HMS Belfast

Um, for me, like, I think the number...

And, and I remember you mentioning this on our, on our last get-together at the Misty Moon event, that the biggest character in The Sweeney, although it has some great actors, great supporting cast, superb writers, the best character in the Sweene- se- in the series is London Like seeing London of the '70s that I, I mean, my first visit to London was in, I think, the early '80s, and I remember going to HMS Belfast and all of that stuff.

But, you know, to see London of the '70s, and then to go on John's tours and go and see them as they are today, it's, it's such a contrast.

So it, it... was London for me, the dialogue, the realism, and John Thaw even said himself in, in an interview that he felt, um, some of the magic of The Sweeney was that you had these guys who worked really hard, played hard because every day they were going to work, they were potentially facing death or serious injury, so you needed that gallows humor almost among the squad.

Marvelous.

Now, I think that Ouvry's mine was aboard HMS Belfast for a long time, and I was down there, um, in the summer, and I combed HMS Belfast from top to bottom looking for this damn mine, and I never found it yet.

So whether it's been moved or what, I don't know.

But yeah.

It used to be-

Well, it's interesting you should talk about HMS Belfast, because I was there a week last Tuesday giving a talk for my book in the wardroom.

One of the people who was there, wonderfully, was the son of John Ouvry, David Ouvry.

Fantastic.

I just couldn't get it, Alan.

And I, second day and we're on the HMS Belfast doing this scene.

I'm trying to get the dialogue out, and it just, things are flying in my face.

I went, "Oh, fuck this.

I'm out."

Yeah.

So I've gone out, and I'm sitting on the deck of the, uh, HMS Belfast, and John, bless him, comes out.

We're both looking out into space.

doing a talk about it in two days, three days' time for a private club.

And one of the ships that involved is HMS Belfast, which is on the Thames.

Yeah.

And another ship that's linked to my hometown, HMS Bridlington, which was a minesweeper.

And so she's not that big.

She's about the fifth the size of HMS Belfast, fifth, between a fifth and sixth of HMS Belfast, which is on the Thames, and quite a lot of people will hopefully have seen.

She has a top speed of 36 knots.

She has a range of 5,500 nautical miles at 15 knots, and, uh, what's really interesting about that is you have to remember, that's a very good range for a destroyer at the time.

but I just found it hard to believe that you can run from one I think I'm trying to remember where she was where she got the phone call she was in I think I'm guessing it's Hampstead Heath which I'm not yeah which I'm not sure how far away that is from where the other side of London where she had to get to um

Well, she ends up near HMS Belfast, which is by London Bridge, so it really does, yeah.

Yeah, so, I mean, just quickly, this is a streaming-only release, isn't

it? Yeah, streaming, direct-to-streaming, and I think it's one of these ones that was produced by Amazon as well, which you can tell, really, from the story and the amount of Amazon fans that's seen whenever she's running.

And, uh, yeah, I have done FT8.

Uh, I did it on the HMS Belfast one afternoon, but long time ago, but, uh, have done it.

Right, move to our next news story, uh, finding power in broadcast partnership with, uh, amateurs.

Well, this is kind of a, a lead on from Hurricane, uh, Helena that went through the States a couple of years ago and, uh, the station stayed on.

You still see it.

We've got a nice view here, uh, Jonty, of, um, HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge, so-

Lovely

... it's very good.