Steeplejack deaths were a regular occurence and considered to be an occupational hazzard up to the 1980's when Heath and Safety laws started to be taken seriously. Childrens TV presenter John Noakes climbed Nelsons Column in 1977 for Blue Peter. Watching it again today is frightening but I remember watching it with delight as a child and not considering the implications of a fall. The cavalier attitude to not looking at risks and trying to mitigate them was institutionalised and everyday. I work in the rail industry and sfatey has changed beyond all recognition for the better. We no longer fulfil our disabled employee numbers by making them disabled in the course of their daily job and how anyone (who isn't retired and therefore unaffected) can have a problem with health and safety laws is beyond me!

@@timothyphillips679 Even madder than John Noakes was the camera man who was also up there with him!

@@timothyphillips679 As a kid in the 1970's London I saw a steeplejack fall from a church spire.

@@davidwallin7518John Noakes was a Blue Peter presenter in the 1960s🤔 Martin Lightening did the Fred Dibnah chimney filming

English legend he's from Lancashire England

Or in Fred's case - an up in the sky hard worker !

So many hard working skilled and courageous men go unappreciated. Without these men modern society would cease to exist. Men should be celebrated.

i'd rather have 1 Fred than 20 Cardassians or similar.

I feel ya ,too many ppl getting footballers wages and not enough down to earth been given that . !!

Fred was also a celeb and by all accounts he enjoyed been a celeb. Apparently that's part of the reason his first wife Alison left him, she couldn't take the spotlight. Lots of 'down to earth workers' are of limited charm, limited interests and don't come over well on-camera either.

Most fitting that Fred has a statue,I'm glad but it should be statues

Aye and he were a reet character anole. You should see the guy's 'pad', all self-built. He were a proper old-school mechanical engineer.

If you had a beer with Fred I bet you paid for it. Fred was famed for having deep pockets and very short arms.

@@davec1768 are you a Jack? I know a DaveC.

@@gflow7 No. I met Fred at an engineering prize giving. He was the guest presenter. Great raconteur, loved quality beer and someone who had hollow legs. A night I'll never forget.

We use to see him driving his steam engine, 0:02 I don't if he was brave or stupid doing this lol great unique person 😊

@@janolaful He would do all his own Planning and drawings:)

And the average house price back then was £19k

Closer to £90,000 in terms of value adjusted inflation.

@@paulleach3612 SIR YOU'RE HIGH PLS LOG OFF

Also worth noting back then in the late 70s, I believe this aired in 79. The pound was worth 2.16 dollars. So £7,000 was more like $15,000 back then. Obviously the pound has tanked but yeah.

IMDB lists 1982/83 and the exchange rate hovered around 1.6 at the time.

and 'e weren't even a Yorksherman

@@LordEriolTolkien we all have our crosses to bear!

Guy Martin is not a steeplejack but is in a similar mindset to fred.their brain works in fixing,maintaining,imagination,planning,dare,excitement etc

I'd say David Attenborough has the same legend status

​@@LordEriolTolkiennot everyone is perfect

At the time I expected him to have a stove pipe hat as many of his heros wore (Brunel etc)

A friend of ours received her OBE in the same ceremony as Fred. She wasn't sure which was the greater honour, getting the gong or meeting Fred. 🙂

None, the scaffold sits on the top of the chimney and drops down as the bricks are removed. He would have to adjust it a few times as the chimney is tapered and gets bigger towards the base.

There are plenty of people on our wonderful island like him😂😂😂

No,the climbing ladders is bad enough but the bosun chair!fu k that😫🤒

😂😂😂😂

You're a very brave Man,yourself,my friend.

Heck yes, for a children's programme that was something else again. Not many episodes of Blue Peter were shown in NZ - not when we had a telly at least, don't know about before - but that clip certainly made it onto the evening news.

Absolutely yes!!

that's what I thought too 🙂🙂

Yes definitely. John Noaks on BBC's Blue Peter.

​@@ABC1701A thats nothing Special. They are document arms for kids about the mountains and extreme sports

I loved him holding up traffic on his steam engine and stopping for a pint. Truly great man.

For sure! That's all I could think about while watching 😂

He dug a shaft in his back garden and erected pit head gear all without planning permission to demonstrate how they sunk the pit shafts, the local council weren't impressed! The pit head gear is now at the museum of mining at Astley which is worth a visit (my dad worked there when it was a working coal mine).

Think he was also a trained Carpenter and Joiner as well.

This actually was 1979 so the value today would be £33,000.

Funny I got a shade under£45k... did we all use Google?

@@JazHazFilmed in 1978 though

@@B1gLe0 I’ve not seen anyone calculate it correctly. We’re comparing what he earned in 78 with what that would be worth today in the US therefore you first have to convert it from £ to $ using the 1978 exchange rate (about £1 = $2) then apply US inflation between 78 and today. If Fred moved to the US with his £7000 in 78, that is how you’d calculate what that is worth to an American today.

Add 5% per year or 50% per decade to account fir inflation. Then add 10%.

Yeh I can just imagine him smoking a cigar with Brunel or Stephenson

​@@dasy2k1🤣imagine the conversation with Fred and Isambard! Fred with cloth cap and cheese butty and Brunel top hat and cigar,I imagine they would get along just fine.

@@martindunstan8043 In that case the only difference between the two men, (a difference which would probably have left both of them indifferent), can be typified in their names. One was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the other was Fred Dibnah....

I figured that buying food n coffee out costs around £8 or more a day. I make luxury sandwiches [eg; whatever is your fav!] & fresh coffee I make for around £1 a day that's £35+ a week I can do something else with.

​@@jhmasterson3087Just makes sense,do the same meself

Totally agree with you. Fred Dibnah lived in the next major town to me, in Bolton Lancashire. A true down to earth Lancastrian who loved the job he did and the history of industry that made our once great country. If he was still alive think he’d be appalled that we have now lost so much of our history.

I think they had a cherry picker to film it. I remember it being visible in another episode.

​@@JungleTunes94not for that chimney. Cameraman had to climb up there with him. You can tell by how the picture moves about.

@@JazHaz Interesting, I guess you cant see it from the ground shots either

men in boiler suits definitely, i was at a place near Bluebellway railway and this oldish chap in a dirty boiler suit came up and had a coffee with us, i thought he looked recognisable but couldnt put a name to him, it was only after he left me fellow workmates explained, thats pete waterman hes got a train up there, he quite often uses our coffee machine and has a chat

& the fact he goes back down for lunch instead of taking it up with him😓

Filmed in 78, broadcast 79

@@Millennial_Manc lol, really?

And I am from Bolton myself, how funny! Small world lol! Chorley is popular with our lot. Never realised Fred was this prominent nationally until the past two years never mind international!

I bet they didn't have apostrophes!

@@hefinhughes7263 thanks

Was wondering how the camera was up there

@@fuhqsideways He was actually on a platform hoisted up by a crane. There were supposed to be 2 of them but the other bloke bottled out. There's an interview with him which must be on KZfaq because I've watched it.

When Fred's old house was sold off I always thought it would have been great if Guy Martin had bought it

Fred's accent is pure Lancashire. Guy Martin's is pure Lincolnshire accent and totally different.

I enjoyed his programmea on Buildings. Specially Tudor ones.

Woah! Which was no easy feat back then, I'm sure, as the cameras were much much bigger/bulkier to carry.

Climbing a chimney with an overhang was an amazing one too as he's effectively leaning backwards.

You think common sense is very rare? You need to surround yourself with better people ;) There are load of idiots in the world, there always have been and always will be because that's humans for you. And usually the idiots garner the most attention so it stands out more. But the majority of people, normal people have a lot of common sense. The ones without are the outliers.

Hello from Preston.

He has done about 5 before of the big ones people normally react to

@@LilMonkeyFella87 ok I will need to look at the previous posts

Makes my palms sweaty watching Fred.

We used to live in Bolton. I was shopping one day when I noticed Fred doing his "rope and ladder" up Bolton Church steeple!! I stood for a while marvelling (and worrying).. Never will be done again with the "Elf and Safe" Laws we have now.

ELF N' 'SAFETY...

I got vertigo just watching him!

That's why the BBC cameraman is safely tucked away on a hydraulic crane platform and not on Fred's scaffold 😅

I guess that strictness in safety didn't apply to Noel Edmond's shows! 😥

The B.B.C may have "hated filming you's"but I imagine the public adored you all, especially the male population(although I imagine they could probably be really condescending as well)

@@SirHilaryManfat Nor to Blue Peter.

Can definitely see how that's the case! He seemed like an awesome guy.

top comment amongst many others

I'm not so sure "ignored" is the right term. I think health and safety was foremost in his mind. Just not the "Health and Safety" rules we have on paper now. I think he used his huge amount of experience and good common sense and had his own rules.. I would love to have seen his own personal book of health and safety. The rules he had learned over the years to keep him and others safe. And I bet his rules would have been far better than the rules written by someone in an office who has never even seen a steeplejack at work, let alone done the job.

Fred never IGNORED health and safety, he did a cool calculation, about the danger, and always, always remembered he couldn't walk on air. Which I am told by professionals and experts in the field, is what kills most people who work at heights.

@@GnrMilligan Yup it's also worth noting that at the time he was working there was only a fraction of the safety gear we take for granted now (the likes of fall arrestors iirc didn't really come into general use until around the 90s and legally required until the early 00's). He was one of the "careful" steeplejacks (some might say lucky ones), he learned early enough to survive the initial main early risk period, and then (unlike many) never forgot that. I'm always reminded of a saying that pilots apparently have "you start off with a bucket of luck that is full, and a bucket of experience, you hope to fill the latter before the former runs out" (I've probably got the wording very wrong). Unfortunately for every Dibner there was probably a dozen who either made a mistake at the wrong time, or just had bad luck/missed checking a rope at the wrong time. I've actually got one of his DVD sets waiting to be watched, as I picked it up for a couple of quid at a charity shop. Watching almost any construction/industrial site footage from before the 80's always makes you realise how little "proper" safety gear there was, and how much of safety was left down to experience, and how easily things could go wrong without that experience (tunnellers on the Underground hoping on and off moving digging equipment with inches and maybe a second to spare before "life changing injuries"), and why we now have the safety stuff formalised. On a related note, my father used to work at heights (roofs etc) on and off, and whilst he was always fairly fearless with it, he always made the point he worked out the "safe" way to do it, wouldn't work on it if it was windy or icy, and made very sure his ladders were in good nick. secured and in the right place "always better to spend 15 minutes getting them correct than an ambulance trip if you're lucky". We've still got the "wall hooks" he put in to do the end walls of our house when he painted and repaired the plasterwork in the 90's (some fairly basic looking scaffold tied to the wall, then the ladders on that), so the scaffold could not go anywhere, IIRC that sort of practice only became common/law to secure ladders and as an option for scaffold in the 00's (I think the preferred method is you stick scaffold legs out at an angle to prevent the risk of toppling, but that isn't always practical).

Didn't someone die up that chimney not so long ago?

was the 8th largest at the time

he came over to Colne and demolished the very tall chimney and Skillfully dropped it into Colne water (the local beck) avoiding some 30 dwellings the chimney was built of brick (banded ) for the council owned incinerator.....

Sadly he was a wife beater

Dibnah

Really impressive feat!

well there were health and safety rules even then, but they also knew that the chimenys he was felling had to be brought down somehow and his 2 to 3 man team was the safest way, there were several other demolition crews who tried to take down chimneys and got the wind wrong, ending up with it falling in completely the opposite direction to what it was meant to, thats what happened when you didnt go to professional steeplejacks in the 70's and 80's

And if he'd fallen to his death, people would have been saying health and safety laws should have been in place and adhered to. It's only because he was lucky enough not to die that you call those laws 'pesky'. Thankfully nowadays, we're a lot less cavalier about the loss of human life and the destruction of the families they leave behind.

lots of people take lunch into work where i am because the canteen is too expensive for the wages we get

The scaffolding _he's standing on...._

Though I loved the man to pieces, not certain I want to live next to him 😅

Sadly.😢