BBC News at 6, Great Storm of 1987 (Part 1 of 3)

[TWENTIETHCENTURYBABY]

Going to be stormy tonight in the south and again on Thursday night, wonder if it will be anything like this.

[alwaysquestiongov]

Geeze did you see the poor schmows with the two axes trying to cut that massive tree? Are they still there today?

[HateFenians]

Why did no one take the Met Office and the BBC to court?

[ilovemoviesuk]

i dunno why michael fish gets slagged off. he was right. it was NOT a hurricane lol not by a long shot . it was a tropical storm . JUST

[davidhaythornthwaite]

dont matter if the weathermen had spotted it or not, the winds would still just have been as strong, and people would still have died, i personally thought it was awesome, whens the next one, cant wait

[TWENTIETHCENTURYBABY]

@davidhaythornthwaite You're weird, just like me :-) I don't want to see people die obviously, but I love stormy weather.

[Kris393]

@TWENTIETHCENTURYBABY

haha yeah same here, I guess it's more interesting in life seeing stuff like this. But yeah it's not good when people start to die.

[davidhaythornthwaite]

@TWENTIETHCENTURYBABY ty my friend

[leesnj]

Wow, factual news, not opinions. I like the old BBC.

[Whatupwidat]

I was five days away from my second birthday. One of my earliest memories is asking my Dad why it was so windy...and we live in Cheshire. I can't imagine what it was like down south.

I know my baby brother was having life-saving surgery in Macclesfield hospital that day as well.

[wulfricvonspot]

preferred Nick Witchell before he became a Royal arse licker.

[andrewburbidge]

@sansomdela The comment about use of the word, tramp, reminds me of how Laurie Mayer once called Nicholas Witchell "Carrot" on a programme many years ago. Also, when Witchell appeared in a London Marathon, Mayer said it looked as though he was taking a trip down "Mincing Lane"; probably some friendly rivalry going on. And once, interviewing John Prescott, deputy leader of the Labour Party, an ex-steward/waiter, who was complaining about his treatment by the BBC, Witchell called him 'Giovanni".

[IlRezzonico]

lol "homes without electrical power..." - ah yes that new fangled "electricity" discovered by Messers Faraday and Maxwell, such an amazing and new thing

[wotsgonon1]

if dis happend today it would be blamed on global warming lol

[atomicnortherner]

6:22 LMAO! There is no way the BBC would say tramp now it would be a "homeless person" :-D

[Durbs75]

Good upload thank you.

Unfortunately I was living in Portsmouth at the time and - it having no trees to be blow down - I had no obstactles to prevent my journey to school. Alas!

[ab37z]

I will never forget this. I was working in the City of London. Hardly anybody came to work on the Monday morning. It was the day of the Black Monday stock market collapse.

[PinkFloydFan74]

What a brilliant capture. Well done.

[SuperSithis]

I laugh when they say 'why didn't weathermen know till it was too late. What the hell would people have done if they knew there was a hurricane?

[keiko909]

i remember michael fish getting fried for this even though it wasent his fault

[Zoomer30]

How did we get out of the 80s without nuking ourselves to oblivion.

[MrSellicksBeach]

I made a pitch for the Windy City Bar and Grill ad. account that day...and won it.

[VolcanicHD]

LMFAO!

There are allowed to use the word tramp!

[outofthegreenmist]

I know it's unlikely as few people would willingly record the news on a relatively uneventful day, but I wonder if anyone has a recording (mid-1980's) of Nicholas Witchell reading the news with a pair of jet-black eyebrows. Maybe he had tried to chat up the make-up girl, I don't know, but I simply couldn't take the news seriously that night.

[skyguy13]

For some reason it does not seem right with two men reporting the news, its much better with a man and a woman.

[DaOneToRuleDaWorld]

My god, 1980's news reports were so depressing!

[outofthegreenmist]

@DaOneToRuleDaWorld Well, it is the news, it's not meant to be entertaining!

[DaOneToRuleDaWorld]

@outofthegreenmist They could at least make it more... Un-depressing...

[outofthegreenmist]

@DaOneToRuleDaWorld Anti-depressant news?

[dormi87]

Omg!!! My dad's doing the report from 5:36 onwards!! He doesn't talk that posh at home =D

[theemperorwearsnoclo]

So refreshing to see the News again. I remember that show. It was good. Why don't we have a show like that today?

[gozza18]

micheal fish once said this storm wasn't comin but it did according to my dad

[ilovemoviesuk]

@gozza18 nah he said a hurricane was not coming and he was right. this was not a hurricane. People just twisted the weathermans words and heard what they wanted to. it was a tropical storm (and only just) it was way off being a hurricane. The sustained winds were not high enough. THere were some massive gusts of wind no doubt , but the sustained wind speed was only 46MPH . has to be 75MPH to be a hurricane

[davolente]

I was a telephone engineer, looking after a rural area when this happened and come the next day, we didn't really know where to start. Devastation to loads of overhead lines and trees down everywhere!

[APriceProduction]

The presenter talking from 08:25 sounds like the guy from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, the part in the film when the guy tries to use a computer to find the last golden ticket.

[stormof87]

one day i shall return

[snapey82]

Nicholas Witchell wants your soul

[andyknight1]

I was 9 when this happened, it was awesome. I want another one in the next year or so.

From the severe weather freak, woooo

[sansomdela]

"the only person who died in London was a tramp" - like it didn't matter!!!! ha ha

[AlanMcB]

@sansomdela haha I noticed that aswell.

[Odyssey500]

Rubbish. Of course it mattered. This is merely a statement of fact. If anything highlighting the fact that so few people died.

[outofthegreenmist]

@sansomdela Of course not, he wasn't contributing anything to the economy, so he was expendable. In fact, the storm did us a favour. He probably wanted to die, anyway. ;-)

[djjoff]

@sansomdela - That's exactly the kind of attitude they spoofed on The Day Today "The people killed were old and would have died soon anyway"...

[EmzingtonOnAHigh]

@sansomdela Yea but it was due to the prespective of peoples oppinions of the time. It wouldn't happen now but thats how people thought back then.

[mubd1234]

For some reason, I like Phillip Hayton's style.

[Visonu]

Do you happen to have the full channel 4 news on this storm?

[Belnahua]

No sorry, just BBC and ITV.

[slappedcheek]

phew only a tramp died...........abd the weather said it might be a little windy i think.........or here was report of a storm but it was dismissed as ridiculous.......

[Visonu]

I was only 2 when this happened

[2puttking]

i slept through it..woke up ..looked out the window..dads greenhouses were gone! tiles off the roof and my car wasnt even scratched....weird day!

[AUTORECOVERYUK]

I was 21 when this happened and remember it like yesterday. I got up to go to work and noticed my neighbour had a boat in his front garden that he did not have the night before and a house at the end of the road had a shed in their back garden which took off and ended up 3 or 4 houses away. I lost a couple of roof tiles but that was all but there were trees down all over the place cars damaged windows broken. It was like something out of a war movie

[MQsCues]

Fascinating to see this - I was 10 at the time, with only vague memories of the disruption. Sickening, though, to hear the reporter at 6:23 and the callous way he implies that the "tramp"'s death didn't matter so much as it might have done if a Belgravia resident had died.

[KevCityboy]

Very good point that

[kellogscornsnake]

yh aparently they media knew about the storm and how serious it was gonna be, but diddnt broadcast it, "becuase it might have frightened people" (well thanks to them 13 people, who might have been safe if they were warned, DIED). Yet the media seems happy to spread bullshit about "devil dog breeds having locking jaws" and "youths all being feral criminals". n wtf do they mean "ONLY a tramp died" (s)hes still a fucking person, if the queen mother had been hit by a twig and had a little bruise...

[kellogscornsnake]

.... there would be up to the minute crap on every channel for 3 days

[Odyssey500]

Your assertion that the reporter implies the death of a tramp doesn't matter is simply not true. It's merely a statement of fact. Unlike the overly emotive, narrative and opinionated journalism of today, this report merely states the facts. If anything the reporter expresses relief that so few people died, particularly considering the large number of buildings that collapsed. You're reading too much into the statement.

[KevCityboy]

Can't get enough of that Six O'Clock News ident! Love it so much even now. They should bring this ident back