BBC Old-News

Enough is enough. If I see one more headline about MPs using my money to clear moats or buy duck islands or dog food I think I’ll scream.

Sure, I’ve been as hooked on this comedy as anyone. I must have played Anthony Steen’s hilariously inappropriate “my very, very large house looks like Balmoral” interview a dozen times; it beats any stand-up routine. And I’m thrilled that supercilious twits like him have been forced out. But I really think we’ve exhausted this drama now. Everyone knows that the system is screwed; we all agree that there needs to be an election to clear these jokers out and start again; we also agree that the election mustn’t be too soon, otherwise we’ll have a hung parliament stacked with BNP fascists and Esther Rantzen. Or Susan Boyle might end up prime minister.

But we knew all this a week ago. So why is the BBC still following the Telegraph’s agenda, rather than creating its own? I’ve not seen a proper piece of investigative journalism about the expenses story. Like, what exactly is the House of Commons Fees Office? Who are these people who encouraged our hapless representatives to claim for curtains and champagne flutes? Let’s name the real culprits. Or let’s have a proper debate about how parliamentary democracy should be restructured once all this nonsense is over.

Am I the only one concerned about the BBC’s editorial priorities? We’ve grown used to their laziness with local news: how often does ‘Look North’ lead with stories broken by that morning’s The Journal? But we expect better skills from the huge team at TV Centre. Yesterday morning, for example, BBC bulletins led on a News of the World “exclusive” about a bribed chauffeur who showed reporters around the royal garage. I agree it’s a story worth covering, but don’t aren’t there more pressing things going on in the world to lead your bulletin?

Like in Pakistan, for instance. Right now, nearly 2 million human beings are desperately trying to find shelter in 45°C heat. They’ve have been displaced by the Pakistani army’s belated battle with the Taliban in Swat province, a humanitarian catastrophe of momentous proportions that’s been unfolding over the last three weeks – precisely the period where we’ve been preoccupied with revelations about MPs’ expenses. Yet there’s been scant coverage either in BBC News bulletins or on the Today programme.

The cosmopolitanism of BBC News was what used to make it so special. Now I fear it’s veering towards the American model. Tune into any American television news bulletin and I guarantee you will be given only local stories (or, occasionally, one about an American who’s been killed overseas). The country with the greatest influence outside its own borders has the most parochial journalism. I suspect it’s one of the reasons why some Americans sound so utterly self-obsessed when they’re abroad: the world outside their 50 states is, quite simply, foreign.

Why do I believe the situation in Pakistan is marginally more important than lax security at Buckingham Palace? Precisely 18 months ago in this blog I listed the ten biggest hypothetical threats facing the West. Top of the list was: "In Pakistan President Musharraf is replaced by a weak civilian government unable to contain the Taliban. That regime is quickly overthrown by religious extremists who immediately turn round the nuclear missiles currently pointing at Delhi and Mumbai and aim them straight at Tel Aviv."

That apocalyptic scenario is getting closer by the day. There’s no evidence that the Pakistani army is actually winning their war, and Taliban fighters are now within 100 miles of the nuclear red button in Islamabad. Yet our most influential news organisation leads on a tabloid newspaper stunt.

Conference phobia and the Carlisle Switcher

I find conferences a pain in the neck. Literally.

Once I walk into a room with people wearing name badges, for some reason I turn into an insecure wreck. I convince myself I’ve forgotten the names of people I’ve spent my whole career working with, and consequently look down at every single name. Or, if I do recognize someone, I’m fearful that some dreadful catastrophe has befallen them since we last met. So instead of saying “How’s business?” I study their badge to check they haven’t been sacked.

It’s quite a knack greeting someone who knows you well whilst surreptitiously gazing at their chest. Especially when they’re female. And as I’ve now reached the age when I can’t read with my normal glasses on, I have to bend my neck even further in order to peer over the top of the frames. Worst of all are women who tie their badges to their handbags where they hang with the names annoyingly facing inwards. You have to pretend to tie a shoelace in order to see them. Conference phobia even extends to meetings with relatively close friends. I panic that I've confused them with someone else, then, having established their identity beyond all reasonable doubt, I don't mention their wives or children in case since I last saw them they've got divorced, or one of their offspring has been smitten with some fatal illness. I'm sure a therapist would have a field day with all this.

So imagine how thrilled I was last week to discover I’d signed up for two conferences. One was on the future of television in the regions, and the other was on training needs of the media industry in the North. Now those of you who survived the last sentence and aren’t currently in the middle someone else's more entertaining blog, will be reassured to know that these subjects aren’t quite as tedious as they sound. Last week Mike Neville, the North East's most famous local television host, who only fairly recently retired after presenting the local news here for about a hundred years, emailed me to say he looks forward to my column (finally, fan mail), and when I emailed back to say I was off to a conference about regional production he said “It’s going to be a pretty short conference, then”.

Mike and I come from a tradition of regional television: not only programmes made for the North East, but also network television made here for the rest of the country. We first worked together when I was a trainee on Look North. I was only allowed on camera once, reporting on the 1974 sugar shortage. Mike introduced my piece by saying “Now Mrs Gutteridge in Tynemouth, you must be very proud. Here’s your son on television”. That was one way of cutting me down to size.

Later, when I was a director on Nationwide, I enjoyed working with Mike because he was the presenter who could hold things together in times of crisis. With that show, just staying on air was pretty touch and go. One of my biggest nightmares was a man we dubbed ‘The Carlisle Switcher’. For some reason the circuits (the lines carrying the signal) from all the regions north of Manchester had to be routed through a switching centre in Carlisle. One night we knew The Carlisle Switcher was on shift because in the middle of an interview on abortion with a bishop in Glasgow, the picture (but not the sound) suddenly cut to the Newcastle studio. There lounged a floor manager smoking a cigarette, his feet on the desk, reading a copy of The Sun.

In those days, regional television programmes were properly funded and an important part of our television culture. It’s ironic that the conference on Tuesday coincided with the funeral of one of the North East’s best regional producers, Harry Green.

How things have changed since Harry was making shows. Next year, ITV is axing its last regional timeslots which have been filled with fine programmes like Grundy’s Northern Pride. Instead, our local producers will have to compete with thousands of others for network timeslots. Just how our regional voice will be maintained is an important cultural and commercial issue for the region. Hence the conference. One of the people there I recognized without his badge was the director general of the BBC. He’s moving five departments to Manchester and, as we nibbled our sandwiches at lunchtime, you could hear the massive construction site for the new “Media City” outside. Sadly nothing at all is planned for the North East. Maybe we need another conference to discuss it.

Crash Landing

Senior First Officer John Coward must have the least appropriate name for a hero. With nerves of steel he guided his 777 onto the Heathrow grass, rather than parking it somewhere in the middle of Hounslow. Quite what he must have felt when the engines lost power in his final approach can scarcely be imagined.

It was hardly life threatening, but I once piloted a television programme that lost power and crash landed in front of six million viewers.

The programme was Panorama, in the days when it was presented live in the studio by David Dimbleby. One week, when I was in the director’s chair, the show looked as though it would be an extremely easy ride. With no studio guests, David had to walk across the studio, sit down at a desk, and introduce two films. We even had some standby films lined up in case anything went wrong.

With the thirty or so television monitors making the studio control room glow like the deck of a jumbo jet, the show took off with its portentous opening music. David went into the first link. “Good Evening. Tonight on Panorama…”

Just as he reached the word “Tonight”, all the screens in the control room suddenly went blank. All except four. Every single piece of film had disappeared, but there were four separate camera shots of David.

In vain, I gazed at the empty screens, willing the films to reappear. The technical crew were screaming into telephones. Oblivious to the approaching catastrophe, Dimbleby kept going.

“Our first film tonight…”

We had just ten seconds before David reached the end of his script. I braced myself for the inevitable.

“Here’s his report”, he announced. Then silence.

It took a few seconds for David to realize we weren’t going to cut away from him. Then he apologised to the viewers, and paused. I rang the telephone on his desk. The scene has been replayed many times on Auntie’s Bloomers Indeed, if you turn up the volume you can just about make out my voice at the end of the line.

“Er, David, we have a problem”.

“I can see that. Shall we go to the next film?”

“Er….there is no next film. And no standby.”

“So, what would you like me to do?”

“Just… keep talking”.

Which he did, for eight gruesome minutes. He talked about the studio, the cameramen, what he was going to have for supper after the show. In front of six million transfixed viewers.

It was a performance worthy of the adlib king Mike Neville during some of the many glorious breakdowns on Look North. But that was local news, and this was the BBC’s current affairs flagship.

Then, suddenly, the screens bounced back into life and I rang the studio phone again to put David out of his misery.

We did eventually find the cause. During the afternoon a fluorescent light bulb had gone out at the back of the control room and someone had rung up the engineering department to have it changed. Just as we went on air, a man in a brown coat arrived clutching a spare, found a switch marked “Power”, turned it off, changed the bulb, and exactly eight minutes later turned it back on again.

I do hope for Boeing’s sake something as simple as that lies behind the 777 problem. Because right now I wouldn’t live in West London if you paid me a fortune. It was bad enough living in Putney for 14 years, right under the flight path, with conversations drowned out every sixty seconds. We all used to fear that one day a plane would come down on top of us.

And yet the Government is seriously thinking of allowing Heathrow to expand and blight the lives of Londoners even further. Instead they should shut the whole thing down and build a decent airport in the middle of the Thames Estuary. Provided Boeing makes sure their planes can float.