Mariners Away appeared live on BBC Spotlight on Monday, 9th October to promote our fund-raising concert in aid of Royal Devon & Exeter hospital charities and were privileged to ‘sing the programme out’ with a shortened version of one of our performance numbers, Randy Dandy.
The fund-raising concert organised by Mariners Away was held at Exeter’s Corn Exchange on Friday, 20th October and was a phenomenal success attracting an audience of around 250 to the prestigious city centre venue.
Entitled ‘The Cream of Devon’, the concert was a collaboration of local talent which included Mariners Away themselves, the legendary award-winning folk singer Jim Causley, the unique sounds of Plymouth-based ‘prog-folk trio Windjammer and one of the world’s most accomplished harpists in Elizabeth-Jane Baldry. The concert was compered by Devon’s very own funny man, Jonno and excerpts can be viewed on our dedicated YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFh1i3zRSI0fnONroIfWJfEou-DVTAy4T
The live appearance on the south-west’s premier tv magazine programme was the pinnacle of Mariner’s publicity efforts which saw a concentrated social media and traditional press campaign which was followed up a few days later with another live appearance when two of Mariner’s event organisers Trevor Munkenbeck and Eric Partridge were interviewed by former BBC Spotlight presenter Justin Leigh on BBC Radio Devon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq6FafL_hso&list=PLFh1i3zRSI0fnONroIfWJfEou-DVTAy4T&index=8
As you can appreciate from the ‘behind the scenes’ images below it was a fascinating insight for the nine-strong Mariner’s crew at the BBC studios in Plymouth from where Spotlight, the half hour-long local news programme, is broadcast live each weekday evening.
Nothing was left to chance as the Spotlight producers insisted we rehearse the closing sequence several times to ensure that the length of our ‘sample shanty’, Randy Dandy, was completely in sync with the ‘handover’ back to the national BBC network on the dot at 19.00. The revised wording to the truncated shanty were transcribed in order for the producer to accurately plan the length of the feature itself which saw Trevor and Eric interviewed by Spotlight presenter Natalie Cornah during the spot.
After nine attempts and the producer’s initial concern that the actual wording of our choruses conflicted with his transcript, which was eventually resolved, we were about as ready as we would ever be to ‘go live’ despite the ending looking like it would overrun the network handover on each of the nine ‘dummy runs’!
Timing was obviously key and it was more by luck than judgement that we finally managed to ‘get it right on the night’ for the tenth and actual LIVE performance as the final strains of Randy Dandy saw the programme out with just TWO seconds to spare and a great sigh of relief all round!
You can view our BBC Spotlight ‘debut’ by visiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uwotTFmsyo&list=PLFh1i3zRSI0fnONroIfWJfEou-DVTAy4T&index=7