The aftermath - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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The aftermath

This is your life 1996

Immediately after 'the hit' I handed John Rands a suitcase, provided by his wife, containing a clean red flying suit and his toilet things and then he was whisked off in a limousine to the Belton Woods Country Hotel a few miles away near Grantham. There were three hours before the recording was due to start and it was important that JR was kept incommunicado, and sober, during that time.

After making sure that everything was happening as planned in the College Hall Mess, the Producer asked me to go the Belton Woods Hotel, sit with JR and then escort him back to Cranwell to arrive just before 7pm ready to have a quick session with the make-up lady before making his ceremonial entrance. Apparently they always get a trusted friend to sit with the subject between the hit and the start of the recording, they call it baby-sitting! I was soon to learn why they had not asked me to arrange a baby-sitter.

JR and I returned to Cranwell in good time in the limousine hired by Thames TV and I asked the driver to hold short of the main entrance until the RAF Policemen on duty there gave me a pre-arranged signal that meant that the Chief of the Air Staff, flown in from London by helicopter, was inside College Hall and safely out of JR's sight.

On the right is part of the Thames Television script - reproduced here by permission of Thames TV. You may, if you wish, click on the image to pop up a full-size scan of this page.

We then continued the drive up to the magnificent door leading into the College, where we were met by the Production Assistant who whisked JR off to the make-up room - actually the AOC and Commandant's private toilet. I was about to make my way behind the scenes to check up on the arrangements for the post-recording party when Mandy, the researcher, rushed up to me.

"Tony, one of our guests hasn't turned up. He was going to be on the stage during the recording. You'll have to take his place."

"Sorry, Mandy," I said. "I made it quite clear that I did not want to be on the stage."

"Please, Tony," pleaded Mandy. "All the shots are lined up - we can't have a blank place, it would confuse the cameramen."

So I allowed myself to be led meekly onto the platform and I sat down where Mandy indicated. Just in time! Barely 30 seconds later the fanfare trumpeters of the Band of the RAF College struck up and the recording began.

It was only the following day, after I'd had time to read through the Thames' shooting script, that I realised my name had been included in the stage party right from the beginning. It was Thames' Television's way of thanking me.

For once I had been out-manoeuvred and the rest of the story is, as they say, history!

Addendum. As many of my readers will know, Mark Hanna, Ray's son and business partner, crashed in the Old Flying Machine Company's Hispano Buchon as he attended a Spanish air show on Saturday 25 September 1999. His aircraft crashed and then caught fire. Mark was taken to hospital but died the next day. An obituary is here

Ray Hanna died on 1 December 2005 at the age of 75. The Daily Telegraph obituary is here