This obituary appeared in The Guardian:

Joan Marsden

The BBC floor manager known to all as 'mother'

Philip Purser
Friday March 12, 2004
The Guardian

Joan Marsden, who has died aged 84, was one of the legendary figures of BBC Television. In the hectic years of expansion and improvisation from the 1950s until the late 1970s, she was the floor manager at Lime Grove studios for what was initially called "Talks" - encompassing documentary programmes, current affairs and, above all, the weekly news magazine Panorama.

Much of the output was still live. Earphones clamped to her head, the floor manager was responsible for ensuring that every participant in a programme was in the right place at the right time, ready to be cued as the camera came nosing in. On one occasion, Panorama lost an incoming relay at the last moment and the editor called for the next item on the schedule to be brought forward. This happened to be an interview with the then education minister, the somewhat portly Edward Boyle. Marsden literally threw him across the studio, she claimed, and in due course received a grateful letter from his press officer.

Not that she was a dragon. On the contrary, she was petite , with a keen sense of humour. She achieved her results by reassuring her clientele as they entered the rather daunting voids of Lime Grove - previously a movie studio - and letting them see that there was order and logic to what was going on. She was known even to prime ministers as "mother", or to just a few as "mum".

General Sir Brian Horrocks, who acquired a second fame as a writer and presenter of TV programmes about soldiers, never trusted autocue devices and had his scripts typed out in giant letters, the better to memorise them. Marsden noticed that the top page always bore his crest as a House of Lords official, Black Rod, and immediately beneath that was the injunction, "Await cue from Mum".

An only child of Liverpool parents, she was brought up in Devon when the family moved there. After wartime service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force she worked as a west end theatre stage manager before joining the BBC.

It was not all politics, as she revealed in Denis Norden's Coming To You Live! (1985). Her very first show was an edition of International Music Hall. The producer sent her in a chauffeur-driven car to London Airport to collect a troupe of 10 acrobats. When they arrived at the theatre she found she had only got 9, and the missing man was the one who supported all the others on his shoulders. In the nick of time he was located at his country's embassy. For a Guy Fawkes night edition of the children's programme Blue Peter, the producer rashly wanted a firework display in the studio. Over the talkback he told Marsden to cue the Catherine wheel. It began to spin round, emitting showers of sparks and she was baffled to hear him snap, "Right, Joan, cue Catherine wheel to stop."

Only once did she have to exert authority. During the Apollo moon landings, Patrick Moore was in the studio to rehearse arrangements for the next live relay. Princess Anne, being shown round the premises, spotted him and said, "Tell me all about the moon, Mr Moore." He was still chuntering on as the time for the relay approached. Up in the control gallery, the producer was tearing his hair. "Get her out," he cried. Marsden went up to the Royal party and said: "I'm afraid we do actually have to rehearse." Stunned silence, but a rueful grin from HRH.

On retirement in 1979, Marsden kept in touch with her large circle of friends - she never married and had few relations but "a great gift for friendship", according to Margaret Douglas, a sometime Panorama producer and supervisor of parliamentary broadcasting. From her Shepherd's Bush flat, Marsden kept an eye on her beloved Lime Grove and was mortified when the studios were eventually demolished.

The recipient of an MBE, she maintained an interest in broadcasting and became a fan of Radio 5 Live, which she held to be the network closest in character to the BBC she had served so well.

· Joan Marsden, stage and television studio manager, born May 20 1919; died March 3 2004

Joan was Mum.

I joined the BBC on a Monday in October, 1961 and was sent to trail Panorama in Lime Grove - Joan was the FM and, from that day, she took me under her wing.   I had no choice - Joan wasn't like other other women of those days.   She had opinions, she was agressive.   She was rude, she was crude - many of her jokes made me, at the tender age of 21, blush!   But she knew what she wanted me to do  - move on.   As far as she was concerned the BBC was the very best place in the world to work and to make television programmes.

I know that Grace Whyndam Goldie and Huw Wheldon and Alisdair Milne were all probably more important in the overall development of British television than was Joan, but without her dedication, most of their programmes would never have got on the air.

When, with her encouragement, I nervously tried to direct my first programme, Joan was on the floor to make sure all my blemishes were swept under the carpet - thank you Joan.

Joan, Mum, was, to her protogees, and there were many of us, a genuine mother.   She encouraged us, she bullied us, she cajooled us, and, above all, she loved us.

I can say only that we loved her just as much.

Thank you Mum.

Joan once told me that having chastised Richard Dimbleby about some misdemeanour he told her that it was an empty threat, 'just like your blouse' - she was very flat chested!!! What a lovely lady she was, ruling Shepherds Bush from 'The Grampians'. Like many others, she was going to write a book about her time in the Beeb, i don't know if she did but it would have been a best seller!