The Plot is hatched - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

Everything was stored on my home computer and most of the sensitive telephone calls were made from there. So here then is the whole complicated story as it really evolved.

Probably the most complicated PR event I ever conceived and organised had its genesis with a telephone call I received at Cranwell from Tony Charles on the afternoon of 1 May 1996. The Red Arrows were away in Cyprus on a Springhawk detachment shortened because of the Far East tour but it had still been quite a busy day for me. At 8am there had been a photo shoot on the flight line with the Band of the RAF College posing in front of one of the spare Red Arrows’ Hawks. The Director of Music wanted a series of pictures to go on the sleeve of a forthcoming CD which would include a new piece dedicated to the Red Arrows, ‘The Diamond Nine March’, composed by their Director of Music, Flight Lieutenant Duncan Stubbs. As is the way with photo shoots, it took the best part of two hours to get shots that the photographer was happy with.

Later in the morning I had a meeting with Tim Callaway from Deltaweb Publishing who had come to tell me about his proposal to set up an internet site for the Red Arrows. In between, I dealt with some of the never-ending flow of letters that found their way into my in tray and answered the usual stream of telephone calls from members of the public requesting information, brochures, or visits. In the early afternoon I had to remain close to my office in case Group Captain Tom Eeles from the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO) called in with a Venezuelan Air Force three-star General who was on a fact-finding visit to the RAF College. They did not call in and by about 4pm I was just thinking of having an early finish when Tony Charles called.

I had never heard of Tony Charles, much to his chagrin, but I learned (because he told me!) that he is a well-known entertainer, stage name Luci, and amongst other things he does an amazingly accurate imitation of Prince Charles. Tony and I had a very strange conversation during which he kept lapsing into a confusing mixture of what sounded to me like real Italian and English with a heavy Italian accent. He asked me for a lot of information about the Red Arrows for a ‘secret’ project BBC Television was proposing to do. From his guarded line of questioning, some instinct told me immediately that he was talking about a programme for ‘This Is Your Life’ but he would not be drawn.

The Red Arrows had been involved in three ‘This Is Your Life’ programmes in the past six years so I knew the score: that secrecy and subterfuge was all important. I sent Tony the material he asked for – the 1996 colour brochure, hot off the press, and all my current news releases, thousands of words in all. He rang again a few days later.

“Thanks very much for all the PR material. It’s great and just what I needed. Would it be possible for me to visit you at Cranwell? I need to talk some things over with you.”

“We’re talking about the Red Arrows taking part in This Is Your Life aren’t we?” I said. He admitted that was so.

“Let me guess,” I continued. “You must be thinking of Ray Hanna, am I right?”

I had flown in Ray’s back seat on a formation training sortie from Kemble in 1967 when I was on the Central Flying School (CFS) course and Ray was then in his second year as Team Leader. I had not seen him since although in the intervening years  he had become famous in both the military and civilian aviation world. I knew that Ray was now running his own aviation business, The Old Flying Machine  Company, based at Duxford Airfield in Cambridgeshire, that he owned and flew a famous World War 2  Spitfire, MH434, and that 1996 was the 60th anniversary of the first Spitfire flight. Those seemed good enough reasons to make a programme on Ray’s Life.

Tony Charles refused, wisely, to be drawn further on the subject of the programme on the telephone so we arranged to meet at Cranwell on 15 May, a date when I knew most of the Red Arrows, apart from Team Leader John Rands, would be off base playing at a golf tournament at Lindrick. The fewer people who were around to ask Tony, quite innocently, what he was doing, the better. In the meantime, when the Team returned to base from their annual training detachment at RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, on 8 May, I told JR what I'd arranged. He seemed as enthusiastic as I was and told me to get on with the arrangements.

Tony visited me as arranged and confirmed that Ray Hanna was to be the subject of a ‘This Is Your Life’  programme and that it was natural to involve the present-day Red Arrows in his story. He seemed very surprised, and I think rather sad, that I had correctly guessed not only the programme but the subject. Tony told me that Thames TV made the programmes under contract for the BBC but he was a freelance and worked for neither. As a long-standing friend of the Hanna family, he told me, he thought that it was high time Ray Hanna got some public credit for all that he had contributed to the British aviation scene over the past 40 years or so. Tony, through his professional contacts, had put the idea of a programme about Ray to John Graham, the Producer of This Is Your Life, and John had quickly been sold on the idea.

Next