The Whispering Diva

I’ve spent three of the last seven days going to the opera. Well, going and coming back to be precise, and to only one opera at that. Glyndebourne in Sussex is just about as far South as you can get before the language turns French. It’s deep in Cameron country and, unless you have a private helicopter, the journey from Newcastle takes you a day each way. So I was relieved that the performance was just about worth the trip – Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring was a jolly romp, almost as good as the three operas I saw the previous week in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal, and for which you didn’t require a mortgage to pay the train fares. I can’t tell you how lucky we are to have Opera North.

For most people the point about Glyndebourne isn’t the music, it’s the picnic you have during the 90-minute interval. Thankfully, as my host had looked at the weather forecast, we dined in the restaurant, and so had a grandstand view of the rich and pompous sitting on the drenched lawns with pink champagne and Marks and Spencer cool boxes. Most drank from plastic flutes, and dragged soggy sandwiches from Tupperware, but the lack of crystal was more than made up for by the cut glass accents. A picnic in the rain is a great English tradition, and from the comfort of the restaurant you could see overweight affluent ladies in long old-fashioned frocks, shoes as wet as their bow-tied husbands, tartan rugs round their necks struggling to keep warm. They wouldn’t survive a day in Northumberland.

The first time I went to Glyndebourne I was behind the scenes, directing an opera for the BBC. It was a fiendishly complex little piece by Ravel called L’Enfant et les Sortileges (The Bewitched Child), and involved animations projected onto the set designed by the Wild Things creator Maurice Sendak. After days trying to get the animations to synchronise with the scenery, we were just about ready when disaster struck. We turned up on the day of filming to discover that the lead had completely lost her voice. Doubtless thanks to too many picnics in the Sussex rain, Cynthia Buchan’s warm mezzo-soprano voice had been reduced to an almost inaudible whisper. A performance was clearly out of the question, but we had a million pounds worth of cameras, recording equipment, scenery, and Simon Rattle and the London Philharmonic sitting waiting in the theatre.

Now the word diva has a double meaning. It’s used to describe an arrogant or temperamental woman because that’s what a distinguished opera singer is supposed to be. Not so Cynthia. She was desperately upset, obviously, but after sitting down with her, and frantic phone calls to our insurance company, we came up with a plan.

So it was that the black-tied picnickers arrived to find a little note in their programmes. The “Child” was to be played by Ms Buchan, but they weren’t actually going to hear her sing. I put a microphone inside her costume, and she whispered her way through the entire opera. Then, weeks later, when her voice had returned, we sat in a sound studio in London and added her real voice. Not a single television viewer noticed.

This rule that the “show must go on” is part of the magic of television. This week my company landed a big order with a major network. Sadly this show won’t go on in the North East because Newcastle no longer has a television studio large enough to accommodate it. It’s a tragedy: the talented technicians are still here, but there’s no studio for them to work in. That’s another thing to be added to the shopping list of the region’s facilities: along with a decent road link to the South and a Champions League-level football team. Maybe next year.

Train-wreck celebrities and me

This Wednesday the University of East Anglia stages a symposium on train-wreck female celebrities. Academics from all over the world will consider such learned papers as “Britney’s tears: the abject female celebrity in post-emotional society”; “From queen of the jungle to tabloid folk devil: Kerry Katona as white trash mother”; and “Lindsay Lohan and the culture of celebrity notoriety”.

Britain is fascinated by self-destructive female celebrities. But then we do seem to have more than our fair share of them. Naomi Campbell’s sentence of 200 hours of community service is probably less than she deserves. I just hope none of those hours are spent in my community. The woman is, quite clearly, a nightmare. But why is it that women seem to be more prone to spontaneous self-combustion than men?

For years I produced Russell Harty’s chat shows on the BBC. As a result I came across quite a few celebrities – eight a week to be precise. We met out of mutual need: I wanted the biggest names for my shows, and they wanted to plug their books and movies. We used each other without shame.

Over hundreds of episodes, two women stood out. One was Shirley MacLaine. She was the ultimate Hollywood star, surrounded by lackeys and publicists. She was also one of the most unpleasant women I have ever met. She was demanding, unreasonable, and reduced our young researchers to tears. When she stormed off in a rage into the London night because her driver had turned up at the front of the studio rather than the stage door, we were glad to see the back of her.

Then there was Diana Dors. Her life was chaotic, her career in a tailspin, yet the audience adored her, and so did we. She would have won “I’m a Celebrity” hands down. One day she rang me at home: “Tom darling, it’s Diana. You’ve got to come and see my new addition”. I duly went round to her house in Sunningdale, and there she revealed an indoor swimming pool with chandeliers, Grecian pillars and black marble panthers guarding the shallow end; it was the most outrageous lido I’d ever seen. Three weeks later we brought eight million viewers live into her home with Adam Ant, Duncan Goodhew and, absurdly, the entire British Olympic synchronised swimming team, who bobbed round in tiny circles in the deep end. Now I can’t imagine Naomi Campbell letting us do that.

Diana laid her heart on the outside of her not inconsiderable bosoms, and the public loved her honesty. But she was also grounded. She knew where she was from, and never forgot her real name, Diana Fluck, which the studios made her change in case she ever had it up in lights and one of the bulbs went. She was so unlike the humourless celebrities of today’s OK-obsessed world. She’d have charmed the BA captain into finding her lost bag.

But why is it women who get all the bad press nowadays? Surely there are just as many train-wrecked celebrity men? Look at Pete Doherty and Owen Wilson. It’s true that tabloid newspapers and magazines write far more about women. But this isn’t sexism, for the readers of OK are mostly female. The fact is, women only enjoy reading about men through the eyes of another woman: through marriage, a baby, or, best of all, a nice juicy breakup. So Coleen is the star of this week’s OK, not Wayne.

Of course, male stars can be just as unpleasant as female ones. The worst guest we ever had on Harty was Oliver Reed. He arrived at the studio drunk then, five minutes before transmission, declared he wouldn’t go on. When I pleaded with him he said, “Get down on your knees and beg me”. I meekly complied – in front of the entire audience. Now he was a real gent.

Happy Father's Day

I’ve been given the most amazing Father’s Day present. It looks like an unshelled peanut with a tiny beating heart. Our embryo has miraculously turned into an eight-week-old foetus. Through the wonder of ultrasound, we’ve just seen it for the first time, swimming inside a radar screen. Ozzy, or maybe Izzy (we won’t know the sex for a while), is already a living, beating, swimming peanut.

As I write this, Joanna is sitting on the sofa, surrounded by strange snacks and pregnancy magazines – for breakfast this morning she had black beans on a baked potato topped with sour cream and jalapenos. Meanwhile I’m planning our move to a larger house.

Having a baby means that in January my role as a parent will start all over again, days before my 57th birthday. Coincidentally, exactly 57 years ago, my Dad must have been sharing what I’m feeling right now. For I, too, was born to a father old enough to be my grandad.

The prospect of a new child at my age is both exciting and worrying. Exciting because I’ve completely forgotten what it was like to hold my own newborn, or change a nappy, or see the first toddling step. I’m looking forward to doing all the things I neglected last time. When my firstborn, now 26, entered my life, I was so preoccupied with career, so blinded by absurd ambition, I scarcely noticed the signposts whizzing past on his motorway to adulthood. These are mistakes I am determined not to make this time. I want to savour every delicious moment.

But I’m worried too. I know that people will assume I’m the granddad. I don’t mind personally, but I recall (now with painful shame) my fear of humiliation as a fourteen year old, praying that Dad wouldn’t come to parents’ day because his grey-haired, overweight 70-year-old presence might engender ridicule amongst my classmates. Oh, if only he were alive today, I would proudly show him off. He fought in the Battle of the Somme, refereed at St James’ Park in the ‘20s, was charming and gentle and doted on me and I wouldn’t even let him come to Assembly. Alas, my shallow, callow ignorance deprived him of many paternal pleasures.

I’ll understand if Ozzy/Izzy feels similarly about me, but I’m determined to be the coolest 70-year-old ever to go to parents’ day. Actually, that would probably be even more embarrassing for the poor child – there’s nothing worse than a parent who imagines he’s cool. But aside from this, I also fear for Ozzy/Izzy’s world.

In 1952 I was born into a society that had survived appalling war and deprivation. My parents’ generation was determined we should grow up with idealism and optimism. If human progress is measured by whether society has improved its quality of life, drawn its population closer to each other and to God, brought up its children balanced evenly on the pillars of family, health, marriage, career, community and spirituality, then my parents’ generation, and mine, have failed abysmally. In the ‘50s, people left their homes and cars unlocked; they smiled and helped each other; young people considered their elders their betters and only used knives to butter their bread; life was simpler, and the fabric of society more richly coloured than the bland consumerism of today. Sure, there have been improvements – we’re a little less discriminatory towards gender, class and race; we’ve learnt how to live longer; but as a whole 1952 was a nicer world to be born into than now.

It’s one of the reasons we have chosen to bring up our child in rural Northumberland. I wouldn’t say it’s like living in the ‘50s, but I do sense an appreciation of traditional values and lifestyle that’s lacking elsewhere in the UK. And that, for my new child, will be a priceless start to life.

Lessons Brown should learn from Hillary Clinton's failure

[Last night Hillary Clinton finally conceded defeat and endorsed Barack Obama's campaign for the US presidency]

There’s something of Gordon Brown in Hillary Clinton. Hard-faced, stubborn, aloof, poor speaking skills, rampant personal ambition hidden for years within the shadow of a more attractive, charismatic partner.

If Clinton had won the Democratic Party nomination, Gordon Brown might now be taking some comfort from the fact that, even with an electorate desperate for change, experience and a safe pair of hands can still win through. But instead Clinton, thanks to a combination of arrogance and ineptitude, now finds herself facing a political wilderness. Brown should learn from her mistakes.

This was a battle between the new generation, carrying no baggage from the past, and the old school, with the previous headmaster still on board. A few months ago the polls suggested Clinton could win by a landslide. There were many reasons for her failure, aside from the general incompetence of her campaign advisers.

Bill was a major factor, a loose cannon roaring around the primaries taking cheap shots at his wife’s opponent. He suggested Obama lied over Iraq, and outrageously played the race card, hinting he could only win because of his colour.

Even when Bill was brought under control (largely by being muzzled altogether) Hillary was brought down by her own mistakes and inadequacies. America won’t easily forgive the lie of the sniper bullets she didn’t face in Bosnia. On stage, she appeared wooden and her smile looked false. Worst of all, she made a series of mean personal attacks against America’s first credible black candidate. She thought she was being strong and uncompromising. But Americans don’t like their women to look tough and mean, so she ended up looking plain nasty against a family man with a naturally friendly demeanour.

Even in defeat, she appears not to have completely given up hope. She’s only “suspended” her campaign, giving Obama her endorsement, but not yet her 18 million voters. Perhaps she wants to trade them for the vice-presidency, or maybe she’s waiting for some terrible Obama slip-up between now and the election. It’s true that Obama needs to win over the women and the lower middle class white voters who voted for Clinton and who could easily cross over to McCain. But Hillary overestimates her own power and influence, and has done so from the start.

To many Americans, Barack Obama represents a break from the past. He’s offering a new style of government unencumbered by old dogma. Tony Blair did this eleven years ago. David Cameron is trying to hitch his wagon to the same star. But there the similarity ends.

Obama actually has policies. If Cameron has any, he’s not sharing them with us. Obama looks trustworthy and believable. By contrast, Cameron looks smarmy – his face looks as though it were made out of dough. Cameron is old Tory, true and blue. Just take a look at his “webcameron”, which on Friday launched a new initiative, “Cameron Direct”. It brings the party leader straight to your door, or, rather, to a village hall near you, stuffed full of Tory supporters asking pre-prepared questions leading to pat, rehearsed answers. Despite his “Direct” approach, Cameron looks just as out of touch with real people as Brown – you can almost smell the expensive aftershave through your computer screen. And just as Obama will have huge problems persuading working class white Americans to put away their prejudices at the ballot box, so it’ll take a lot for working class Brits to put Mr Smarmy into Number Ten. Even if the alternative is indecisive, stubborn old Mr Gloomy.

Cameron is young, but he is no Obama. So Brown should start heeding the lessons of the Clinton failure. Take nothing for granted; listen to the people; get some social and speaking skills; tell the truth. And learn how to smile.

Jim's Inn, Dad, and piccalilli

Last week's experience of working for a day in a professional gastropub kitchen brought back many childhood memories.

My father used to manage a restaurant in Newcastle called Jim’s Inn. It was a Steak Diane/Lobster Thermidor type of eaterie. You know the sort of place: black-tied waiters with faces marbled by alcohol, cocktail barmaid with heaving cleavage, tables lit by tiny candles, black walls and red leather, an air of forbidden opulence. For a 15-year-old, it was utterly addictive.

Dad had worked in the food industry all his life – he was a food technologist, working for companies like Heinz. He was on the team that developed Heinz Sandwich Spread and I still have his recipe for piccalilli at home, which might be really useful if ever I need to make 40 gallons of the stuff. Later he was a consultant for Tyne Brand in North Shields (strapline: “No lumps of fat or gristle guaranteed”) and for a company called Jaunty Foods that sold minced chicken resembling dog food.

Dad had the most sensitive palate, particularly for fine wine. So to be asked to manage a restaurant at the age of 70 must for him have been heaven. For me it meant that if I wanted to see him before bedtime I had to go into the dark recesses of the cocktail bar, and our Christmas lunch was always off the set menu. In its day, Jim’s Inn was the place to be. All the stars at the Theatre Royal piled in after the shows.

Mind you, there wasn’t much competition. I experienced the other end of the scale first-hand. Like the Park Hotel in Tynemouth where I worked as a waiter in the holidays. There was a terrifying chef who treated his staff even worse than the unfortunate pieces of meat he offered his customers. There was a Portuguese waiter who resembled Manuel from Fawlty Towers and one day, while serving a formal lunch to twenty of the region’s bank managers, he presented a huge tray of overcooked lamb chops to the guest of honour, and in the process poured two pints of scalding hot gravy onto his trouser crotch. The banker leapt into the air, sending the entire table, laden with liebfraumilch, skywards. The waiter burst into tears and ran out, never to be seen again.

I also remember working at the Everest restaurant in Tynemouth. I was asked to help out because on Christmas Day they’d optimistically sold two sittings for lunch. When I turned up, I was the only one with any waiting experience (and that was derived from my six weeks at the Park Hotel). Unfortunately the Everest's chef had quit the night before, so they hired a replacement from an agency. He turned up drunk at 10am and the turkeys were still in the freezer. The first hundred customers arrived at noon, and at 3pm they were still waiting for starters as the second lot were banging on the door. There was blood on the carpet that day. The owner, a charming but inept Indian gentleman, was in tears. North East food has come on a lot since those days.

Dad died in 1972, but those last flambé-filled years gifted me my fascination for catering. From time to time I scan the leases for sale, wondering if I should take the plunge, but I know that it would lead to ruin. I like food too much to serve anything but the best or to cut corners. It’s in the blood – my mother was a food industry expert as well. It’s one of the reasons I love being back in the North East: our ingredients and local supply chain are second to none. We could still do with some good restaurants, though.

25 years after his death, I was filming in Newcastle and made a pilgrimage to North Street to see what had become of Jim’s Inn. Amazingly, surrounded by new development, the little Victorian black and white building was still there, boarded up but otherwise untouched. There above the front door was the small plastic sign: “Herbert Thomas Gutteridge, Licensed to sell Beers, Wines & Spirits”. That night I borrowed a screwdriver from my hotel’s concierge and surreptitiously unscrewed it from the doorframe. I mounted it on a smart wooden plaque and my mother has it to this day.

That was ten years ago. The building still stands empty. Every time I pass it I smile and think of Dad, and how proud he’d be of my cooking in a real restaurant, even if for just one night. Forget television, the awards and the rest: food was what really mattered to him. Mind you, despite his amazing palate, he was really just a meat and two veg man. All my complicated sauces would have been pushed to the side of the plate. But he would have loved the Galloway beef.

The f-Word

[Last night I cooked in the kitchens of our local gastropub]

Torturers in faraway dictatorships probably already know this, but I can definitively report that raw garlic rubbed into an open wound hurts even more than red chili peppers. This little experiment was a result of just one little accident in my first, and last, day as a professional chef.

I confess that for the last ten years I’ve been a cooking bore. Just because you’ve taken a course with Raymond Blanc, you think you’re an expert. So my girlfriend organised the perfect birthday present for me: a whole day working in a real professional kitchen. No ordinary kitchen either, but one of the best gastropubs in Northumberland, the Queen’s Head in Great Whittington. Steve Murray was chef at a Michelin-rated restaurant in Glasgow before relocating to the North East and he’s brought with him a career packed with experience at the highest level. I brought with me a brand new chef’s jacket, and a few handwritten recipes.

I don’t know how Joanna persuaded Steve to put his reputation on the line, but he even let me add some of my own dishes to his menu: like spiced belly pork, scallops with sweet chilli sauce, and my famous (well, famous to my friends, they’ve had it so many times) butternut squash risotto. Add to this mint pannacotta and Gary Rhodes’ bread and butter pudding and you’ve got most of my repertoire. Also on the menu were regular Queen’s Head favourites like fillet steak sourced from the rare Galloway cattle you can see from Steve’s kitchen door.

You’d have thought twelve hours was enough to get ready for one dinner. However the time flew by as we chopped, strained, baked, reduced, whisked – and from time to time stopped to find another blue catering plaster for my cuts. We baked bread, rolled out pasta, and every ingredient was sourced locally.

It wasn’t plain sailing. The suppliers sent vine leaves instead of lime leaves for my belly pork; they sent one packet of watercress for our soup when we needed a boxload; we had planned a wonderful foie gras terrine, except it “split” as it about to be poured into the moulds. As it lay in the bin, we sadly wiped it off the specials list. But, as 7pm approached and the first customers could be heard in the bar, we seemed to be under control.

As the first scallop starters went out, topped with my very own chilli sauce, I cheered. But then a party of 11 booked at 8pm decided to have an extra drink in the bar and collided with another party of 10 who’d come early for their 8.30pm; three tables of two appeared from nowhere and very soon there was a line of little tickets stretching round the kitchen. That’s when the professionalism kicked in. In the tiny galley kitchen, in front of twelve burners and two giant ovens, Steve and his team coped with the mountain of orders, and a novice in their ranks. And not one Ramsay-type expletive all night. Well, a couple maybe.

There are loads of professional shortcuts which the amateur cook knows nothing about, like part-cooking the rice for a risotto and keeping it chilled until an order comes in. Except that when hardly anybody orders the risotto (I just wanted to run into the dining room and get everyone to taste it), and everyone wants scallops, and one person wants his steak well done at the same time as his partner wants it rare, there’s nothing to fall back on but experience and skill. Of which I have neither. Steve, DT and Charlie had asbestos fingers and, despite my inadequacies, kept smiling throughout. They certainly needed a sense of humour.

I learned so much last night. Like how to cook a blue steak. I had always thought that “blue” meant uncooked, except for waft under a flame at the last minute. But actually, a blue steak takes longer to prepare than a well-done one, because the middle of the steak should be warm but uncooked. This means the steak has to sit at the bottom of the grill (or in a very warm place) for a good while as the others, medium-rare and so on, go into the pan. The man who ordered it said it was the best blue steak he'd ever eaten. I sent his congratulations to the grill. By the end of the evening I felt like a blue steak myself. I was warm inside and glowed all over.

It all seemed to go down very well (people were still drinking in the restaurant at 1am, and the takings were three times the Tuesday average). Plus Keith Hann sent me a copy of his review for tomorrow’s Newcastle Journal. I was too originally too modest to publish it here, but I thought, 'Hell, I’ve explained that it was all down to Steve, so I’ll bask in his reflected glory'. And my scallop sauce.

Puppets on a String

[Britain came last in last night's Eurovision Song Contest]

We used to be good at the Eurovision Song Contest. We rank second in the winners’ league. Only Ireland (7 victories) has won it more often. So last night’s result, with the UK at the bottom of the pack, ought to be a national calamity, akin to our failure to reach the finals of Euro 2008. Except this time we don’t really care.

Mind you, our entry was exceptionally dire. I don’t know which was worse, the singer or the song. We deserved nul points, so scraping fourteen was a bit of an achievement. But even if we’d resurrected Cliff Richard and persuaded Andrew Lloyd Webber to get a spare ditty out of his bottom drawer, I doubt we would have fared much better. We haven’t won Eurovision since the first day of Tony Blair’s government. That was on May 3rd 1997, when Katrina and the Waves gave us Love Shine A Light. It’s been downhill ever since. Not that we can entirely blame New Labour. It’s the fragmentation of the former communist bloc that did it. Isn’t it symbolic that Germany, Britain and Poland came joint last? How the power base of Europe has changed since 1939.

I don’t this think was just political. It was cultural voting. Those former communist states that voted together genuinely like those terrible jaunty songs. There are now two voting blocs controlling Eurovision: the Balkans and the Vikings. We only have a tiny blocette with Ireland. If their puppet turkey had got through to the final, he would certainly have had douze points from us. It was a protest song, and we would have got the joke. The Balkans take Eurovision seriously, whilst we have Terry Wogan. There’s the difference.

The song contest began as a symbol of European unity. Now that Europe is finally together, it’s showing us the cracks. Music, that great reflector of national spirit, is laying bare Europe’s cultural differences. We and Ireland, for all our Euro talk, are still islands off the far Western shore. Our popular music may sell around the world, our record industries matched in scale and diversity only by America, but at the end of the day, we don’t like the oompah band one little bit. And those Balkans adore it.

Watching the ghastly interval wedding-funeral songs from the Belgrade house band, we could have been sitting in some strange taverna, wondering why we’d booked the holiday, and counting the hours till we get back to nice British Easyjet. It takes something like the Eurovision Song Contest to remind us of why we like home so much.

Of course, if I’m wrong, and all this is just political, then we should be really worried. Despite the fact that Eurovision is just a lot of tosh, it should wake us up to an uncomfortable truth: Europe really doesn’t like us at all.

Terry Wogan says he may not do it again next year, because “it’s no longer a music contest”. Now that would be a national tragedy. Terry’s ironic comments have always been the only reason to watch this terrible, dull three-hour Eurocharade. It’s a waste of a good Saturday night, of a lot of licence fees, and of thousands of pounds worth of telephone votes. But we can’t pull out now that we’ve finished bottom: that would just be sour grapes.

It would also be the end of the contest. Britain, with Germany, France and Spain, pays 40% of the costs of this nonsense. Without us, the Serbians couldn’t have afforded the lighting bill. Ironically, we’ve let all these other countries into the contest in order to keep it alive. Now we feel like gatecrashers at our own party.

Anyway, I’ve got the solution. Let’s divide Britain up into counties, and give each one an entry. Then at least we’ll have 86 sets of douze points to throw around. That’ll show those Balkans.

The Embryology Debate

Tomorrow in the House of Commons, members of Parliament will be debating a genuinely life-changing topic. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has proved to be one of the most difficult pieces of legislation for years and, with a free vote on several of the more controversial aspects, there’s going to be a lot of heart-searching in Westminster.

For once Newcastle is right at the centre of this national debate, because it’s here that a team of scientists is working at the cutting edge of research into currently incurable conditions such as Alzheimer’s. In the last decade these researchers have succeeded in moving science forward so fast that the law, last debated in 1990, is now out of date. They are seeking a legal framework within which to continue their revolutionary work. And one of the key elements is the ability to utilize animal eggs (with 99% of genetic material removed, and a single human cell nucleus added) to replace a chronic shortage of human eggs.

Last week Joanna and I came face to face with one of the reasons for this shortage. For some time she and I have been trying to have a baby, and we have now turned for help to the fertility specialists at Newcastle’s Life Centre. As a result, not only are we waiting on tenterhooks for news of whether or not our current round of IVF treatment has been successful (sadly, there’s only a 25% chance it will be), but also we are now proud owners of six first class frozen embryos. During the IVF process, however, the treatment caused Jo to produce over thirty eggs. We happily signed the clause on our clearance forms to donate our unused eggs and embryos to enable the Newcastle researchers to continue their work. I doubt there are many readers of this blog who have not experienced close family members afflicted with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or some form of cancer. We believe we owe it to our children and grandchildren to do whatever we can to support genetic research to enable science to conquer these terrible afflictions.

However, the consequence of Joanna generating so many spare eggs (we jokingly dubbed her the “mother hen” for the first couple of days after we learned the news) was that she ended up in unbelievable pain, potentially life-threatening discomfort and a spell in the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Jo was suffering from Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), an affliction which affects a small proportion of all IVF patients, and which can even prove fatal. It’s not something I would wish to inflict on my worst enemy, and it was frightening to see Jo, her stomach distended as if she were seven months’ pregnant, doubled up in agony, her blood dehydrating by the hour. In order to prevent women enduring this dangerous side effect, the fertility experts are trying to reduce the number of eggs produced during the IVF process. However this in turn reduces the number of spare eggs that can be used in medical research. Hence the vital importance of this part of the legislation being debated today.

Reactionary religious leaders tend to set themselves and their congregations against anything that seems to challenge the biblical account of creation. Others fear giving power-crazed scientists a charter to meddle in things spiritual. But this bill has come about because the scientists in Newcastle and elsewhere want boundaries to be set. It’s a debate about regulation, not permission. I do respect the views of those who oppose it on religious grounds, but to describe it, as one reactionary clergyman has done, as “endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion” is to miss the point.

This law has been created with the sole aim of saving lives. The moral argument in favour is overwhelming. I hope our MPs are persuaded to vote for the proper regulation of a science that is dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering. For the sake of all our children.

Respect to the Viewers

[Yesterday the BBC announced that one of its divisions, Audiocall, had failed to pass on £100,000 of revenue from viewers' phone calls to Children In Need. On the same day, Ofcom fined ITV £5.67million for the premium rate telephone call scams discovered across a range of its entertainment programming]

I used to think broadcasting was such an honourable profession. When I joined the BBC straight from university, it was one of the blue-chip careers, like the Foreign Office or Reuters. The day we arrived at the BBC Journalist Training School we were told what an honour it was to join. Sitting below a portrait of Lord Reith, our instructor said: “you will all become heads of departments here, provided you don’t commit either of two crimes: bounce a cheque at the BBC cash office, or forget to pay your licence fee.” For two years our training was about the right way of doing things – writing news bulletins, constructing balanced programmes, filling in our expenses forms. Above all, we were taught how important it was to respect our viewers and listeners. They funded our salaries, so their faith in our self-governing organisation was paramount.

Cut to 2008. A BBC division called Audiocall has “kept” £100,000 of viewers’ money that the public thought it was donating to charity through its telephone call revenue.

I could detail chapter and verse on this sad decline in standards, but it would fill up an entire book -- I'd best save it for my never-to-be-published autobiography. Suffice it to say that I, and other producers who rose through the ranks in the 80s and 90s, including my immediate contemporaries like Mark Thompson – are to a certain extent guilty, for we should have seen this coming.

It was in the early 90s that “premium rate telephone calls” were introduced. For an independent producer like myself, the opportunity to earn some extra profit by popping a viewers’ competition into a show was a godsend. You know the kind of thing: “Today's the Day that on 12th May 1971, Mick Jagger married his first wife. Was she called a: Doris, b: Charlie, or c: Bianca? Phone 0898123123 and you could be entered in our prize draw to win a round the world air ticket”. No matter that we made thousands every day from the call revenue and the actual cost of a bucket class round-the-world ticket was just £750. And we only gave away one ticket every 200 episodes. However, we knew it was fair because the whole thing was overseen, approved and run by BBC Audiocall, which was specifically set up to ensure veracity.

Except Audiocall wasn’t just there to make things fair: it was there to make money, because someone had the bright idea of making it part of BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s arms-length commercial organisation. That’s where the rot started. Television is about public service, not exploitation, and when the dead hand of easy money starts scratching away at editorial content, you’re just an arm’s length away from moral bankruptcy.

If the BBC was tempted by this new source of free cash, commercial television gulped it down. Soon entire programmes were being funded by call revenue. It was close to, but not quite, a lottery, and all perfectly legal.

But even in the dark days of GMTV’s absurdly simple multiple choice competitions, or the pointless “viewer surveys” on daytime television, producers would never actually cheat. Sure, we’ve occasionally pulled the wool over the eyes for dramatic effect (did you really think there were three separate holidays in Cilla’s envelopes on Blind Date?), but we never faked a winner.

So the recent revelations mystify me. Could greed have spread so quickly through the television industry? Or is it that we have promoted young people so fast, even allowing presenters like Ant and Dec to call themselves “executive producers”, so that the traditional wise heads are no longer running the ship? Well, probably a bit of both.

The catalogue of dishonesty, deception and downright fraud literally makes my blood boil. I’d like to apologise to you, the viewers, on behalf of my entire industry. Except I know that isn’t enough. It took the BBC decades to build up your trust, and I know it’ll take more than an apology or a fine from Ofcom to rebuild it.

End of a Dream

[Labour managed its worst performance in 40 years in this week's local elections]

The second of May is a significant date in Labour’s history book. It marks the beginning and the end of the dream. It’s the date when, in 1997, the united army of Blair’s New Labour marched into power. It’s also the date when, in 2008, Gordon Brown’s bedraggled forces lay defeated, washed up on the arrogance and complacency of its tired, uninspiring leadership.

With a certain nostalgia, I looked up some of Labour’s party political broadcasts from that first triumphant battle. In one of them, Anita Roddick said, “Whenever I’ve spoken to Tony Blair, what comes through is conviction, a sense of what Labour will give. Finally, a politician that is not arrogant. I like the way he looks exhausted. I like the way he’s working.”

On Andrew Marr’s programme yesterday morning, the leader of Labour’s dispirited troops certainly looked exhausted. Yet, extraordinarily, Gordon’s arrogance still shone through. You’d have thought there’d be a modicum of humility, a tiny scrap of shame for the devastation he has caused. But no, this was a man still blind to the mood of the nation. He claimed to be “listening and leading”, but he wasn’t hearing a thing.

“People need to know we have a strong sense of direction, that we’re putting in place the big building blocks of the future”, said Brown, convinced that the cause of the rout was neither his leadership nor the insensitive and ill-timed decisions he himself had taken, but instead the failure of Labour to explain the big picture, “to get its arguments across to the public”. Boris Johnson got it in one: pompous, overblown, bonkers Boris, now mayor of all London, said in an interview immediately after his acceptance speech, “Brown should go, and Labour should replace him with David Milliband”. Spot on, Boris, though “Dave” Cameron will hardly thank you for endorsing the one man who could keep him from Number 10.

Actually, thanks to the events of May 2nd, there’s now a second man who could keep Cameron from power, and that’s Bonkers Boris himself. To have such a loose Tory cannon as Mayor of London is just about the only piece of hope Brown can cling onto between now and the next election. He must be praying for the first pratfall.

Mind you, it’s going to be hard for even Boris to make living in London a worse experience that it is at present. I still have to travel down there once a week, and count the hours to my return. The tubes are packed, hot and unreliable; in the area where I used to live three women have been mugged outside their own homes in the last month; the congestion charge, which worked for a bit, now fails to curb the jams at all; Heathrow remains one of the most unpleasant airports in the world and blights the lives of half the city’s population. Boris promises to tackle all of these problems. He even wants a new airport in the middle of the Thames Estuary. Hopefully not run by BAA.

I remember the evening of Labour’s first May 2nd very well. I was at Television Centre in London, watching the map of Britain turn red. There was an air of great moment – like another May night when Thatcher first came to power. In 1997 like all Labour supporters I basked in the victory. The tide had turned for good.

This year, for the first time in my life, I voted Conservative. Why? Because the only person who bothered to contact me was my Tory candidate. Veronica Jones, you got my vote because you sent me a questionnaire asking for my views on the problems of my area. You then wrote and said what you were going to do about them. None of your opponents sent so much as a handout. I’ve never met you Councillor Jones, I haven’t a clue whether you’re any good, but you do appear to be listening, and in 2008, that’s a trick that all our politicians need to learn.

Farewell Humph

[Humphrey Lyttelton, Britain's greatest jazz musician, died this weekend]

The Queen was having her lunch when Humph saved my bacon. It was on June 7th 1977, in the middle of the Silver Jubilee celebrations. In London a million people lined the pavements to see the gold state coach make its way to St Paul’s. In every village and town, streets were filled with tables and smiles. The whole country dressed in red white and blue for what was probably our last great national celebration. It’s funny how you can remember what you were doing during momentous events. I was in a television studio with Humphrey Lyttelton.

I was just 25, and I’d been given the task of directing the BBC’s Jubilee coverage: not the actual state occasion, but all the other bits that didn’t have the royal family in them. On the big day, our main role was to keep the nation amused while the Queen was lunching in the Guildhall.

According to the royal schedule, we had an hour and a half to fill – that’s an eternity for a live entertainment show. So we built a giant fairground of nostalgia, with stalls, sideshows and cafes lined with memorabilia and celebrity guests. It was called the Nationwide Jubilee Fair and in the middle was a bandstand, where we installed that great British institution, Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band. Having given Humph a brief to “keep it jolly”, we knew we could rely on a few pieces of traditional jazz to get the national foot tapping.

As we waited to start our party, we watched the Queen going on an unplanned walkabout outside St Paul’s. It was making her late for lunch. We knew we had to finish our bit at 2.30 because at precisely that moment an extra 500 million viewers from all over the Commonwealth would be joining to watch the Queen’s speech in the Guildhall. It would be one of the biggest live audiences in the history of television. So my producer and I set about cutting out chunks of script to shorten the show.

We went on air twelve minutes late. Apart from Humph there were lots of bands, celebrities and people talking with moist eyes about the past. Somehow we managed to reach our finale dead on time at 2.25. I was keeping an eye on the Guildhall so that I could organize a smooth handover, but for some reason all the cameras were pointing at the ground. “They’re cutting it fine,” I thought, as Frank Bough announced the final song.

“Standby Guildhall” I shouted above the din. No response. I called the control room at St Paul’s. An engineer told me they were still at lunch. “They can’t be”, I said. “We’re on our last item”. “Sorry mate, can’t help you”.

I frantically searched for the bits of script we’d cut out. They were all crumpled up on the floor. In front of me I could see the line “Cue Applause, Cue the Queen” which I’d written at the end of the script as a private joke. In desperation I grabbed a pencil and tore a little piece off the corner of the page. I scribbled three words on it, threw it at a runner, and waited.

At the end of the song, the applause was deafening. Humph was bowing as the note was handed to him. It read “Keep Going Humph.” He paused for a second, smiled, put his trumpet to his lips, and nodded at the band. Then, with that extraordinary intuition which all jazz musicians share, they started to play on together. And on, and on.

So it was that at half past two, 500 million people who’d tuned in for their Queen, instead, for reasons never explained, found themselves watching this wonderful, funny, giant of a man doing what he loved best: impromptu, unrehearsed, celebratory jamming. For twelve glorious minutes he entertained the world until the Queen finished her petits fours. I’m sure they loved every second of it.

Thank you, Humph, we’ll miss you.

John Prescott's Dark Secret

[Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott confessed today that he used to be a bulimia nervosa sufferer.]

Well, we didn’t see that one coming. John Prescott a secret victim of bulimia? It sounds like a cheap gag from a standup comic. Oh, and Gordon Brown has laughing sickness. But in his memoirs Prezza reveals how he would happily down a whole tin of Carnation condensed milk, or eat his way through the entire menu of Mr Chu’s in Hull. He’d make himself vomit after his binges, a classic sign of the disease which sadly afflicts thousands of girls in their late teens. Mr Prescott blames it on stress. He went to see a consultant who asked him “about my childhood, early sexual experiences, that sort of stuff, which I don’t think had anything to do with it.” Mr Prescott claims “I was just under pressure and seeking relief in eating too much, then sicking it up – that’s all there was to it.”

Although I have no reason to doubt the diagnosis, I’m not sure I entirely buy the source of his affliction. One of the principal causes of bulimia is low self-esteem. Can it be true that the ebullient Mr Prescott had actually discovered what to the rest of the world was blindingly obvious: he was a terrible minister? He’d punched a farmer, had dubious dealings over the super casinos, played away from home with his secretary and his housing and transport policies had failed. You could accuse Prescott of a lot of things, but being good at his job was not one of them. Faced with the realization of such inadequacies, any man would have turned to the bottle – or in his case, the tin.

I wonder if bulimia will soon join the list of celebrity must-have diseases, like depression. Depression is one of those catchy words, like rehab or charity, which is part of a new media shorthand designed to raise public sympathy. It’s a key weapon in the arsenal of the publicity machine: we all like a good victim, so coming out and admitting depression can excuse the most appalling behaviour. The list of celebrity sufferers is growing: George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Melvyn Bragg, Bill Oddie, Ruby Wax, Russell Grant, even Jordan has jumped on the bandwagon. There’s a danger that the sheer number of breast beaters may dilute what is actually a very serious illness. However one consequence of this self-exposure is that at last the public is beginning to accept the importance of “therapy”.

In Britain, especially here in the North, there’s still a stigma attached to the word. People still equate “therapy” with “loony bin”: it’s not something that’s talked about in polite circles. I had dinner last week with a friend who’s just split from his wife. His distress was obvious. It’s affecting his work and he’s drinking too much. When I suggested he should see a therapist, he looked at me with his proud Yorkshire face and said “Don’t be daft, I’ve not gone mad.”

When my first marriage ended I went to see someone called Trevor. He was very nice, but wore grey plastic shoes (funny how you remember such details in times of crisis). At the end of the first session, he charged me £75 and told me to come back twice a week for the next year. I never went again.

When my second marriage was failing, I was living in L.A., where going to a therapist is like going to the gym. I don’t know if I was actually depressed, but I was certainly pretty glum. So, overcoming my northern phobia, I trotted off to see a man with a moustache and Gucci shoes. He asked me the same questions that Mr Prescott’s consultant asked him, and fortunately I didn’t write them off as “stuff”. A year and a hundred sessions later I’d found the failings in me (which were substantial), and began the process of sorting my life out. My shrink even found me a divorce lawyer from among his clients. Mind you, I could have bought a lot of cans of Carnation for the price.

Mark Speight

[Television Presenter Mark Speight's body was found this morning on Paddington Station]

Mark Speight was a real television talent. I first came across him in the mid-nineties when I was looking for a host for our new children’s series Scratchy and Co. Although we’d won the Saturday morning children’s slot against fierce opposition from other production companies, we knew it was something of a poisoned chalice. At that time ITV was being hammered in the ratings by the BBC’s juggernaut Live and Kicking. The opposition had huge resources, a big live studio full of children and celebrities and an apparently unlimited budget. We had just enough money to pay for some cartoons, one presenter and a child.

We had this idea of creating a show around an impossibly jolly, manic host called Scratchy and gave the child, whom we called Reg, a deep, grown-up voice. The idea was that Reg, played by a seven-year-old boy called Elliot, would represent sanity in Scratchy’s mad world of mayhem. They both wore enormous suits and crazy rubber wigs. Scratchy’s suit was blue with white clouds whilst Reg was dressed in sober black. They “lived” together in a lop-sided house. Later we added a penguin called Sedgely and a football called Fathead. Don’t ask me why. You can do almost anything you want in Children’s TV.

Mark was a perfect choice for Scratchy. He had a wonderfully dangerous quality about him, and he could switch his mind into child mode as soon as the red light came on. The children’s audience warmed to him from the first episode. By the second season, we were matching the BBC, and the show lasted for three gloriously insane years. We even won an RTS award, though it was scarcely high culture. Mark went on to even greater success with his later programmes encouraging kids to explore their imagination through art. On the screen Mark never grew up. Which makes the circumstances of his own personal tragedy and death all the more upsetting.

I don’t begrudge our television presenters one penny of their salaries: their career life expectancy is surprisingly short, and I can’t imagine the stress of being forever in the public eye. The moment you’re hired, you are always looking over your shoulder at the next young thing coming up on the inside track. And, thanks to the insatiable tabloids, your private life ceases to be your own. Television presenters remain public property for the rest of their lives. Once you’ve been marked out as “onscreen talent”, it’s almost impossible to be taken seriously again in the world of production or journalism. Look at how few news reporters who try their hand at newsreading make the return journey to serious journalism. The moment they’ve kicked their legs about for Children In Need they get put in the box marked “Talent”.

The day we hired Mark, we also took on a presenter for a second ITV’s children’s offering called Massive. She was a very young and green Essex girl called Denise van Outen. Later she was poached by The Big Breakfast and she probably begins her CV there. But it’s one thing to make your mark on television for a few years and quite another to make a lifetime’s career out of it. I’m delighted that Denise has carved herself a proper vocation on the stage, though to me she remains one of Britain’s most relaxed and natural television hosts.

That’s why whenever some young thing asks me for advice on how to get on the telly (and my intray is full of them) my first suggestion is, “Don’t”. As a producer I know the casting of the presenter is the most important choice I have to make, for that person’s image defines my show. But once fashions change, and the series reaches its inevitable end, I’m already off looking for the next big thing, leaving the “star” to file away the newspaper cuttings and ring his agent.

Age Shall Not Wither Them

Muka finally went blind last night. At 3am we heard the howling and found her butting the side of the open kitchen door. I put on all the lights, but still she couldn’t see her way out. She howled her fear until I stroked her brow and put my face next to hers. She laid her head on my neck and licked my ear, then, her big cow eyes unblinking, I gently led her step by step to the safety of her own bed.

Muka is a survivor. Joanna found her 13 years ago in a Los Angeles dog pound. She’d been rescued from the notorious South Central neighbourhood. Muka’s twin sister had already been put down, and it was her turn for execution that very afternoon. For months Jo nurtured her as the fur, destroyed by mange, slowly grew back on the enormous bat-like ears. Muka – quarter Staffordshire, quarter Lab, the rest anyone’s guess – has been at the centre of my life since Jo and I met. As her pack grew, she welcomed newcomers: Poncho the cat, and Truffle, our one-year old cocker. She is flatulent and seventeen and we all adore her.

Muka’s degeneration has been sudden. Last summer she was racing with Truffle across the fields behind the house. Now she trips over flowerpots as she shuffles her arthritic body round the garden.

We all have to accept the inevitability of old age, but it’s the speed of decay that I can’t get used to. My mother is 87. She’s independent, has her own house and car (she even recently got a speeding ticket), goes on international holidays and still teaches painting. Strong as an ox, she spent last weekend helping me plant my potatoes. Her mind is full of a lifetime’s experience and judgment.

Mum and I talked about the inevitable last week, sitting with a large gin and tonic, and Muka, big ears listening for the drop of crisps, at our feet. We weren’t being gloomy, just practical (she’s been showing me her funeral plot and where she keeps her Will every year since 1989). Her five brothers and sisters lasted into their nineties. She lost a brother last year, and her sister’s funeral was on Friday. Most of her friends have already gone. Mortality stares at us, and yet, to me, Mum hasn’t changed since she was sixty: opinionated, annoying, and utterly resilient. It’s her independence that impresses me most. An independence you see in so many of our elderly. And which, in a way, is their greatest threat.

For my generation tends to let our parents get on with things on their own. The disintegration of ‘family’, which began in the fifties, has now virtually stripped the word of any social meaning and left separate generations walled up in self-contained units, only opening their doors at Christmas and Easter.

Sure, society makes the odd gesture, probably to assuage communal guilt. Everyone over sixty got a free local bus pass this week (but no national train pass); there’s a winter fuel allowance, which against the rocketing cost of fuel is worth a fraction of what it used to be. Yet my mother, with a tiny state pension her only reward for a lifetime of national insurance and tax, instead of relaxing and enjoying her independence worries about every penny spent as if she were still in the days of rationing. How obscene that we, living under a supposedly Socialist government, charge our old people Council Tax. Especially as, thanks to the fragmentation of society that we have engineered, most of these old people now live alone.

It’s time Britain undertook a proper review of how we treat the aged. For when my own light begins to fade, I want to live my last days in a society which looks after its elderly at least as well as its dogs.

The Great Cock-up

It was shambolic, embarrassing and a national disgrace. However Chief Executive William M Walsh (“Willie” to his friends, or “Wally” to his customers) passed it off as “not BA’s finest hour”.

This has got to be the most inept understatement in the history of PR. The last four days have been disastrous for the company that used to call itself “The World’s Favourite Airline”. British Airways wisely dropped that epithet as its popularity plummeted in line with its declining service. I wish they’d drop the “British” as well. I can’t imagine many experienced travellers fly BA by choice. Of the dozens of BA flights I’ve taken in the last year, only one touched down on time. On that occasion, the pilot seemed so surprised by this unusual turn of events, he positively crowed as he announced the good news before landing. Only to return sheepishly to the microphone a few moments later to inform us that, because no domestic gates were available, we were trekking to an international one and would have to wait for a pair of steps and a bus. Last year British Airways was forced to admit that 23 out of every 1000 bags it handled went missing. That’s without the 15,000 stuck inside Terminal 5.

On Friday, Mr Walsh said he had no intention of resigning. I’m pleased about that, because it gives the board the opportunity to sack him. If I were his Chairman, I’d make Wally earn out his notice period in the bowels of Terminal 5 personally loading each of the missing bags into the boot of his company limousine and delivering them with a handwritten note of apology. After all, he did say “the buck stops with me”. Not the big bucks, I bet – his contract is bound to guarantee him an enormous payoff.

What amazes me is that, with so much at stake, the new system at Terminal 5 wasn’t properly tested. I work in an industry where there are no second chances. The launch of a new television programme is a do or die event. Particularly live television.

The first one I ever worked on was called The Great Debate, a live programme about Europe hosted by Robin Day. It was in 1972, the year before we joined the EEC, and as a student I’d managed to get a holiday job as a “runner”. I had two key roles: running for the tea, and then, on the big night, running the result of the vote to Mr Day himself. All round the country people sat in BBC studios waiting to vote and, most exciting of all, the result was going to be generated by a computer, the first time such a thing had been used on TV. After two hours of the most mind-numbingly boring debate, the votes were fed into a machine the size of a lorry and I positioned myself by the printer waiting for the outcome.

Robin promised the viewers that, owing to this miraculous new technology, we would have the result in less than a minute. The seconds passed. Nothing happened. I stared at the printer, willing it into life. Five minutes, still nothing. After a quarter of an hour, Robin Day asked the voters for a show of hands.

Finally, the computer spluttered out: “?”

Thousands of pounds worth of technology, days of rehearsals, all for one solitary question mark. My job was not to comment but to run, so I dutifully rushed the “result” to Mr Day. That’s when BBC1 viewers heard the immortal line: “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Great Debate has turned into The Great Cock-up”.

The computer, of course, was fired on the spot. Not so Wally Walsh, I suspect. He’ll be uttering phrases like “British Airways needs to deliver” till the next great cock-up. And, as usual, only the passengers will suffer. As well as Britain’s reputation.

With One Word I Was Married

I could never live in New York. It’s a great place to stay for a few days (or, as we did last week, for a few hours on our way home from LA), but the extremes of temperature would soon drive me into airconditioned madness. The winters are freezing and the summers are like a permanent steambath.

Joanna and I weren’t exactly prepared for the icy blasts down 5th Avenue. We only had clothes for 75-degree California, so we looked incongruous dressed in layers of t-shirts while everyone else wore overcoats.

My first trip to New York was a result of young love. In my first year at university I'd fallen for a girl called Mary and, having pledged eternal devotion, my world fell apart when she won a scholarship for a year at a New York university. Mary-less, I pined for about six months until my mother, despairing of all my moping, lent me some money to fly over and spend the summer vacation with my beloved in New York.

So, with clean socks and underwear, I set off promising my worried mother to contact her as soon as I arrived.

New York in June was in the nineties, both in temperature and humidity. It was pouring with hot rain and the moment I stepped off the plane I was bathed in a thick mask of perspiration. Mary was sharing an apartment on the Upper East Side with a neurotic actress, three cats and no airconditioning. It was hell, but somehow through the jetlag, despite the sweaty nights in a single bed, we seemed to be getting on OK.

So I dutifully sent my mother a telegram (it was 1972, well before the days of International Subscriber Trunk Dialling or the fax machine). Mum had given me strict instructions to report three key facts: Had I arrived? Where was I off to? and How were things with Mary? The trouble was, telegrams were charged by the word, and I could only afford twelve.

It took me two and a half hours to squeeze the facts into the limit, and I even managed to include a reference to the weather. Triumphantly I telephoned the result through to Western Union:

EMBRACED BY NEW YORK AND MARY IN POURING RAIN FLORIDA NEXT STOP.

It wasn't until I returned to England two months later that I discovered the havoc my telegram had wreaked back home. Western Union had only got one word wrong, but it almost gave my mother a coronary:

EMBRACED BY NEW YORK AND MARRIED IN POURING RAIN FLORIDA NEXT STOP.

She was devastated. I was her only son, and now I had married without even telling or inviting her. And we were off on honeymoon to Florida. Nevertheless, to Mum’s eternal credit, she went to St Nicholas’s Cathedral to light a candle for our future happiness.

The next time she heard from me was a month later. I sent a postcard from San Francisco saying I had run out of funds and was living on MacDonalds. By then I was marching behind Jane Fonda in support of McGovern against the evil Nixon. He lost by a landslide. But we were young, idealistic: and, in those days, very thin.

Speaking of which, I offer you all an apology. In my New Year’s Day blog, I swore I would lose 21 lbs by Easter. Of course I hadn’t reckoned on Easter being so absurdly early. Well, that’s my excuse and, yes, I failed. My cause wasn’t helped by the last three weeks in LA. My mother brought me up to eat everything on my plate, which is a really bad idea in the land of the giant portion.

On Easter Day I confess I was just 10 lbs lighter, and I have a feeling that Keith Hann, who took the challenge with me, will be gloating in his column tomorrow. My cheque book awaits the bad news.

Tibetan Wedding

I was seven when the Dalai Lama fled to India. With 50,000 Chinese troops surrounding Lhasa, where, as now, unarmed people were in the streets demanding freedom, the 23 year old leader slipped out of the Norbulinka Palace and began his two week icy trek to the Indian border. It was March 17th 1959 – exactly 49 years tomorrow. In exile in the Indian town of Dharamsala he has since watched the systematic destruction of his people’s way of life.

It is significant that he took with him not an army, but an opera company. The Tibetans carried to safety trunkloads of costumes, scripts and musical instruments. For the Dalai Lama knew that the Chinese would wield their brute power by attempting to stamp out Tibet’s culture and religion, and he wanted to ensure that a vital part of Tibetan life, the community opera, would survive.

In Dharamsala, he established a small dance and drama school, now called the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. I know that little dance and drama school well, set in the village of McLeod Ganj overlooking the main town. In fact, I was married there.

Last year I wrote about my drive across Saudi Arabia to India with my girlfriend Jilly. During our year in India we drove south to Mysore, where a large Tibetan community was based. We’d heard that an opera was to be staged using the original instruments and costumes brought over during the exodus. What we hadn’t expected was the scale. Three days before curtain up, in a huge clearing, thousands of Tibetan families had arrived with tents to claim their spaces. It resembled a giant Glastonbury, with little cafes and stalls, and by the time the opera started, there must have been tens of thousands in the arena.

It was like a continuous Ring Cycle without the intervals. With fantastic colourful costumes and masks, the opera told of heroes and Gods, dragons and evil forces. With an orchestra of drums, cymbals and deep rasping horns, and a chorus of girls with high-pitched reedy voices, it was a cross between Glyndebourne and pantomime. From toddlers to the ancient, the crowd sat transfixed. Tibetan Opera dates back 600 years. It’s a unique form of folk art handed down by successive generations. It was part of the rich culture which the Dalai Lama was trying to preserve, the “genocide” of which he accused the Chinese this weekend.

After the performance, we became friends with several of the cast and, perceiving that we were in the throes of young love, they asked if we were going to get married. We explained that it was tricky as Jilly was still married to someone else. Apparently that made no difference in Tibet. We were in love, so we should marry.

So it was that a month later, we sat next to a photograph of the Dalai Lama in the Dance and Drama School, swathed in little silk scarves (the Tibetan traditional gift of greeting), and exchanged silver rings made by the Dalai Lama’s own jeweller.

The ceremony was simple. Did anyone in the village think these two shouldn’t be married? They all shook their heads. Then applause, the ceremony was over, and a test of virility followed: I was handed an enormous three-pint jug of sour Tibetan rice beer to down in one. Next everyone had to perform a song. I was far too drunk to remember what or how I sang, but I do recall standing with my bride looking out over the Himalayas as the sun set thinking that somehow, someday, the international community had to put pressure on China to cease its brutal repression and grant Tibet some form of autonomy.

I hope the current events, just two weeks before the Olympic torch arrives in Beijing, will mark the beginning of that process.

Hot Air from BA

This is my third letter from America. We’ve now flown from LA to New York to pitch our ideas to MTV. The flight takes five hours to cover the 2,500 miles and our tickets on JetBlue cost $350 each. We’ve just found out that, because of the change of itinerary, British Airways won’t transfer our London Heathrow to Newcastle booking, so we have to buy new tickets for the short 50 minute, 250-mile hop. Cost: $450 dollars each.

Letter from Hollywood

Yesterday evening we had dinner with a celebrity handbag designer called Nancy. She does wonderful things with leather: Angelina Jolie has just bought seven bags and now Nancy’s making her one to hold nappies and baby bottles, which she’s calling The Nanny. When news gets out, Nancy’s company Jamah could become world famous.

In Hollywood fame and fortune can arrive overnight, but the real challenge is stopping them leaving again in the morning. It’s a city of promises, many of them broken. Last week I recounted how we finally got into production with Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct. What I didn’t add was how that series nearly ruined me.

It started so well. We found a film-loving American billionaire to back us with thirty million pounds. Or that’s what the contract said.

We hired two enormous stages at Pinewood and filled them with spaceships, aliens, actors and crew. After a few weeks of filming, the flow of cheques from America slowed down. So, courtesy of Lloyds Bank, Newcastle, I ran up a modest overdraft to cover what I assumed was a technical delay – after all, we had a firm contract. Within a month, I was one and a half million pounds in debt, and the funding dried up completely.

I don’t know who was more suicidal: me facing bankruptcy, Gerry losing his reputation, or the lovely bank manager in Grey Street who had allowed an unsecured overdraft to get out of control.

So I threatened to sue the billionaire. He responded by sending in the heavies: eleven black-suited lawyers flew into London. They claimed their client knew nothing about the series, that a rogue underling had signed our contract without authority and moreover that, as this underling had used a limited liability subsidiary to do the deal, there was nothing we could do about it. It was the end.

I was summoned to meet the executioners. I left Gerry sitting gloomily in the production office, surrounded by Thunderbird models, waiting for the axe to fall.

Suddenly I had an idea. I’d read somewhere that in the States you can “pierce the corporate veil of limited liability” by proving that a director of one company had control over its subsidiary.

I ran to my office and frantically searched through my files. Eventually, tucked away in a drawer, I found a solitary fax from the underling, complaining about the colour we’d painted the scenery. He said it looked too gloomy, and asked us to brighten it up.

I shoved the fax into my pocket along with a few personal letters, including a note from my girlfriend reminding me to pick up the dry cleaning.

The meeting was brief. There was no discussion: they were pulling the plug. The suits closed their briefcases and prepared to leave. It was time to play my only card.

“But Mr X was not only a director of your client’s corporation, he also had influence over our production,” I said.

“Nonsense”, they snapped, “he had nothing to do with the filming.”

“Right down to the minutest details”, I went on, “like the colour of the scenery”. I slowly pulled out the fax from the pile of personal correspondence and began to read.

Just then, a curious thing happened. The lawyers opened their briefcases again.

“Mr Gutteridge, we’d like to take a ten minute break.”

Three hours later, they came back into the room with a cheque for three million pounds and a commitment for the remaining twenty-seven.

So if I tell you that earlier today I had a meeting with a nice man called Mort who says he’s going to pay for our new television series and turn it into a worldwide hit, you’ll understand I’m taking it with a pinch of salt. But Joanna and I, and Nancy the celebrity bagmaker, did split a bottle of champagne over dinner. Just in case.

The Hard Sell

Warning. Those of you prone to jealousy should turn away. As I write, I’m trying to stay cool as the California sun beats down on my computer. Remember warm air? We last experienced it in Northumberland in April 2007. For an hour or two.

I’m over here talking to broadcasters about one of the ideas we’ve been developing in our Byker office over the last few months. I’m pleased to say it’s getting a pretty good reception. When I say “good”, it means that they’ve politely sat through the DVD I’ve played them, rather than brusquely cutting me off with “Not for us, Tom. Anything else?” It means they quite like it, not that I can go out and buy a mansion in Beverly Hills. There’s a long, precarious path from pitching to production, about as arduous as the route to the pitching stage from the first glimmer of an idea.

At least this week’s experience is going more smoothly than my first terrifying pitch in the US years ago. Gerry Anderson (yes, Mr Thunderbird) and I wanted to make a sci-fi drama series called Space Precinct. Trouble was, it was going to cost around $36 million dollars and we didn’t have any money. So when a man rang me and asked if I’d like to go to New Orleans to take part in a “pitching seminar” at a convention of broadcasters I leapt at the chance of exciting a few buyers with our idea. As I walked towards the conference theatre, I heard a low roar not unlike a hundred thousand Romans preparing for the entry of the gladiators. The vast room was packed. What I hadn’t appreciated was that this was a pitching contest, a sport akin to bear baiting.

Four of us were given five minutes each to present our ideas, and then we were to be cross-examined, X-Factor style, by a group of judges each of whom made Simon Cowell look like a pussy cat. I was last to go. The previous entrant, a sweet French documentary producer called Natalie with a perfectly decent if rather Gallic idea, was already in tears. The other two sat red-faced and depressed, head in hands, two years’ development work torn apart in just ten minutes.

Chief inquisitor was Greg “Mr Nasty” Dyke, who was then head of London Weekend Television. Now Greg and I have a bit of a history. We were at university together and, I’m pleased to say, we are still quite good friends. But our relationship had hit a bit of a rocky patch after I’d competed against his company for the London television licence. Even though he won the bid, it took him years to forgive me. So that day he decided to take sweet revenge.

I played the showreel, which had cost months of preparation and not a little cash. Greg went straight for the jugular. “I can’t think of a network in Europe that would take it”. The other judges took his lead. My show was dead in the water.

Just then, an extraordinary thing happened. From the middle of the audience a man in an expensive suit stood up. “My name is Kloiber. I represent RTL 2”. It was Germany’s most important buyer.

“I would like to buy this series”.

There was a stunned silence. Then laughter. Surely he was joking? But with a wonderful Germanic wave of the hand, Herr Kloiber continued. “I would like to offer $100,000 per episode for a seven year licence”. Then wild applause, and a man from Tokyo stood up and made an offer for Japan. Within five minutes I had raised enough money to get the show into production.

Ah, such sweet memories, I think the sun has gone to my head. That’s the sort of thing that can happen in America. But for a show conceived in Byker?

Well, let’s see.

Another Angle on the Dead Judge

A friend of mine has sent me an extract from Hugh Massingberd's autobiography "Daydream Believer" which augments and corroborates my earlier recollection about the day on the BBC's Nationwide when a lady dressed as a judge fainted in front of millions of viewers. He writes of a genealogist friend called Patrick Montague-Smith who

"appeared on the television magazine programme Nationwide to discuss forms of address. The production team had hit on the wheeze of lining up a collection of suitably robed and ermined 'extras' for Patrick and the presenter to hail. Unfortunately, just as the two of them approached a heavily bewigged lady judge, this worthy began to sway alarmingly and then fell down in a faint at Patrick's feet. The learned genealogist blinked and glanced at the presenter, who anxiously motioned him forward. Without a word, Patrick and the presenter then proceeded to step gingerly over the prostrate female form before continuing their discourse on the finer points of etiquette."

Which makes my error, as the director of the said disaster, even more execrable.

Dancing on Thin Ice

In my day the Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on a spinning wheel. Last week at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, the evil Carabosse wheeled on an eight foot high cactus to ensnare the princess. It was part of choreographer Ashley Page’s ongoing quest to popularize the classics, and confuse countless little girls in the process. In the interval I heard “Mummy, what were Red Riding Hood and Snow White doing in the forest? And why was the Prince rolling around on top of that blue man?”

Poor Sleeping Beauty has been interfered with countless times since Petipa first choreographed her in 1890. I confess I’ve been a culprit too. After my first venture into ice ballet with Torvill and Dean’s Fire and Ice, ITV asked me to film Sleeping Beauty with Robin Cousins. And before you ask, no, Robin was the Prince. The Princess was an American figure skater with a weight problem. Except that I didn’t know about it until after I cast her.

Now it’s one thing for a ballet company to advertise Sleeping Beauty and wait for a few punters to show up; it’s quite another to expect nine million viewers to sit through three hours of Tchaikovsky. So I got together with one of the UK’s foremost conductors, Bramwell Tovey, who at that time was Music Director at Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet, and together we cut out the boring bits. As a result, we lost the entire first act, and started off with the best tune, which is normally in Act 2.

Bramwell and I performed this act of desecration one Saturday afternoon in my living room, with Tchaikovsky’s score spread over the carpet, a large pair of scissors, some sellotape and several bottles of red wine. We even used a few bits from Nutcracker to paper over the gaps. The result was like Sleeping Beauty on Acid, an all-action version with plenty of space for triple axles and other gymnastics. Then, armed with one of America’s top choreographers, Lar Lubovitch, we set off for Norwich to shoot it in an aircraft hangar large enough for a castle, a village, an enchanted forest – and a spinning wheel.

Now last week’s Princess Aurora (played by Japanese dancer Tomomi Sato) was so tiny, slight and young-looking, the Prince could have been arrested for child abduction. When our Princess arrived in Norwich she looked a couple of stone overweight and the costume lady threw a fit. According to her agent, our star had boyfriend problems which had led to a compulsion for Mars Bars, but we were assured she would shed the weight before filming. As the deadline loomed and the enormous set neared completion, the costume lady came to me in tears saying she was running out of elasticated fabric. Then, as if by magic, the waistline receded, to be replaced by another problem. Our star had become close with one of the skaters. He was called John Thomas, which just about says it all. Princess Aurora came onto the set so exhausted every morning that she could scarcely put her skates on.

Then the snows came. February storms engulfed Norfolk and with the temperature outside at minus six, we had a power cut and the ice melted. By the end of the shoot, Cousins and the team were skating through a swamp and the spinning wheel bobbed about like a boat. When skaters fell over, their costumes were covered in slushy mud. That’s the glamour of television for you.

So it was a delight to see the Scottish Ballet’s efforts this week. All in all, theirs was a splendid camp romp, but you’ve got to feel for any dancer trying to cope with the Theatre Royal’s tiny stage. The orchestra filled half the stalls and when the whole company came on, I’m not sure they didn’t outnumber the audience. I don’t know what the public subsidy per seat is for the Scottish Ballet. I just hope it’s Scottish taxpayers who are paying for our gratification.

Love Conquers All -- Even Divorce

As the McCartney/Mills divorce hearing drags into a second week, you can’t help but wish that the two of them would just step outside, grab a couple of green teas in Starbucks, and sort it out between them.

Of course that’s hardly likely. Once divorce reaches the courts, both partners are usually so blind to common sense that they stand and fight over the tiniest of details. I know, to my own shame and cost.

I used McCartney’s divorce firm, Payne Hicks Beach, in all three of my own settlements. They’re great solicitors (they represented Prince Charles), but boy do those bills hurt. Whoever said that in divorce no one wins but the lawyers certainly hit the nail on the proverbial head. Having accumulated a mountain of incendiary letters with claim and counter claim, my first wife and I one day woke up to the absurdity of decimating the family’s assets in this way. So we literally went for a coffee, found a sheet of paper, and agreed the whole thing in twenty minutes. As a result, she and I remain the best of friends and neither of us felt shortchanged.

By contrast my most recent experience involved four sets of lawyers in two continents and lasted two bitter years, twice the length of the marriage. Because I was living in California I fought for and won the right to have the hearing in Los Angeles, in the very same Superior Court where poor Britney Spears has been having her custody battles.

Unlike Britain, divorce in California isn’t about blame or apportionment; it’s based on the simple principle that marriage is an equal partnership. Everything earned by either party during the marriage is deemed “community property” and therefore jointly owned by both sides. On the other hand, any assets that predated the marriage are the property of the person who owned them before the knot was tied. This applies to everything from the CD collection to the toaster.

Now that’s clean, clear and very fair. It doesn’t matter that one party earns a million dollars a month and the other stays at home and buys shoes, the consequence of getting married is that what’s ours is ours and what was yours stays yours. This is based on quite an idealistic view of the institution of marriage. If two hearts become one, you can hardly complain if the proceeds of that relationship are split down the middle.

By contrast, our British system is antiquated, arbitrary and unfair, and has become a gold digger’s charter, creating a strong disincentive for a man with any saved cash or property to get married at all.

Even under the Californian system, the division of chattels was stressful. I had to go to court to win custody of my own dog. One national tabloid reported the story with the headline “Woof Justice For Tess”.

Tess was a delightful but not terribly bright cocker spaniel. In the heat of divorce she became a symbol of our utter irrationality. After months of haggling, my ex-wife and I were still about $100,000 apart. So, in order to get the matter settled and to avoid the astronomical costs of a court hearing, I offered her a choice: an extra $100,000 or the dog. It seemed to me a no-brainer, and I expected to walk away with the most expensive pooch in the world. Instead, the wife chose the dog, and I kept the hundred grand. Later I happily spent four hundred pounds of it on Truffle, another lovely spaniel who’s infinitely brighter and symbol of an altogether more successful relationship.

Indeed, walking with Joanna through Paris on our fourth Valentine’s Day, I now wonder what the fuss was all about. Love certainly conquers all, and I sincerely hope that by this time next year Paul and Heather will have found theirs and put memories of this degrading nightmare behind them.

Crowd Control

Watching Clinton and Obama slugging it out over the weekend it’s pretty clear that it matters not what they say, but how they say it. Their policies are pretty much identical, but Obama’s ability to whip up a crowd is awe-inspiring. Provided it’s the right crowd. Obama has the edge with affluent intellectuals, but is failing to convince the white working-class. Meanwhile they’re both adjusting their rhetoric to avoid alienating entrenched minority groups. These days politics is all about compromise.

I first discovered the power of the pressure group when I was invited to the annual general meeting of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. They wanted me accept the rather dubious accolade of “Programme of the Year” for Challenge Anneka. I’d decided to go along after receiving a personal note from Mary Whitehouse saying she considered it “good wholesome entertainment”.

The ceremony was held in one of those dusty London gentlemen’s clubs, full of toad in the hole and prejudice. As I had no idea what to expect, I wrote no acceptance speech, but thought I could wing it with a few thanks to my mother and the crew. However, when I arrived, Mrs Whitehouse shook me warmly by the hand and said she’d be grateful if I could keep my remarks to fifteen minutes because the Home Secretary would be speaking after me and he had to get back to a cabinet meeting.

So, grabbing a sheet of club notepaper and a stiff gin and tonic, I set about penning a few notes. The membership arrived with hats, Harris Tweed and sherry. I was glad I wore my suit. I appeared to be about half the age of the youngest there, apart from two scruffy 20-year-olds whom I assumed were media students.

After the preliminaries I was ushered to the stage where a large phallic silver object awaited me. As I surveyed the assembly, I was amazed that this little group of women’s institute and bowls club stereotypes had managed to become such a thorn in the side of the BBC. I began by thanking them, then said how pleased I was that the BBC had placed the show on Saturday nights because it could be enjoyed by the whole family.

At that moment, I heard a low rumble. The bowls club was clearing its collective throat. Then I heard a shrill “Hear, Hear” from the back.

“Using the power of television for public good…” I went on, and the crumbly audience began to sit forward in their seats expectantly. The hastily scribbled notes now discarded, I got into my stride, and rambled on about the rebirth of family entertainment. The rumble had now become a roar. At the end of every sentence there was round of applause. I was playing the crowd like a Pentecostal preacher. Or a politician.

When it was Michael Howard’s turn, the congregation was already warmed up. But no sooner had he reached the end of his first paragraph, as if on cue the two “students” stood up and began to heckle. Instantly things turned nasty. Within a nano-second, the entire audience starting hissing, burly bouncers had seized the “intruders”, and a photographer was recording the event in time for the newspaper deadlines. In fifteen seconds it was over, and to this day I can’t decide if the whole thing wasn’t a sinister set-up.

Of course, this is what most of politics is all about these days: harnessing prejudice. Which explains the total panic amongst right wing republicans when they realized that John McCain might not be using quite the right words in his speeches. At least now, whoever wins the nomination, the democrats are going to be offering America something new, and there’s a real revival in public interest as a result. Which is more than can be said for our politics over here.

Lunch with The Tap Dancing Millionaire

It’s just a month since my New Year’s resolution, and things aren’t going at all well. Keith Hann, my adversary in the battle of the diets, has gloatingly emailed me that he’s down to 14 stone 9 pounds. This puts me five pounds behind, and that’s not counting a wonderful dinner at Seaham Hall on Saturday night. As it was my suggestion that we undertake this ludicrous challenge, it’s particularly galling, particularly as Hann’s email arrived in the middle of a rather hearty lunch with my old friend Richard Stilgoe.

Stilgoe, he of the witty songs, has done incredibly well since I was his producer on Nationwide. He and I collaborated on all those musical sketches, like the barber shop quartet, where he played all four characters simultaneously and one Stilgoe shaved another’s beard off. We also made a little DIY series called Oddjob, with helpful hints for the hopelessly inept. I still have a couple of copies of the book of the series with my name on the cover, which Joanna thinks is a huge joke because she knows just how unhandy I really am, whereas Richard built his own house. Later we made a couple of comedy series together, including A Kick Up The Eighties, the programme that discovered Tracey Ullman and Rik Mayall.

Despite having a name that is an anagram of Giscard O’Hitler, Richard is one of the world’s really nice chaps, and he finally struck gold when Andrew Lloyd Webber hired him to write lyrics for Cats. He went on to pen the whole of Starlight Express, and nearly half of Phantom of the Opera. Yet, despite the massive royalty cheques which flow in to this day, and which could have seen him with more Ferraris and bling than the whole of Darras Hall, he has chosen to keep his feet on the ground and gives most of his wealth to various worthy charities. Well, I say his feet are on the ground: they haven’t been since January 1st, and this is where I got really depressed.

Apparently Richard’s new year’s resolution was to take up tap dancing. In contrast to my own utter lack of resolve, Richard has really gone for it, and now he’s paddling and rolling and shim-sham-shimmying like a true pro.

The thought of Richard, who’s 65 this year, queuing up for tap classes with all the lissom young dancers at the Pineapple Dance Studios really makes me smile. I can’t imagine him in a leotard (I’ve only ever seen him in a sports jacket and tie). He told me that even though he’s three times the age of most people there he’s very comfortable in his tap shoes, and only slightly disconcerted by the overtures of some of the men.

I’ve been to Pineapple Dance Studios many times, holding auditions for the various dance shows I produced in the 80’s, like The Hot Shoe Show with Wayne Sleep and Bonnie Langford. Surrounded by the slender and bendy, at first I used to hold my tummy in: then I decided looking like Orson Welles made me more glamorous, so I let it all hang out. Dance auditions are the cruelest sport. The bright young things arrive full of hope, having spent an hour or more travelling in from the suburbs. As a producer, it takes you on average 12 seconds to make a decision. “Thank you so much, next please”. Twenty at a time.

Meanwhile, I’ve managed to uncover Hann’s secret diet. Forget the fitness regime and slimming aids, he’s using the new “No-D” diet. He’s given up dinner. No wonder he’s winning the contest, the poor chap must be starving. No chance I’m going to follow his lead, living with Joanna, who is an excellent cook. Besides, I’m dutifully doing what The Journal commands, and Eating Local. In fact, I’m eating for the whole of Tynedale. So if I lose the diet challenge on Easter Day, I can now blame the Journal's Editor. Anyway, I’m fighting back. Inspired by Stilgoe’s hoofing, I’ve hit the Matfen Hall gym big time. No photos please, and I’m certainly not releasing a slimming video.

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.