MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
BBC and MOD planning 25th Liberation Anniversary
A British Ministry of Defence and BBC team of top experts visited the Falkland Islands for several days to assess technical aspects of the South Atlantic conflict twenty fifth anniversary commemorations planned for June 2007.
Reasons of protocol prevented any declaration of British plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands' conflict in advance of a statement by the Minister responsible and furthermore local plans are still lacking detail.
This was the overt message given to local Falklands' media representatives, who on Tuesday night met with a group, which spent the last week in the Islands assessing the technical aspects of the coordination of such celebrations.
However, when the group includes such personalities as David Pickthall, Executive Producer of Events for the BBC and Wing Commander Chris Pickthall (no relation to the former) who is in charge of the British ministry of Defence's Ceremonial Events and Commemorations team, you can be sure that something big is in the wind.
David Pickthall's credits include responsibility for such diverse live broadcasts as the funeral of HM The Queen Mother, the recent D Day Landings Commemorations and the Live Aid concerts, while Chris Pickthall's team is responsible for organising every major British military ceremony, event or commemoration. As far as this kind of activity goes, they represent the UK's top team.
While Wing Commander Pickthall would not be drawn on the detail of what is planned, he gave the assurance that what was planned both in the Falklands and in London, would be both "appropriate" and "exciting", if it could be achieved.
The purpose of the visit of the group which also included BBC engineer Jeremy Turner and Ministry of Defence public relations officer, Melissa Maynard, was, he said, primarily to investigate what were the technical possibilities of bringing off what was envisaged.
This week's visit, said David Pickthall of the BBC, was simply "the first building brick" to see what was technically feasible. They were here to see what events were planned and what could be covered live from the Falklands, something which hadn't been done before.
Asked whether he could be said to be optimistic, David Pickthall simply replied that he "was going away considerably happier."
The visiting team and the chairman of the local 2007 Committee, Lewis Clifton, said that further details of what is expected to be a whole week of commemorative activities, both in the Falklands and UK, should be available by June of this year.
Pictured from Left: Jeremy Turner (BBC) David Pickthall (BBC) Lewis Clifton, Melissa Maynard (Defence PR) and Wing.Co. Chris Pickthall
John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
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