the pilot?

  As we approached to land at Conningsby, he reminded the pilots to check that their landing gear was down. It hadn’t occurred to me to think that, although every one of them was highly trained, after witnessing an accident and not knowing how their colleague was, they might also need to be reminded how to proceed. Tim Miller pointed out that very few civilians approached Conningsby in this way and that this was highly irregular. He also instructed me not to disclose what I saw. So I won’t.

  The Red Arrows landed perfectly and all taxied into a perfectly straight line. Tim slid back the cockpit canopy and made sure I could remember how to unplug everything and get out without ejecting myself. I assured him I could. He said he was going to talk to the pilots and I was to join them when I could, and with that he climbed out and was gone. I made sure everything was disconnected correctly, then climbed out. The tinted sun shield was down on my helmet, so you couldn’t see my face. As I stood by the plane, the ground crew arrived.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Don’t often see you here, sir,’ one of them said to me.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ I replied. ‘One of the planes has gone down.’

  One of the crew stood back, looked down the line and actually counted! As
if a mistake had been made.

  ‘You’ve got nine, sir.’

  ‘We left Scampton with ten. One of these is the camera plane, and you can stop calling me sir. I’m a civilian.’

  All protocol was dropped as he exclaimed, ‘What the fuck has happened?’

  By the time I got to the group of shaken pilots, I was told that my TV crew were all fine and that the pilot was also unhurt. Although he may have ejected directly into a desk job.

  The footage filmed for Going Live was used that evening on the Nine o’Clock News.

  Because of what we’d all been through, a few months later I was invited back to Scampton for a dinner. Those guys partied hard. Sometime after that, I finally took part in a complete display.

  On Monday 3 October 1988 I was on the twelfth floor of the East Tower at TV Centre for a Going Live production meeting. Chris Bellinger had a TV tuned to ITV in the corner of the office. There was a new show about to launch that he wanted to watch. At ten forty we all stopped what we were doing and gathered around the TV. Broadcasting live from the Albert Dock in Liverpool, This Morning took its place in the nation’s lives. I could have no idea how important it would become to me.

  I suppose part of writing a book like this is that you tell stories that make you wince, especially when you see them written on paper. I have always had the greatest respect for our emergency services and I try to make time if they need my help in promoting any schemes or initiatives they launch.

  The Northumberland Police asked if I would help to promote a new scheme to get young children to talk to adults if there was anything worrying them. I travelled to the launch and was happy to take part. A few days later, I was caught speeding on the M1. Not excessively, but enough. The James Grant office called to warn the chief superintendent in Northumberland that this had happened and that we were sorry if this had caused any embarrassment. He surprised us by saying he would look into it. A week or so later I got a letter from the police in Hendon, where the speeding offence had happened. The chief inspector told me that in light of the fact that I was currently working with the police, and to prevent embarrassment, he would on this one occasion overlook the offence. However, if my name ever crossed his desk again (it never has), he would without question come down on me in the fullest way possible. I wrote, ‘Yippee!’ on the letter and drew a car with speed lines around it and ‘Vroom’ coming out of the exhaust. I drove to the office to tell Russ and Paul. They were both out. My intention was to copy the letter once and place the copy on Russ’s desk. I accidentally made ten copies. I stabbed at the copier in a frantic attempt to make it stop, but it wouldn’t. I left one copy on Russ’s desk, put the remaining nine copies in my bag and went to work at Radio 1.

  By a stroke of sheer misfortune, that evening at the studio a particularly clever thief managed to get in. He left with a reasonable haul of wallets and cards, and my entire bag. I called the office to explain that I wasn’t bothered about anything inside the bag, it could all be replaced. The thief had, however, got the nine copies of the ‘Yippee! Vroom’ letter. I was mortified, and the office, who were becoming increasingly adept at putting out media fires, said that I had been stupid to make the copies, but thanked me for owning up. They would be ready if the thief decided to sell them.

  Nothing happened. Silence. I thought nothing more would be said on the matter.

  About six months later, two police constables from Chiswick Police knocked on my door. They had arrested the thief, who turned out to be a criminal very well known to the police.

  My bag had been returned intact, with most of the items in it. Did I want to check? I did just that. Everything but my wallet was there, including the ‘Yippee! Vroom’ letters. I discreetly counted them: damn, only eight. My heart sank. I thanked the constables and showed them to the door. As they were leaving, one of them turned to me and said, ‘If you were wondering why there are only eight copies of your letter, we’ve got one on our noticeboard at work.’

  I’ve had my share of over-zealous fans. One thought we were getting married and booked our wedding venue then sent me tickets to New York for our honeymoon. And one was obsessed by the secret messages I was apparently leaving for her in the Radio Times. But by far the most peculiar was the Chinese lady who took to jumping out at me with her camera at the ready. It didn’t matter where I was in the country or what time of the day or night it was, she always seemed to know where I’d be. I would walk past a bus stop, a billboard, be parking my car in a multi-storey … I never saw her coming until she was in front of me. She would jump out and shout, ‘Yaaaaa!’ I would scream in surprise and, at that moment, she took her photo. I had my very own Cato from the Pink Panther movies. Somewhere, there are about thirty photos of me, trapped in a moment in time, with a look of abject terror on my face.

  In November 1989, Pete, Russ and I were all sitting in the office watching the news. The Berlin Wall was being besieged, and the soldiers on both sides of the wall were watching it happen and not firing on the crowds who were gathering. They were climbing it; they were taking hammers and pickaxes to it. The atmosphere was jubilant, euphoric. We couldn’t believe what we were witnessing. Russ had a thought out loud:

  ‘We should go.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘We should go! We should go, right now!’

  He looked in my diary. ‘You’re not working tomorrow. Let’s go now.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I have to go home for my passport. I’ll meet you at the airport.’

  Just forty minutes later, we were at Heathrow. At the ticket desk, we were told that if we ran we could get the flight that was about to board. We ran.

  Three hours after watching the news, we were in Berlin and approaching the Wall. Old ladies were sobbing, hitting it with anything they could find, in some cases just their shoes. The bits of concrete that were chipped off were being handed out as souvenirs. A guy lent me his hammer and I chipped some of it off for myself. We climbed a ladder and stood on the top, looking into no-man’s-land and the darkness of East Berlin beyond. That vantage point, only days before, would have got me arrested, or worse. We walked to the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing and found, to our astonishment, that it was open and, with the proper paperwork completed, we could cross into the East for a few hours. The walk through the checkpoint and into the East was, even for us, emotional. As we stood in East Berlin, we saw how profound the difference between the two sides of the Wall was.

  The sky of the West was lit by the glow from neon signs and we could hear the noise of horns and the bustle of busy lives beyond. Walking into the East was like stepping back in time, or on to the set of The Third Man. Very few streetlamps lit the shadows; the buildings were dark and brooding. There was no traffic, and the roads and pavements had dry grass growing through the cracks. We walked aimlessly for about thirty minutes, then spotted bright lights in the distance. The source of the light was a grand hotel. Although its best days were behind it, it still had a faded magnificence. A hotel stopped in time offering the only light in the dark streets.

  The Berlin Wall comes down.

  We walked through the doors, and back about sixty years. Crystal chandeliers sparkled above the old guy in a suit playing a grand piano. Only a handful of people sat in the bar. They were furtive, their conversations spoken into hands covering their mouths. On the bar was a huge ice bucket filled with bottles of Dom Pérignon champagne and beside that a huge bowl of caviar. The opulence inside compared to the forlorn and gloomy streets outside was shocking. We sat at the bar in stunned silence. What conversations had been had in this bar over the years? Probably quite a few like the one we were about to have.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ said a husky female voice with a heavy German accent. ‘Would you like to buy us a drink?’

  The woman with her asked, ‘Maybe you’d like a little fun tonight?’

  The two ‘professional’ ladies were very beautiful and excellent company. I should say immediately that our time with them remained
in the bar, on four barstools!

  They drank champagne and told us about their lives. Both had young children and struggled to keep them fed. ‘Business is slow,’ they said. They asked why we were there and we explained that we had just walked through Checkpoint Charlie. They were captivated. Was it easy? Could anyone cross? What was it like on the other side? We answered their many questions and reassured them that the border was open, the Wall was coming down. Did we think they could cross? We said we were sure they could. They said that they were extremely scared. Perhaps we could cross with them?

  We agreed!

  Both girls raced from the bar, assuring us they would be back in twenty minutes. Their mothers took it in turns to watch the children as their daughters went to work. About half an hour later, they returned, each with a small bag and their passport. They had also brought their car.

  At about 3 a.m. we drove through Checkpoint Charlie in a Trabant with two East German hookers. They kissed us on the cheeks as we sent them, wide-eyed, into the bright neon lights.

  Things were marching along at a substantial pace back in London. Kenneth Williams had asked me out (I declined) and Bob Monkhouse had said to me outside TC reception, ‘If I had ever had another son, I would have liked it to have been you.’ I only include that because it touched me deeply at the time, and still does. Bob was an ever-smiling gentleman and a TV icon.

  So, everything was happening – all fun, some bizarre. There were only two things left to be ticked off my teenage wish list. And then Johnny Beerling, the Controller of Radio 1, called me into his office and I ticked off one of them.

  ‘I wondered if you would like to do a week on the Roadshow?’

  The chorus in my head played yet again.

  I was teamed with Roger Pusey as my producer, and I asked Cathy Mellor, who was production secretary on my Radio 1 shows, to come on board too.

  Roger Pusey was literally the perfect pairing for me. Looking like a handsome Captain Birdseye, he was the best fun, totally lovely, a wonderfully dynamic producer and he loved all the daring ‘adventure’ stuff that I did. To complete the party, Trev and Simon from Going Live made up the joyous team.