The BBC and ME: A LOVE-HATE THING Part IV

Wherein I conclude this account of my sentimental education in one of the most institutional of British institutions. We last glimpsed our protagonist leaving BBC employ for the final time. I cannot now recall with certainty but I guess I must still have been on contract when my production of Farrukh Dhondy’s four-parter, King of the Ghetto, went out. At any rate, I do remember being interviewed for Radio Times in my office at Threshold House on Shepherd’s Bush Green. It was, I feel sure, part of the reason why Jonathan Powell, the Head of Drama, pretended that the production schedule was a lot more comfortable than it turned out to be that he required the tapes for transmission almost as soon as editing was completed.

As I was on hand, I couldn’t resist popping down to the viewing room to see my old previewer chums on the Friday that Part 1 was screened for them. Most of the faces were familiar to me, not least that courtly old gent Herbie Kretzmer, long the previewer for the Daily Express, whose lyrics for Les Misérables had not quite yet made him a millionaire. There was a new kid on the block, though, the previewer for The Sunday Times, who spent the entire duration of the episode on the telephone. Perhaps understandably, he has never been my favourite journalist. His name was Mark Lawson.


Herbie Kretzmer: do you hear the people sing his lyrics?

King caused a certain amount of flurry, not least because Farrukh had been writing loosely fictionalized versions of real people. I knew nothing of the background to his fiction and – call me irresponsible if you like, but – I was happy not to know. After all, the BBC had committed to production long before it was in any sense my responsibility. My first duty was to get the thing done in time for the booked slots.

In several ways, I was on a hiding to nothing. For instance, we were going to need a number of extras for several scenes shot around Brick Lane. I tried the usual gambit of placing an announcement in the trade magazine, The Stage. The mag’s advertising manager sharply informed me that we could not seek to recruit Bengalis, however. This evidently was a breach of provisions under the Race Relations Act. All we could ask for were people who could play Bengali. Consequently, on the day, the extras that reported covered the waterfront: Indo-Pakistanis, Arabs, Orientals, Afro-Caribbeans, Turks, Greeks and Cypriots, Jews and Muslims, Latinos, indeed anyone who didn’t look obviously WASPy or Nordic. Hence our crowd scenes did not bear much scrutiny.

Another problem was that Farrukh had written some dialogue to be exchanged between Bengali characters but did not himself speak Bengali. I contacted the Bengali department of the BBC World Service and someone there expressed himself delighted to supply the translations, which he duly did. Come the shoot, however, our actors who were to say the lines decried the translations, saying that they sounded more like the Bengali equivalent of Shakespeare than the appropriate demotic. This put me and the director Roy Battersby in a quandary. None of the actors was actually Bengali so how reliable could they be? On the other hand, there was no time to mess about. We had to trust the actors not to create a further problem.


Mark Lawson: he was never young, even when he was young

Before the run of the serial was finished, a formal complaint had been lodged with the BBC by people reckoning to represent the Bengali community around Brick Lane and a small if noisy demonstration was mounted at the gates of Television Centre. Roy happened to be at the Centre that day – I suspect we were still editing episode 4 – and he quizzed the protesters closely.

Farrukh, Roy and I were summoned to a meeting with some Bengali representatives in the office of the then Controller of BBC2, who was none other than Graeme McDonald, the producer of the one-off drama Circle Line that launched my BBC career. Graeme was obliged to play it lofty and impartial. The Bengalis – clearly articulate young men with a particular axe to grind and no conceivable right to speak for “the whole” Bengali community – were angry and dismissive. The three of us decided not to get into too much detailed debate or to reveal the difficulties under which we had been labouring or to concede much of anything. I remember one young chap declaring “you have raped my language and culture” and I decided he would be a local councillor before too long. I imagine some formal record of the meeting was kept by the BBC but, as far as any practical consideration went, that was the end of the matter.


Bengalis marching in Brick Lane (though not, on this occasion, against the BBC)

Whether that – relatively modest – outburst of controversy had any bearing on my own standing at the BBC, I cannot tell. The press didn’t pick it up, mercifully. On balance, it seemed to me that I had done exactly what was required and got Jonathan out of an awkward scheduling hole. But I was never rewarded for it.

I had spent quite a lot of the mid-1980s looking for work. After King, I was again unemployed. I recall feeling that, as I turned 40, I was good and ready for a major post in television. Yet I couldn’t even get an interview as an assistant sub-editor on Radio Times, a publication for which I had written quite often as a freelance. Meanwhile, my contemporaries were taking over the top television jobs. Soon after my departure from the BBC, Jonathan Powell was appointed Controller BBC1 and, simultaneously, Alan Yentob became Controller BBC2. As another contemporary pointed out, they were both 40 and neither had a family. Well, nor did I.


Alan Yentob, also old when young

Over the years, I have applied for a large number of posts, many of them at the BBC. I usually managed at least to get an interview because my cv, if I may say so, is pretty interesting. I may not be a particularly dynamic interviewee. The only two times that I actually enquired what in particular had counted against me, I was told that the person who had won the post was “hungrier”. I couldn’t but feel that this was not much help. In both cases, the appointed person was quite a bit younger than me. I suspect that “hungry” in someone older can easily come over as “desperate”.

One BBC post I applied for required applicants to furnish a list of “contacts” in the industry. As a long-time journalist, I could make a list running into hundreds but I confined my submission to a few dozen, beginning with the then BBC Director-General (John Birt) whom I had known as far back as when he was a humble programme-maker, let alone an executive.

But it occurred to me that I needed to append a covering note to my submission. The BBC form required one to enter one’s full name, in my case William Stephen Gilbert. If someone checking out my contacts claim were to refer to me as William Gilbert, she would draw a total blank. Stephen Gilbert would trawl many more confirmations and W Stephen Gilbert one-hundred-percent success. But I might be unfortunate enough to find myself being checked out by the one person in the exercise to whom no version of the name meant a thing.

As it transpired, I never heard any more about that post, so I have no notion whether my application was dismissed as fanciful. Another attempt at securing work was even more disastrous. Someone had decided to create a new post, that of executive producer on the BBC2 magazine The Late Show. The programme already had an editor so it was difficult to see why it had any need for an additional manager.

I rang the information number given on the advertisement for the post, only to be told that the person who had the information was on leave and no one else there could help me. This seemed somewhat amateurish. I decided that I would be sure to press the query when I was interviewed and sent off my application. I was given an appointment for an interview at Kensington House, in those days the home of BBC arts programmes’ offices, to be conducted by the then Head of Arts Programming, Kim Evans (whom I had never met), and Mike Poole, The Late Show editor, whose path I had crossed several times, never especially to my own advantage.


Mike Poole, not always as genial as he photographs

My appointment was for 3:15 and I arrived by 3:00 and walked round the block a couple of times (one should never appear too keen) before presenting myself at reception comfortably before 3:10. A young woman came to collect me, explaining as she took me up to the interview room that unfortunately Kim and Mike would have to go to the studio shortly so it would necessarily be a rather brief encounter. I felt pretty miffed but what choice did I have?

The beginning was taken up with explanations about their need to finish by half-past and their none-too clear account of why an executive producer was suddenly required for the programme. I was asked one or two desultory questions and then dismissed, feeling sure that an appointment had been agreed before I had even entered the room. As the assistant accompanied me back to reception, she remarked that it was a pity that I had arrived “so late”.

What did she mean? Well, she said, my interview was supposed to be at 2:45. I had the letter in my pocket so I fished it out and showed her: 3:15, perfectly clearly. Suitably embarrassed, she rushed back to the interview room while I reflected that of course Evans and Poole would have spent an unlooked-for empty half-hour deciding which of the applicants deserved the post, discounting the last one who was “so late” and who anyway Poole doubtless didn’t much rate.

The assistant returned, all apologies. I could have castigated her for the corporate failure to have an explanation of the post available as promised and for screwing up the particulars of my own interview but what would be the point? I went home and tried to call Mike Poole – we didn’t have mobile phones in those days – but of course he was unavailable in the studio. I got a letter off to him, which should have reached him first thing next day – we didn’t have email either but we did have relatively early postal deliveries. But I knew that it was futile and, sure enough, he didn’t bother to reply. Nor did I receive notice that I hadn’t got the job. I never troubled to check out who did get it.

Screw-ups like this and other posts that I applied for without any response made me wonder if I was on some BBC blacklist. Perhaps my file was decorated with one of those infamous Christmas-tree symbols that every BBC watcher had heard tell of. I wrote to the appropriate executive asking whether this was the case and I received a long and discursive letter back, full of pain that I should think such a thing and assurance that no such let or hindrance applied to my prospects at the BBC. Nevertheless, as I have indicated, I have never again worked for the corporation.

I had intended to go on to some more general reflections about the state of the BBC but it feels as though I have maundered on long enough for this posting. In due course, I shall work up a more considered conclusion. Be patient.