An embarrassing pain in the proverbial region

Submitted By: Steve Cook

Back in 1973, I worked for a local TV shop as a junior engineer, working closely with the service manager who happened to be a close family friend called Ken. We had a particular customer who was something of a perfectionist. He was a retired colonel, who hereinafter I will refer to as “the colonel”. He had obtained a plastic transparency of test card F, precisely as it should appear on his TV and every day, he would place the transparency over his TV screen and if he observed any errors with the picture geometry or the convergence, he would demand a service call.

On the day in question, the colonel’s TV had necessarily been brought into the workshop, which was up two flights of stairs. The set was so heavy that it took four men to carry it. Ken had been working on the set, when he and I were summoned to an urgent service call to a rental customer and left the colonel’s set on the workshop floor with its back removed.

Whilst we were out, John, the firm’s book keeper was left holding the fort. He had to go into the workshop in order to find something in a filing cabinet. When Ken and I returned, John rather sheepishly described the following scenario. He stated. “I bent over the filing cabinet and I caught my arse on something inside that telly with its back off and it went psht ! I hope I haven’t done any damage, Ken”. Of course, what he had done was to sit on the tube neck causing it to break off. The boss was not at all amused to find himself having to fork out for a new tube, not to mention the time required to set it up in compliance with the colonel’s exacting standards of performance.