Alumni Spotlight - Donald McLean
- domkullander
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
When Donald McLean first stepped into the GUST studio in 1973, he was following a fascination.
"I’d already started building my own TV camera from scratch. As it turned out, the professional studio cameras at GUST used the same EMI camera tube I had – so I knew how not to ruin them, and how much it would cost if I did.
That background in broadcast technology, and his unflappable demeanour, made Donald an essential part of the pioneering GUST team of 1973/74. Indeed, he was the first student ever let loose on the gallery racks by the university. It was a time when student-run television stations were finding their feet across the country, a time of flares, long hair, and the birth of NaSTA.
Donald kindly sat down with STAN to tell his story, and leave his message for the student television creators of today...
Joining GUST
Donald missed GUST at Freshers’ Week, but after recommendations from friends he arrived at the studio for a recording session. He stood quietly at the back of the gallery, observing and working out how to help.
GUST for me was not ‘pivotal’ in determining my career as it seemed to be a few from my GUST friends who went into broadcasting. Irene Mallis (Editor 1973/74) joined the BBC and worked at Radio Devon. Alison Stevenson became the BBC’s first female videotape engineer in 1974. Gillean MacDougall our best interviewer by far in 1974/75, joined BBC Scotland in continuity.
My earlier experience in recording live music meant that I got used to keeping copies of all the audio recordings I made for GUST. I kept the copies I made of the audio from interviews and music bands and, in 2024, handed over the original reel-to-reel tapes along with restored versions to the GU Archives. The most significant acquisition for the Archives was a recording I made of a 1974 interview with Billy Connolly prior to one of his earliest performances in a Glasgow theatre. At the time, Billy was famous in Glasgow, but we had no idea that Glasgow accent would become an international success story.
Memorable Productions
One surviving highlight from Donald’s very first night is Greg Philo’s sketch The Principal’s Address to Freshers, considered the earliest existing GUST video.
Decades later, when Greg was a professor and headed up the Media Group at Glasgow University, he told me it had been adapted from a sketch he had written for a satirical show called ‘Examination in Progress’. That had been crafted by both Greg and Richard Crane at Bradford University and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. I recall that the GUST team in 1973 had difficulty recording it as the production folk in the gallery were laughing so much.
Not all productions went smoothly.
Later that same year, we had a disastrous experience, fortunately not of any GUST person’s making. There was a music festival taking place in one of our Union buildings. The ‘Editor’ (as the GUST Controller was called in the 1970s) had arranged with the Television Service for the University’s precious OB unit to capture the event. The event was gate-crashed by some troublemakers who proceeded to ruin the festival. I could see from the monitors in the OB van the unfolding chaos. The engineering staff, who had painstakingly set up the equipment for us, dashed out to save the microphones and equipment from any damage. The recording was unusable. We never asked to use that OB unit again. We knew what the answer would be!
Entertaining & Informing
GUST was mandated to produce a weekly 30–40 minute magazine show, recorded in three hours and transmitted on Friday lunchtimes via the university’s cable network.
With the studio facilities we had in the 1970s, there was no possibility for post-production work - not even basic audio effects for music performances such as reverb. The studio had been outfitted for educational use by EMI and first went operational in 1968.
The technology created its own challenges. The tele-prompt was a small TV monitor attached to the side of one of the cameras, and it was connected to a simple TV camera that pointed down at a roll of paper. The script had to be typed by hand and manually wound on. Captions were Letraset characters manually transferred onto black card. Those cards were placed on a caption stand and tied up one of the studio cameras to get the caption superimposed on the video feed. GUST programmes were assembled one segment after another on a rather basic videotape recorder (1-inch IVC800 series) capable of near broadcast-standard quality.
Programmes were assembled segment-by-segment on a basic videotape recorder. Opening sequences featured vintage theme music—from Hendrix to Jethro Tull—and led into campus news, reviews, interviews, or pre-recorded music sessions.
Studio interviews were made more interesting with unusual topics. We covered the University’s mountaineering club, complete with ropes and pitons in a ‘first ascent’ of University Avenue, as if it were a sheer cliff. One chap ‘fell off’ the ‘climb’ and rolled all the way down the gentle hill – sorry, ‘sheer drop’ – ending up safely in the bar in the Union – sorry, ‘base camp’ - at the foot of University Avenue.
NaSTA and Beyond
I only ever met with the Student TV folks in Aberdeen in 1974/75 – likely in my NaSTA role. We were jealous of their full-colour studio kitted out with EMI2001 broadcast colour cameras.
On awards, one of my audio creations with stills was chosen by the team and submitted for the NaSTA awards in 1974/75. The audio was all manually spliced reel-to-reel tape and basic multi-tracking that took hours to put together. The whole exercise would be trivial to do in software today. That submitted piece was absolutely panned by, I think, the Sunday Times critic.
After university, Donald joined EMI Central Research Labs, working in medical imaging and early computer image processing. It turned out that building his own television camera amongst other feats was enough to attract an unconditional offer.
In the 1980s, he independently discovered and recovered the world’s earliest television recordings, based on John Logie Baird’s 30-line system. This work led to BBC recognition, an award-winning book, academic publications, and eventually a PhD. As a result of his historical work, Donald was appointed Chair of the RTS History & Archives group. Today, he is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
Old Friends
After finals, we spread out across the country chasing our new careers. We each developed our own lives, found partners, maybe started families and sought to improve ourselves and our lot in life.
For a few of us ex-GUST folk, the strangest thing occurs when we get together. The old camaraderie kicks in and it’s as if all the different experiences we’ve since had over the decades just drop away. The close-knit community that was GUST in our years meant that we got to know each other’s characters, habits and what made us have a great time.
Getting together has been more frequent as we each find more time on our hands. Each time I return to Glasgow for my occasional work at the University, I put out a call and am always amazed by the positive response.
Part of getting-together is that I like to include current-GUST. They are a breath of fresh air, and their genuine warmth and friendship to us surprises me every time we meet. Even though we may be the same age as their grandparents, we shared something special by being GUST across the years.
Advice for Students
First and foremost – join your student television service in your first year and reduce your involvement in your final year, even though student television is likely to be a far more attractive proposition than studying!
If you prefer to stay doing a job behind the camera, always take the opportunity of being in front of it. Believe me, that might become useful experience in later life!
It sounds obvious (to me anyway) but networking can provide mutual support when you most need it.
Some challenges seem like impossible mountains to climb. Persistence – taking the ‘climb’ one step at a time – can eventually get you where you want to be. But, like any serious mountain climb, teamwork makes those challenges in life easier. And I can think of no better teamwork at university than making programmes for student television!
Student television provides a hugely rich mix of experiences and opportunities for developing skills that can be immensely valuable for career development – not just in media and broadcasting. The greatest value I think within student TV is by engaging together as a team: working out problems and achieving something tangible by exploiting the individual strengths within the team. The process of creation of something for the public to enjoy, whether information or entertainment, is a fantastic stimulus for innovation."
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