Well you may have watched tonight’s episode of Coronation Street and wasn’t it gripping stuff, with the RAF helicopter & Keswick Mountain Rescue Team.

Bolton MRT also had a part to play in that storyline as Dave Healey, our Radio Communications Techie, also works for ITV Granada as a broadcast engineer. Dave had been pestering his Coronation Street contacts, for a Mountain Rescue storyline for years. During his HSE First Aid at Work course he met a Production Manager from Coros and Dave was taken aback with the interest shown in Dave’s involvement with MR.

Then a phone call from a Coros researcher, led to Dave reading the scripts of the MR scenes and advising what would happen re Mountain Rescue Team members and the involvement of MRT members and how the incident could progress. There were various questions the production team had, especially with Liam’s injuries, well Dave was asked and the information he could not give, he quickly got from more medical brains.

Then the final rewritten scenes were read and all parties were happy to go forth and film the episodes. But, even during the filming Dave came to the rescue of Coronation Street, as part of his day job he was asked to rescue a tape which had Keswick MRT abseiling with the stretcher down to the injured Liam, the tape had been damaged in the camera due to the extreme weather they were having during filming.

Repair to tape made, budget saved because they didn’t have to do a re-shoot of the scenes on the damaged tape, the Technical Manager departed back to the Lake District all happy and dry.

Dave’s reward for his advice and repair work ….. a credit as MR Advisor – nope, a credit for his technical help – nope.

If you did see the episode do you remember the name of the MR member who was doing First Aid on Liam ?? Well surprise, surprise it was a gentleman called Dave, perhaps that’s his credit, a character named after him.

But knowing the real Dave, being anywhere near a cas site is unheard of !!