Ed Booth, Series Producer of Channel 4 TV’s Salvage Squad explains how a pet restoration project becomes primetime television and why the next series will be different from the last two. Photographs by Claire Barratt.

“Sorry but we’re going to have to move the final days filming for the Scammell Scarab by two weeks, the bodybuilders are behind”...
“There’s been a problem with the windows with the German Mini Submarine – the contractors turned up with the wrong identification and weren’t allowed on to the naval base”...

Presenter Suggs tests the weight of his ego on the restored
Grafton steam crane.

“The Amphi car needs to get its seat belts fitted tomorrow but Gary the Stitch’s trailer isn’t available so we’ll have to hire one in. It’s going to cost, can we afford it?”...
The above is a pretty accurate log of the last ten minutes of ‘problems’ on Salvage Squad. As I write we are exactly half way through filming the third series. We’ve finished one programme, the restoration of a 1955 Massey Harris 780 combine harvester which was wonderfully restored by ‘Rocket’ Ron Knight of Stamford. And there are another eight re-builds in various stages of completion. At this moment, director Lionel Mill and the team are heading up the M1 to work with Ian Howard and Jack Meeker of Alton Engineering, who are beginning to re-assemble the motion on a 5 tonne Grafton steam crane. They’ll be there for two days before heading down to Andy Melrose of Mendip Steam, who’s busy pressing the boiler barrels of a 1931 Super Sentinel DG4 Steam Waggon owned by Edward and Andrew Goddard. Behind me in an edit suite another director Frances Backer and editor Charlie McDonald are busy editing a programme about a Scammell Scarab, and worrying about the fact that it’s now running two weeks behind schedule.

‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!’ Claire talks ‘steam crane’
in the jungle at Blists Hill.

Meanwhile our final director, Matt Bennett, is up in Leicester looking at a Aktiv Snow Trac that we might restore as our final project of the series. Until a week ago, this would have been a wonderful Wall of Death with its two beautiful Indian 101 Scout motorcycles – but when we worked out the build costs the project blew our budget.

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