2016 Edinburgh Fringe

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The story of civilian broadcasters providing radio and TV services to the British Forces in conflict zones.

A humorous account of the remarkable and unusual challenges facing the British Forces Broadcasting Service who provide our military with radio and television services while they are deployed to conflict zones. These services are absolutely vital to the morale of the British Forces while they are serving abroad; this is why BFBS routinely sends civilian broadcasters into war zones. BFBS broadcasters have a story to tell. Extreme Broadcasting is their story.

If you send civilian broadcasters into war zones the unexpected will happen, sometimes with hilarious consequences. This show lifts the lid on how BFBS Radio drove the Iraqi army out of Basra, why civilian body armour is blue and why US jets bombed our satellite dish.

David Ramsay became a broadcast engineer after completing his engineering degree at Napier Polytechnic in 1989. Since then he has been installing broadcast equipment across the globe and has spent some considerable time supporting BFBS broadcast infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a story he is passionate about, and a story he feels deserves to be told.

"If you have not experienced the austere, uncomfortable and dangerous environment of Afghanistan or Iraq, it can be difficult to understand quite how important radio and TV services from back home are," Ramsay said. "The chance to lose yourself in a sporting event or film, and for a period of time be mentally elsewhere should not be underestimated."

With regard to how BFBS broadcasters deal with the very real danger of working in conflict zones Ramsay said "You just have to trust the people you are with, and the safety procedures that are in place, and the British Military excel at this, we've never had anybody injured and we've been doing this an awful long time. And when things are going bang and whizzing about, it's best not to take it too personally."

Edited by Dan Sweryt, David Salisbury and Alison Pritchard of Kirrin Productions, the production company behind such shows as the New York Radio Award-winning Damn the Torpedoes for the British Forces Broadcasting Service, and the multi award nominated Live from Kirrin Island podcast.