Steve Crabtree: Painting A Nuclear Submarine
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2016
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steve Crabtree gets an unusual start to his career: watching paint dry. Steve Crabtree left school aged 15 in 1985 and started work as a painter & decorator in Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Limited in Barrow in Furness, where he painted nuclear submarines. Steve left the shipyard in 1992, went to Art College and after leaving college – and teaching music technology for a short time - started at the BBC in January 1999 as a junior researcher on ‘Tomorrow’s World’. Steve has produced and directed much of the BBC’s Science, Arts and Business programming, and made programs across all four BBC television channels. He is now the Editor of flagship BBC Science Strand ‘Horizon’ - now in its 52nd Year.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientists a... |
| 0:06.0 | It felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I was so... |
| 0:09.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | Hi, everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Storyglider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:29.6 | This week's stories from Steve Crabtree. It was recorded in March 2016 at the Hackney Round Chapel in London, |
| 0:36.0 | in collaboration with the British Science Association |
| 0:38.0 | as part of British Science Week. |
| 0:51.1 | So, on Christmas Eve, in 1986, I was sat on top of an active nuclear reactor inside a nuclear submarine holding a paintbrush. |
| 1:14.6 | And I don't know if anyone here has ever been inside a nuclear submarine |
| 1:18.6 | or inside the reactor room of a nuclear submarine. |
| 1:21.6 | But it kind of, I don't know if anyone here is a science fiction fan, |
| 1:25.6 | but it kind of looks like the inside of the TARDIS. |
| 1:29.9 | The reactor looks like the doctor's control panel. |
| 1:35.2 | It's kind of that shape and that size. |
| 1:39.1 | And I don't think I've broken any official secrets telling you that. |
| 1:43.0 | I had to sign the Official Secrets Act every year while I worked in the shipyard. |
| 1:48.3 | But basically, I'm now the editor of a program called Horizon, |
| 1:52.7 | which is a BBC 2 science strand. |
... |
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