BBC led revolution in public access TV

Re your article on Channel 4 (Revolution in your living room, G2, 12 September), from 1973 to 2002 the BBC’s Community Programme Unit gave the marginalised, unheard and ignored the opportunity to make programmes under their own editorial control. The CPU’s Video Diaries and Video Nation strands also put the cameras in the public’s hands. Part of Channel 4’s initial remit was to broadcast unheard voices and different perspectives, but the public access revolution began at the BBC.
Tony Laryea
Editor, BBC Community Programme Unit 1985-1990

• I hope that trade union representatives of the RMT and Aslef will be invited to write a full-page opinion piece in response to Simon Jenkins’ (Fragmented railways will never work, public or private, 21 September).
Julie Boston
Co-founder of Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways

• £20m for a bicycle chain? Did Damien Hirst make it (Evans bicycle chain seeks buyer as it struggles to survive, 21 September)?
Chris Baker
Willington, Derbyshire

• Your solution (G2, 21 September) for Thursday’s Wordsearch looking for words associated with a party conference missed the answer “clots”.
Alan Cummins
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

• Trident “not fit for purpose, say MPs” (21 September)? Remind me what that was, exactly?
Alison Leonard
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

• The couple pictured basking “on the seafront in Brighton” (Sun loungers, 18 September) were in Hove actually!
Robert Hinton
Brighton

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