Ron Gordon – Family Grams

You can’t say ‘little Johnny’s dead.’ Johnny might be the dog but you can’t say that, so they take stuff like that out.

They censor it.

Simon: Do they almost get training, the families get training in what they can and can’t say or …

They don’t know what gets censored, but you used to tell them, don’t put any bad news in there and don’t put any cryptic stuff in there.

Just say ‘kids doing well at school’, and that sort of stuff. It was just to know that everything’s ok.

Simon: But that was important to have that contact.

Oh yeah, and if you didn’t get that family gram, people used to get really depressed, obviously because they think something has badly gone wrong.

Simon: Right. If I’m not hearing anything, then goodness knows what’s happening.