The Collectors was a BBC1 series which ran for 10 episodes on Saturday evenings from March to May 1986. Unlike, The Revenue Men, it focussed on the uniformed HM Customs and Excise staff based at the Custom House in a small port called Welling (filmed at Poole). Peter McEnery starred as Harry Caines, the new Surveyor at Welling District, drafted in from Heathrow Airport to sharpen up performance. “Chumminess is a thing of the past,” he warns his staff. Created by Welsh writer, Ewart Alexander (Kings Royal, Juliet Bravo) the series featured a cross-section of characters. Michael Billington (UFO, The Onedin Line) played Tom Gibbons, a Higher Executive Officer, resentful at being passed over for the Surveyor’s job and placating a rich and spoilt young wife (Karen Drury, later of Brookside). Jack McKenzie played bearded HEO Calvin Simpson, never happier than when aboard his Customs launch, The Seal. Lois Butlin (Grange Hill) was Alyson Bentley , horse riding, fast-driving Executive Of...

 The first time I ventured into line management for HM Customs and Excise (as was), my outgoing manager made me a gift of a 1973 civil service textbook on staff reporting. As I’d always been the schoolboy, creeping like snail to appraisals, he obviously thought I needed the help. Even though HMCE (and later HMRC) had training materials, I don’t think any of it rivalled the clarity and unsentimentality of the 1973 booklet. Published by the Personnel Management (Training) Division of the Civil Service Department, it was an attempt to standardise Staff Reporting throughout the Civil Service. 750 draft copies were tested at all grades and departments before the programmed textbook was issued. While self-instruction was a new concept viewed with suspicion in comparison to formal learning, given time and staff hours the booklet judged the best way to roll the system out to over 150,000 reporting officers. The booklet sets out the general principles that staff reporting allows the organis...