Television Is Dead...

On Saturday night at the Sage in Gateshead the North East’s media elite assembled for the annual Royal Television Society Awards. It wasn’t quite the Oscars, but it was still an impressive shindig, with nearly 600 guests, ranging from veteran producers and local celebrities, to hopeful media students. Every UK region holds its own television awards ceremony, but ours is by far the largest, an astonishing fact considering our producers make the least number of programmes.

Last week Northern Film & Media, our local screen agency, launched a campaign to save our local production industry. It's not a moment too soon. They showed us some pretty bleak statistics: Wales, with a population only slightly larger than ours, produces thousands of hours for the UK’s broadcasting networks, whereas we produce almost none. In this region we fork out £134 million a year in licence fees, but the BBC commissions not a single North East network programme. It’s a shameful state of affairs. This region has creative talent spilling out of every pore, but its television industry is invisible in the national marketplace.

Blame for this decline has been laid largely at the door of ITV; I’m not sure this is fair. I think I know how the rot set in. It was in 1992 when, as newly elected chair of the film and television producer’s body PACT, I decided to launch a campaign for regional production.

I guess it was mainly guilt. Having been brought up on Tyneside, and leaving to join the BBC at the age of 21, it didn’t occur to me to return to my roots to work in the region. Like so many northern professionals, ambition and family had settled me in London, but I wanted to do something for my colleagues back home, because I knew how hard it was for them to breach the walls of Television Centre to get their ideas commissioned. Here I was in London, with hundreds of hours of juicy programmes, and my regional colleagues were getting the scraps.

So almost the first thing I did as chairman was ring up John Birt, who had just become the BBC’s director-general. I’ll never forget the call, or the circumstances. I was in The Ivy (where else??), and he called me back after I'd left a message with his assistant. I'm only setting the context, because what he told me on the phone was so utterly shocking I can still picture myself reeling with disappointment against the wooden panelling. I told John that we wanted the BBC to do something to increase the commissions for producers from outside London. He replied, “It’s not the BBC’s job to protect regional production; that’s what ITV is for”. I probably ordered a very large glass of champagne to calm me down.

That simple sentence sounded the first death knell for regional producers. As if to underline his point, shortly afterwards he closed down all the thriving local BBC features departments, the source of wonderful local programmes over the years, and more importantly the training ground for budding producers, directors and cameramen who, by an unfortunate quirk of fate, found themselves born north of Watford. The features department used to have direct links to the networks; now all BBC regional programmes were to come through the news division. Basically, if it wasn't a factual documentary which fitted in with the news agenda, they weren't interested. No entertainment, no features, and certainly no drama or music programmes. It was the beginning of the end.

This response fired our regional campaign, which we won hands down: the BBC was forced to set aside 30% of all its production spend for non-London producers, and in 1998 this quota was extended to Channel Four. But despite having an obligation to commission, the BBC accepted no responsibility for maintaining the supply chain. It had already destroyed its regional infrastructure of training and support that was essential to nurture local producers into the network fold, and it didn't offer anything in exchange.

Leaving the job to ITV ultimately proved disastrous: for when Tyne Tees was bought by Yorkshire, and then both became part of Granada, it was inevitable that network production would be focused on the larger companies, rather than the remoter corners of the empire. As a network force, the home of The Tube, Highway, Supergran, and hundreds of hours of network production, including quality drama, the spirit of Tyne Tees withered away. They shut their big network studios on City Road and moved their
news operation into an office block in an industrial park.

From then on Tyne Tees could only offer our producers a meagre supply of local documentaries (produced on budgets less than 10% of network prices). A friend of mine has made 30 documentaries over the last few years for Tyne Tees at an average budget of just £12,000. Last year I made a single non-broadcast pilot for a network show which cost £600,000. And I doubt the series will ever be made. That's the chasm between us.

Local producers have worked wonders with these derisory resources, but recently the axe fell on even this small consolation. ITV is no longer commissioning local documentaries, so from now on they’re on their own.

So on Saturday night, as the final batch of regional programmes competed against each other and Wire in the Blood received its last ever nomination for Best Drama, there was anxious talk across the ham and pease pudding canapés about the future.

Yet, amazingly, it wasn’t all gloom; there was a real determination to fight on together. One well known actress from Emmerdale stood up on stage and issued a rallying cry for us to keep on going, even though by then she'd clearly had more than a couple of glasses of RTS champagne, she brought the house down. It was a theme echoed by all the award-winners throughout the evening.

Our producers now need the support of all our politicians and opinion formers. The creative industries will be the heart of what the government proudly calls Digital Britain; it’s vital that our region will be part of that future. Watch this space.

My Censored Newspaper Column

[My usual weekly column in Newcastle's daily newspaper The Journal didn't appear this morning. My editor gave me the following explanation:

"Tom, I've decided not to print your column tomorrow. Disparaging newspapers and those who write for them should not be the work of Journal writers, however contemplative they intend to be."

For my regular readers, here's what you missed.]

The problem with writing a newspaper column is the deadline. I’d love to be writing on Monday morning as you read this, so you can know my thoughts about things that are happening right now (your right now, not mine, because my right now will have happened several hours ago).

I mean, who knows what excitement could have occurred in the intervening hours while The Journal’s presses are churning away and the vans drive through the city to your newsagent. Another of our banks (yes, the banks we now own) could have accidentally lost us another £8 billion; a third plane could have nosedived into a city; Gordon Brown could have smiled (unlikely, I know, but hey, it’s been a surprising few weeks).

But I guess if you really wanted to know what I was doing or thinking right now, we’d be using Twitter. There, I’ve said it: the T-Word. I’ve absolutely no idea how or where you “twitter”, or why it’s called “twitter”, but everyone I speak to is talking about it, if not actually twittering, so I thought I’d mention it this week to be part of the club. Obama twits (or is it tweets?), and so do Ross and Fry. It’s a social networking thing where the only communication you have with your friends is telling them what you are doing or thinking. In 140 characters or less. On your mobile phone. Goodness, modern life is exciting. How did we live before Twitter?

So, What Am I Doing Now?

"I’m actually writing these thoughts in the contented afterglow of Valentine’s Day."

That was only 81 characters, so I’ll add: "With 3 of my 5 children, including baby Izzy, and partner Jo."

Somehow the space restriction doesn’t encourage a satisfactory reflection of my feelings of bliss engendered by watching the family playing together, separated by three marriages and 27 years; or my continuing amazement at Joanna’s beauty as she smiles at baby Izzy snuffling at her breast. My world is now complete, the ultimate Valentine’s present. It’s enough to stimulate the green shoots in a recession.

Speaking of which, I know something good is on the way the way because of the tweets. Not the messages sent on Twitter (which really are called tweets), but the birds in our wood, which have gone quite twittery over the last two days. They know it’s soon to be the end of this cold, heartless winter. And according to the man in the country store, loud tweeting means early Spring.

I’m surprised I’m feeling so positive. On Thursday night I was at a dinner party with the leaders of quite a few media organisations, and, gloves off, we all said what we really felt about the recession. Gloom doesn’t describe the collective feeling. The consensus was that we’ve seen nothing yet and it’s going to get a great deal worse. It’s enough to make you go off and live in a farmhouse in faraway Northumberland. Which, as luck would have it, I do.

But the assembled gathering also felt that, aside from utter cowardice of our bankers, what’s really holding back those green shoots is public confidence. We’ve all got our heads under the duvet, waiting for winter to end, and until we pop them out and tweet like my birds, it never will. It was also felt that the last people to spot the upturn will be the journalists, and especially the newspaper columnists. News likes gloomy; good news doesn’t sell papers.

So as soon as I’ve worked out how to do it, I’m going to get Twitter. Because I want to know what real people are doing and thinking right now – not the bankers and politicians and journalists. Because that’s the key to the end of this recession. And the moment there are some positive vibrations floating around I’ll let you know. Albeit a few hours later.

[As you will surmise, the reference to journalists was actually made by others at the dinner, attended by some senior broadcasters, publishers and journalists, together with a number of academics. Because it was a small private dinner held under Chatham House rules, I can't reveal who said what. These thoughts are also echoed to a certain extent in an article on Twitter in today's Media Guardian - where it's revealed that switched on journalists are now using Twitter to get information about popular culture and the mood of society.

In one way, I'm rather relieved this wasn't published, as the piece is far from my best work. I suspect that familial contentment doesn't make for spicy writing. However, I don't really see where the slight against journalists appears, other than my cheap and unnecessary cliche about good news not selling papers. I don't actually believe this axiom, particularly not in the case of The Journal, which provides an excellent service for the North East and specialises in front page splashes about major local achievements. It also holds celebratory campaigns for the good things about life in the North, like its food and many natural assets.

However my real point, albeit sloppily made, is about the social climate, and how we can spot changes in what people want and think if we keep or ears to the ground; it's a theme mentioned elsewhere in this blog, for I believe that one of the primary jobs of a television producer (and also a journalist) is to sense the popular zeitgeist in advance. After all, we're pitching shows which won't be seen for a year or two, and we want them to be enjoyed - so predicting public taste and fashion is part of the job. As a consequence searching for green shoots in these dark days is an important goal - we can't rely on the house price index or unemployment figures. These indicators reflect what has already happened. What's interesting is what is happening now - and that's where Twitter could come in handy.

Incidentally, one person at the dinner suggested that it should be the BBC's role to provide uplifting content for the nation in its hour of need, rather as the British film industry tried to do in the 30's. I pointed out that at least one country in Europe had an alternative solution to the depression, which was fascism. Perhaps more episodes of Strictly Come Dancing might have a positive effect. Or maybe Bruce Forsyth should become our Fuhrer.]

Selina Scott to the Rescue

Seeing the ruins of Lord Steven’s garden fence beneath my dented car on Monday night, I was reminded me of another fence I mangled some 25 years ago.

In 1984 I had a little red sports car, a Mazda RX7, which I used to drive at absurd speeds whenever I had the opportunity. At that time I was still working for the BBC, producing a BBC1 dance series called The Hot Shoe Show, with Wayne Sleep and Bonnie Langford. That series had brought me into contact with Andrew Lloyd Webber for the first time, and I’d just directed a video of his musical Song and Dance. The Hot Shoe Show was in its second season, and had an incredibly complex and exhausting schedule, but I still said yes when Andrew asked me if I’d moonlight to direct a video of Unexpected Song with his new wife Sarah Brightman. So it was that after a long day in the office in Shepherds Bush, I’d hit the M4 and drive over to Sydmonton, his Victorian pile on the edge of Watership Down in Berkshire to plan the shoot.

As I’ve never been one to knowingly arrive early for anything, I used to force my Mazda to ridiculous speeds in order to make up time once the road had emptied itself of rush hour traffic. Just after Reading there’s a stretch of motorway which runs without an exit for about 13 miles. It must be one of the most boring stretches of motorway in the country.

One evening I was cruising in the fast lane at well over a hundred miles an hour, and I was about ten minutes from the Newbury turning to Andrew’s house. I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open and had to turn the air vent onto my face to stop myself nodding off.

Then I felt a bump, and blinked hard. A pair of Wellington boots was flying in slow motion past my windscreen, followed by a kettle, some large lady’s underwear, and then, held weightless in suspension as if in a space capsule, a cloud of small household items. It turned out to be the contents of a small white caravan which I’d apparently shunted up the rear, and which had managed to absorb some of the impact of my car. Over what seemed like about thirty seconds (but in truth must have been a fraction of this time, for the adrenalin in a road accident causes everything apparently slow to a snails pace) I pushed caravan and its unfortunate owner off the road. The driver of the other car and his wife, quietly motoring to a week’s holiday in Devon, must have had no warning. One moment they were gently pootling in the middle lane, as caravan owners tend to, oblivious to everything else but the Archers on the radio, the next they were being pushed out of control towards the hard shoulder.

I’ve driven this stretch of road many times since, and I’m amazed at the narrow escape we all had. At the point where the accident happened there’s a steep ravine to the left of the road. Immediately afterwards there’s an equally steep embankment about a hundred feet high. In between the two runs a small ramp of grass and trees, like a sliproad no more than ten feet wide. One second earlier and we’d have been over the ravine, with a fall of into the river below; a second later and we’d have hit the hill and overturned. As luck would have it, with just a couple of feet on either side, my car pushed us all up this narrow ramp. Slowed down by some newly planted trees, we came to rest at the edge of a field. I can still picture the broken fence post in front of me, and the steam pouring from my bonnet.

I got out of the car, and went to check the others. Luckily noone was hurt, but the caravan had disintegrated and both cars were written off.

“What happened?”, said the confused driver, a man in his 50s who worked for the gas board. Avoiding the temptation to apologise and say I must have fallen asleep and driven into his mobile sitting room, I merely repeated, “What happened?”

Together we made our way down to the motorway. Traffic had come to a halt as people stopped to gape at the carnage. Except there was no carnage, just two cars and a few bits of tangled metal in a field.

“What happened?” The words spread round the onlookers. Someone found a bit of white caravan by the roadside with a blue scratch on the side. Then someone else said he had seen a blue van drive off after the accident. And then the police arrived.

They were terribly polite. They took our details, examined the debris and called for a tow truck to extricate our cars from the field. By now the “witnesses” had embellished the story. Apparently a blue van, going much too fast, had struck the caravan and knocked it into the side of my car, pushing both vehicles off the road. The policemen nodded, and wrote things into their notebooks. They radioed the details of the blue van. I kept quiet.

“And what do you do, sir?” one of them asked.

“I work in television”.

His notebook closed. He lowered his voice and said into my ear, “Do you by any chance know Selina Scott?” Selina was in those days the host of BBC Breakfast News and by far the most desirable female celebrity in Britain: to police officers, anyway.

“Actually, I do – we worked in the same department for a while”.

“Do you think you could get her autograph?”

“I’m sure there’s no problem, officer.”

We were standing beside a smashed motorway marker sign. Coincidentally, it appeared to be exactly the same colour as the blue scratch down the side of the bits of caravan. The same blue as the missing van. The policeman studied it carefully, and wrote something down in his book.

Just then the tow truck dragged my car out of the field. It came to rest beside us. There, embossed on my rubber front bumper, was the imprint of the number plate of the caravan. Clearly my car had struck it precisely in the rear.

The policeman frowned and turned to me again. “Of course, sir, if you hadn’t been hit by that blue van; if, dare I say it, you had fallen asleep at the wheel, and you’d driven into the back of that poor couple’s caravan, now that would be quite serious. It would in fact be called dangerous driving.”

I nodded sadly, as more bits of broken blue sign were extracted from the remains of the caravan.

“Could I have a private word, Sir?”

The policeman led me up the side of the motorway.

“The thing about dangerous driving is, that it’s incredibly difficult to prove. Usually, it’s just not worth our time. Now, are you absolutely sure that you can get Selina Scott’s autograph?”

Two months later I got a letter from Thames Valley police. It apologised for the fact that they had been unable to trace the third party in my unfortunate accident on the M4: despite exhaustive enquiries they were unable to find the blue van.

That was my first and last road accident. Until last Monday, that is. Tomorrow I take the Volvo into the “Mill Car Clinic” for an estimate. It’s been an expensive week.

[By the way, regular readers of this blog might like to know that you can "follow" its contents regularly by clicking on the Follow This Blog link on the right. Or you can "subscribe" by clicking on the appropriate link. Or post a comment - I'd appreciate your feedback.]

How Not to Drive Down a Hill

I have no sympathy for those thousands of motorists caught in snowstorms over the last week. I mean, why on earth does anyone go for a drive in a blizzard, playing chicken with the emergency services? – they deserve a good dose of hypothermia. It’s no use blaming the councils for running out of grit, people should be at home watching Newsnight rather than selfishly obliging nice innocent villagers to unlock their community halls and heat up bowls of soup in the middle of the night.

There’s something about bad weather that brings out the worst in men. Yes, men, for I doubt many women would be stupid enough to venture out in conditions like these. But no, a man has to get out his 4x4 and show it off.

On Monday night, just as a white blanket was descending over our valley, I decided to visit my Mother. “Don’t come,” she warned, “you’ll never get down the hill”. “Don’t be absurd, Mum”, I laughed, “the Volvo has four wheel drive.” “You’ll still never get down the hill,” she droned. “I’ll be fine; I’ve got a special button called Hill Descent Control. You just press it and take your foot off the brake.” “Off the brake? You’re mad; you’ll end up in the river.” “Mum, the engine torque holds back the weight of the car”, I added, without the slightest clue of what I was saying.

The white road snaked into the darkness below. My Hill Descent Control button has a picture of a car confidently gliding down the side of an alpine peak. I pressed it and led the shiny new Volvo into the abyss. 10 jerky seconds later, I realised that this had all been a huge mistake. It must be a sensation felt across the nation this week, especially by those morons in Devon who thought they could make it safely up the A38 before the snow was up to their windscreens. It’s been a great week for bodyshop repair companies. Halfway down the hill, I knew there was no way my two ton monster would make the turn into Mum’s drive; the powdery white surface was the frosting on a cake of pure ice.

Mum was wrong about one thing, though: I didn’t end up in the river. This was thanks only to a huge gatepost connected to an even larger gate, along with about twenty feet of perfectly good fencing. All of which belonged to the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens, and which currently lie in pieces somewhere near his front porch. He was terribly nice about it. Lady Stevens took photographs as Britain’s most distinguished policeman and I tried to tug a ten-foot fence plank out of my chassis; it had somehow managed to drive itself into the fog light and out of the other side of the car, so the Volvo resembled a gazelle impaled by an Assegai spear.

He’s a decent bloke that John Stevens. Apart from blaming his road for being too icy, and his gate for being shut, neither of which were any justification for an event caused by my customary stubbornness and refusal to listen to my mother’s good advice, it was obvious there was no way my all-weather XC70 was going to get out of his front drive until the thaws came, so he gave me a lift home, and on the way demonstrated how a real expert drives on ice. I felt about 12 years old.

The last time I destroyed a fence was 30 years ago, on the M4. That time I was rescued by Selina Scott. To be precise, I escaped arrest by promising the boys of the Thames Valley police a signed photograph of their favourite newsreader. It’s a shameful story, which I couldn’t possibly repeat here. But if you really want the full confessional, see my next post.

Immorality In Immingham

I went to Immingham on Friday. It’s not what you’d call a destination resort. You drive forever across a flat landscape. Then you see two dozen thin chimneys sticking up through the horizon, like cardboard models. You can smell them long before you arrive. It must be like living in a petrol station.

Local people are quick to defend their oil refineries. They say I should have arrived by night, because then they’re lit up like Disneyworld. On Friday morning it all looked post-Apocalytic. Immingham is not a place to go for your holidays; especially if you’re Italian. I wasn’t there to see the refinery, but to visit the community television station.

Immingham has a great sense of community. The studio is the only purpose-built local station in the country. It’s a fantastic resource: yesterday they were telling you how to keep fit while walking your dog. And on their dog cookery programme, they were making doggy pizzas. With unemployment in North Lincolnshire up by 47% in the last year, there’s plenty of time to walk your dog.

I’d set my car’s sat-nav to the postcode of the television station, and it took me the pretty route, right past the Total site. It looked like a film set. Blue flashing lights and no-entry barriers. An enormous crowd swarming round the gates. That was just the press. There were cameras on ladders, scaffolding, in helicopters in the sky, and hundreds of men with rather polite placards, like “In the Wise Words of Gordon Brown: UK jobs for British Workers”.

The sat-nav led me through the town, bored seagulls resting on lampposts, into a painfully shabby council housing estate, and deposited me outside someone’s front door. I could see the studio building across their back garden, so made my way round to the Immingham Resource Centre and Museum. The car park was full of police backup vehicles. The town was quiet as a morgue.

It is about as far removed as you could get from bustle of bankers’ wives shopping in the boutiques of Davos. Not a big demand for Prada on the Humber. Those world leaders and economists should get themselves to Immingham to smell the coffee. Or, rather, the oil products.

Already the politicians are condemning the protests. Of course these strikes are indefensible: the Italians’ bid was cheaper; under EU law, Total had every right to add a few cents to its share price by going with the stingy option. By all means ignore any corporate responsibility for the existing workforce, just allow your sub-contractor to moor a boatload of Italian workers in Grimsby docks, while the Immingham unemployed stay at home to watch dog-cooking videos. Let them look out of their peeling windows at the giant plant, built by their fathers in the 70s, which is, and always has been, their only source of income. A quarter of Humberside lives in abject poverty, but how could that non-global fact make any sense to the subcontractor in California who weighed up the bids and chose the Italian option. Why should a multi-national have a heart?

When Brown made his “British jobs for British workers” speech in 2007, I actually agreed with him, despite the risk of sounding like a member of the BNP. Local does matter. On Friday night Gordon Ramsay tried to cure a downturn in one of his protégé restaurants by gathering together hundreds of townsfolk, a local farmer, butcher and the restaurant owner in an effort to persuade them all to forsake the chains and go local. It was a neat, logical circle, and it worked. Mandelson calls it protectionism. But in these times, the global economy has let us all down, and the pitiless and cynical, albeit logical and legal, way in which Total treated its loyal community down in Immingham must be a sign that things have to change.

No Win Situation

When I joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1973, the first thing our instructor said to us six wet behind the ears young hopefuls was, “I expect one of you to become Director-General in a few years’ time”. I’m sure our newly graduated arrogance caused us to smirk with ambition, and indeed one of us, Tony Hall, nearly pipped Greg Dyke to the top spot a few years back. Today I couldn’t imagine a worse assignment.

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Mark Thompson decided not to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee calling for donations to its Gaza relief fund, and now all hell has broken loose. His logic is that putting out the advert would undermine public confidence in the impartiality of the BBC. The result has been an outcry, with politicians, journalists, and even the BBC’s own staff, calling the decision weak, a serious error, or just plain wrong. Ben Bradshaw, the Health Minister, who used to be a reporter on Radio 4’s The World At One, said “This is a humanitarian catastrophe and I am afraid the reasons given by the BBC are completely feeble”. Even Phil Harding, the former BBC Controller of Policy (or, as we used to call him, Head of the Thought Police), who actually wrote the BBC’s editorial guidelines, says that although it’s a tough call, Thompson misjudged this one. I have to say, I agree.

Israel is, and always has been, the BBC’s hot potato. Constantly accused of bias on both sides, the BBC actually admitted it got it wrong (together with most of the world’s media) in 2005 over its overemotional (and consequently pro-Palestinian) coverage of the Israel attacks on Lebanon. That’s why this time it’s determined to get it right. The BBC says that by broadcasting the DEC appeal it might be seen to be backing Palestinians rather than Israelis as victims of the Gaza conflict. Consequently it’s now being accused of bias in favour of Israel. The Director-General can do no right.

The BBC’s mistake is that suggesting that broadcasting what is palpably a humanitarian, not a political appeal, might in some way confuse its viewers. This is condescending to the extreme. Does he serious believe that you and I will mistake it as some kind of pro-Hamas rant? This is an appeal by an umbrella group of 13 British humanitarian aid organisations, from Oxfam to Save the Children, to help children and innocent civilians whom, everyone agrees, are enduring the most appalling conditions. The money isn’t for the rebuilding of Gaza: that will presumably be funded by the Syrians and Iranians, who supplied the rockets that Hamas have been firing into undefended Israeli towns for the last six years. Whether or not Israel used disproportionate force against a civilian population, or Hamas used those civilians as human shields, is utterly irrelevant. Urgent aid is needed now, and these organisations need our cash as soon as they can get it.

The DEC was set up in 1963 to respond to extreme humanitarian emergency overseas. That such an emergency now exists is fact: it’s even accepted by the Israelis themselves, which is why organisations like Labour Friends of Israel are calling for the broadcast to go ahead. The scale of suffering is greater than anyone first thought; meanwhile the BBC insults the intelligence of its own viewers by suggesting they cannot distinguish between fact and propaganda.

As the Archbishop of York said at the weekend, this is not a row about impartiality, but about humanity. By the way, if you do want to donate, DEC’s phone number is 0370 60 60 900.

Boom Bang a Bang

Poor Diane Warren must be wondering what she’s let herself in for. One of the world’s most successful songwriters (she wrote Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time, and Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart), she now has the tough task of lowering her game to pen the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Eurovision song. Ms Warren is an odd choice: apart from being American (couldn’t they find a British songwriter good enough for a show called Your Country Needs You?) she’s been dubbed Queen of the Ballad. Although she claims never to have been in love she has prompted more lovers to weep into their cappuccinos than any other songwriter. I doubt a ballad will set the right tone in Moscow; most successful Eurovision entries tend to be bland, poppy numbers that get the Balkans swaying over their slivovitz. The day after our disastrous Eurofiasco last year, when Britain came last, I wrote that even if the great Lloyd Webber were persuaded to donate a song, we still wouldn’t triumph. In a few months we’ll find out if I was right.

I’m intrigued to know if Andrew had a song in reserve when he agreed to do this, rather than, as the television programme is suggesting, genuinely composing the thing during the series. I suspect the former, as Andrew has sporadic moments of sheer genius and never throws away a good tune. I do hope this is the case, for I doubt he’ll be able to draw much inspiration from the unexciting group of wannabes who are still left in the BBC contest. He even said of the sub-cruise-ship act he “saved” this week, Emperors of Soul, that “they would absolutely entertain us in any cabaret club”, a plaudit more damning than anything Simon Cowell could dream up.

I’m privileged to have watched the master at work at his creative best. Having been asked to direct a television version of his musical Song and Dance I fully expected to be working with the original star Marti Webb. Instead, Andrew’s manager took me aside and said “Andrew wants you to audition another girl: it’s entirely up to you, but…”. That girl was Sarah Brightman, with whom Andrew had just fallen passionately in love.

I remember sitting in Andrew’s office with the choreographer Anthony van Laast and Don Black, the show’s lyricist, having to decide whether to cast Marti or the composer’s lover in a project that Andrew was personally funding. Tough call. Actually, for Don it really was a difficult moment, as he was Marti Webb’s manager, but at the end of the day, Lloyd Webber was the one paying the piper – and it was his tune we were already playing. Besides, Sarah was rather good.

It was almost an honour to spend some very enlightening months with the loved-up Lloyd Webbers making our film. It was during Andrew’s most creative period: Cats was wowing the world, Starlight Express was in rehearsals, and gestation was already well under way for Phantom of the Opera, written for his new love’s incredible vocal range. British musical theatre had never been so rich, and neither had Andrew Lloyd Webber. Occasionally I would be invited to stay over at Sydmonton, his Victorian pile overlooking Watership Down. I remember sitting in the kitchen having breakfast, when Andrew came down in his manorial dressing gown, beaming. “Come quickly”, he said, calling me into the music room, and tried out a new tune over the cornflakes. One morning he produced “Unexpected Song” which he’d dug out of the bottom drawer and re-worked as a vehicle for Sarah’s high notes. We stuck it in Song and Dance and it brought the house down.

On a good day Andrew’s catchy melodies play the emotions like no other. I just hope those Eurovoters appreciate all the efforts he’s putting in for them.

Children!

The destructive impact of those two little words can’t be overestimated. If anything argues for the termination of our contract with the House of Windsor, it’s Prince Harry’s use of the paki and raghead words. We’ve always suspected that racism is rife in our armed forces and this incident proves it. If our trainee officers have these words in their everyday parlance, you can be pretty sure they’re endemic throughout the ranks. Indeed, in the unlikely event that the Ministry of Defence wants to demonstrate a genuine commitment to eradicating racism, it would sack Harry immediately. But apart from leaving us with yet another redundant royal, that wouldn’t really be getting at the heart of the problem, which apparently lies behind the front door of the army’s commander-in-chief. Harry can be sacked from the army, but not from his role as a member of our monarchy.

For the last 24 hours, royal commentators have been trying to placate us with the justification that “this happened three years ago; Harry was naïve and innocent; it was just young lads in the army; he intended no malice”.

They’re absolutely right. There was no malice; he was young; the words just came out. But isn’t that what makes it all the more unacceptable? It’s the fact that the language was just sitting there in Harry’s everyday vocabulary that renders the situation so deplorable.

This young man, educated in an absurdly expensive school, was born into the most privileged family in the world; a family with a publicly funded lifestyle and wealth derived from prior centuries of taxation, yet which remains accountable to no one. So if youth and inexperience are to be used as excuses, point the accusatory finger instead at a school and family culture that apparently tolerate such language as normal. Blame either Eton, or the castle opposite the school’s gates on the other side of the Thames. Either way, it’s a sign of institutional racism at the heart of our privileged classes, and something you’d have thought a civilised democracy would have rooted out by 2009.

If I’d discovered one of my children using words like these, I’d have been the one to apologise first. I’d also be demanding a refund from their costly private school. Instead, this incident will probably be swept under the carpet as just another embarrassing royal gaffe, like the numerous snobbish and racist comments of his grandfather and great grandmother. The responsibility of parenthood doesn’t end when children get sent off to school or to university. Our children are what we make them, and if anyone should apologise to our Asian communities, it’s the monarchy itself.

Which brings me to my own children. In last week's blog I wrote the fateful words: “I’m determined things will run a little smoother” when referring to the imminent birth of Izzy, my fifth child. She was due to arrive on the 26th but, having recounted the story of how my firstborn scared the wits out of me by trying to arrive in the back of a campervan stuck in gridlock on the way to the hospital, Izzy decided she wasn’t to be outdone by her elder brother.

At 4am on Monday, just after I'd published the blog, Jo’s waters suddenly broke. This event coincided with a blizzard and a curious decision by the council not to grit the A696 or the A1. As a result the ambulance took an hour to arrive, and even longer to convey us, blue lights flashing, to hospital. I’m delighted to say Mother and baby are doing well and I have a thousand thanks to convey to Duncan Irons, who was roused from his bed to do the deed, and to all the amazing staff at North Durham University Hospital, who together make up the best maternity team I have ever encountered.

The Vet's On Standby

Dr John Braxton Hicks first observed them in 1872. Observed? Surely they were bleeding obvious. You certainly couldn’t miss them in our house on New Year’s Eve as Joanna writhed in agony on the floor. “Braxton Hicks” are the bane of pregnant women. They’re bogus contractions that nonetheless feel extremely real. Just two weeks off her due date, despite the pregnancy manuals’ reassurances that “you’ll know a real contraction when it comes”, these false alarms are disturbing. Although Izzy will be my fifth child, I found myself counting the breaks in the pain and planning the fastest route to the hospital. Childbirth is the most inexact science. Despite millennia of practice, it’s extraordinary how hit and miss the whole process is for the female human.

27 years ago, when my first child was due, my wife and I twice piled her hospital bag into the boot and dashed off to the maternity ward, only to be greeted with weary mockery by the nurses. “Oh, they’re only Braxton Hicks”, they said and sent us packing. The second time we felt truly ashamed.

It was on the eve of Charles and Diana’s wedding when she felt the contractions for the third time. “They’re only Braxton Hicks”, we chorused, cracked open a bottle of Moet and switched on television to watch the fireworks in Hyde Park. A couple of hours later we were merrily toasting the royal couple as the BBC prepared to light the hilltop beacons around the country. But despite the champagne, Jilly was in serious discomfort. I timed the gaps and picked up the car keys. “No rush – but maybe we should get ready”. We had another glass for the road, then climbed into our battered old van.

London was strangely silent. The reason became apparent as we reached the high street. The entire city was gridlocked. Over a million people were trying to get to Hyde Park and the roads were jammed solid. The hospital was four miles away across the Thames, and hundreds of stationary cars blocked our way.

At that moment Jilly’s waters broke. No time for an ambulance, we needed a police escort. So whether it was the alcohol or just sheer panic coursing through the veins, I decided to try to get arrested. On the wrong side of the road, horn blaring, I weaved through the oncoming traffic. Storming along the pavement, across a bowling green, down a shopping mall, I roared up to the local police station. It was shut; every policeman in London was in Hyde Park. It was the longest four miles of my life, with Jilly in the back screaming obscenities at me like women in labour always do in the movies.

We arrived with minutes to spare. As Ben’s head popped into the light of the delivery room, we heard the first bars of Handel’s Royal Fireworks music from the nurses’ lounge next door, and a hundred rockets exploded in the sky.

This time I’m determined things will run a little smoother. The calm, possibly hung-over telephone voice of Jo’s consultant on New Year’s Day (“They’re only Braxton Hicks”) has condemned her to another fortnight of discomfort.

Don’t believe anyone who claims pregnancy is a joyous experience. I reckon it’s an unpleasant process from start to finish. Jo’s body is absurdly distended, Izzy’s feet are somewhere under her mother’s chin, and neither has had a decent night’s sleep since August. You’d have thought women would have evolved a more user-friendly reproduction mechanism by now.

Jo says men have no idea what women go through. That of course is a great blessing, but it’s also a frustration, as I’d really like to be sharing our most important event of 2009. Meanwhile I’m taking no chances. Our next-door neighbour is a vet, and I’ve put him on standby, just in case the Braxton Hicks turn into the real thing.

Countdown

In exactly four weeks time my world must change forever. I’ve been anticipating this moment for eight months or, to be precise, for the last 36 weeks. Yes, Izzy is about to arrive, so the waistline has to go.

I don’t mean Joanna’s: she has remained petite and trim with nothing to show but the most spectacular orb of a bump. From the front and rear she looks the same; turn her sideways and it’s as if someone has stitched a giant beach ball onto her tummy. I know that as soon as Izzy emerges, the beach ball will disappear – it’s my waistline that’s the problem.

I think I’ve developed male pregnancy by proxy. I don’t know if it’s a recognized medical condition, but I can assure you it’s entirely authentic. As Jo’s bump has grown, I’ve developed a sympathetic clone. Now it hangs below my chest, an entirely unwelcome addition to the family.

Regular readers may sigh that they’ve seen it all before. I know it’s less than a year since I was beaten in a weight loss contest by the dieting equivalent of an innings defeat. A failure so embarrassing I’ve had to eat humble pie all year, along with apple, rhubarb, steak and ale and any other variety on offer.

The problem is, Joanna’s food cravings are too enticing. It’s not just her passion for chocolate ice cream: we have 7 different varieties in the freezer; nor her desire for mustard mash at midnight (made with a gallon of double cream and a cowsworth of butter). It’s the reassuring argument that it’s OK to binge because we’re eating for two. Which, in my case, is a lie: I’m eating for me. By this date next month, Jo’s waistline will have become a person, so mine has to become history. But how?

After last year’s debacle, I can’t risk the ignominy of another failure. I’ve tried all sorts of diets in the past, and none of them have had the slightest impact. Except one.

It was in 1980, and this diet was unplanned, but incredibly effective. At the end of our year in India, my first wife and I decided to explore Nepal. A new route around the Annapurnas was just being opened over the Thorung La Pass, which rises to nearly 18,000 feet, and we wanted to be amongst the first to try it. We set off from Pokhara with laden rucksacks and a Sherpa guide called Bim. The problem was, that unlike the common tourist route through the Kali Gandaki valley, this trek wasn’t accustomed to visitors. There were no teahouses or hippy inns; no Tibetans lined the route offering snacks and turquoise souvenirs. In fact there was nothing at all, except the most spectacular scenery and a constantly uphill horizon. The path was so steep that Jilly had to tie her rucksack on top of mine. Occasionally we came across a little village and Bim managed to persuade a local to sell us an egg or some fermented vegetable soup. Meat was out of the question.

The only provisions we’d packed were several catering sized packets of dried beef stroganoff that had somehow survived a year in the back of our van. Sherpas and stroganoff don’t go terribly well together – especially beef, which is against their religion. But at 14,000 feet after 12 days of starvation, Bim was ravenous. The following day he turned green and developed altitude sickness. So it was that I ended up carrying all three rucksacks over the pass. It was the best view I have ever seen, and by far the best diet. I lost 30 pounds.

Somehow I don’t think a walk up Cheviot is going to have quite the same effect, even if I lived on dried beef stroganoff for a month. But I guess it’s worth a try. Any better suggestions gratefully received.

Last Days of the Raj

I’m glad England’s cricketers popped back to India to finish their tour. Otherwise I wouldn’t have experienced that sweet sense of shock this morning when I discovered that we could actually win the Test in Madras (sorry, I mean “Chennai” – it’s difficult remembering all the new names India has given its cities to disguise its colonial past)*.

Though I haven’t been back for nearly thirty years, I can still vividly recall India’s smells and sounds. Last week, while moving house, I opened a dusty old box and memories of my year-long trip came pouring out in a pile of faded photographs. One exposes me with hippy beard and long hair, clutching a piece of tinsel and a plate of Christmas pudding: Christmas 1979, Uttar Pradesh. In another I’m bowling very badly against a group of Punjabi children screaming with laughter at my sporting ineptitude. India takes its cricket very seriously. If we win this game, there’ll be gnashing of teeth across the sub-continent.

Madras was on our original itinerary, but we were distracted by an unexpected encounter. Driving from the South with Jilly in our little Volkswagen campervan, we’d decided to visit Khana tiger reserve in Central India. Arriving at sunset we were just parking up in a jungle clearing when we heard a low rumble, then a deep booming voice called out “What, ho! English?” We peered through the undergrowth; lumbering towards us was an enormous elephant and perched on top was an impossibly tall man who looked and sounded just like David Niven. “I say, you must be on your way to the Queen Elizabeth Cup – would you care for a gin and tonic?”

So began our friendship with the extraordinary Bob Wright, a man who managed to preserve the spirit of the British Raj throughout his life. He was a kind of stereotypical Englishman abroad; he’d stayed in the country after partition, and had established a little tourist camp (appropriately called Kipling Camp) in India’s most important tiger reserve. “Never heard of the Queen Elizabeth?” he roared at us, “It’s in Calcutta, the most important horserace in India; everyone will be there, you simply have to go”. Several gin and tonics later, we made a pact. We’d go to the race if he came with us in our van.

“You’re on,” he cried. And we promptly forgot all about it.

At dawn the following morning there was a tap on the van door. There was Bob’s diminutive manservant Nubi, and behind him were lined up more than a dozen suitcases and bedding rolls. Bob was bringing his entire entourage.

Calcutta was 1300 miles away, along a dirt track optimistically named National Highway 7. We didn’t drive along it, we bounced; for six whole days. Weighed down by Bob’s huge frame, luggage and servant, our suspension trawled through the dust and potholes. Swerving to avoid brightly coloured lorries and buses, trying not to hit ox carts, we grew to ignore the cries from the back as Nubi, sitting on the bedding rolls, kept bouncing up and hitting the ceiling. Every few hundred miles or so there’d be a smart government sign: “Roads Define The Culture of a Nation”. Quite.

At nightfall, Bob would instruct us to drive into centre of the nearest village where he’d boom out of the window, “Where’s the inspection bungalow?” Whereupon a mob of children would lead us to the only stone house, built by the British for their touring magistrates. An ancient manager would open the shutters, dust down the bedrooms, prepare us a meal and find a punka-walla to operate the human powered fans. All for about twenty pence. It was as if the British had never left; we’d gone back fifty years and were living a scene from Jewel In The Crown.

Now I doubt our English cricketers are getting service like that, however grand their Chennai hotel.

* Of course, this was written before England performed its customary eleventh hour collapse. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the possibility of winning. Or touched wood, or something.

The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

Sitting here in my Northumbrian farmhouse, fields still white from last Thursday’s snow, I wouldn’t normally be inspired to write about events in a dusty landscape thousands of miles away. But, reading the headlines and seeing the terrible footage of suffering in Zimbabwe, I feel I have to share a few lines of optimism about that country’s appalling situation.

I detect the first rays of a new dawn breaking over the darkness of Zimbabwe. You wouldn’t have guessed it by the tone of the news bulletins, or in the weekend’s editorials. With the number of cholera victims expected to rise to over 60,000, with thousands more facing starvation, with the economy and all basic services in tatters, the army on the rampage and inflation running at 231,000,000%, it’s easy to see why the press has elevated Zimbabwe back to the front pages: it’s another sensational disaster story, and all appears doom and gloom.

Yesterday the Archbishop of York called for Mugabe to be sent to the International Criminal Court along with his evil cronies; Gordon Brown declared that “enough is enough”, and Condoleezza Rice has said it’s “well past time” for him to leave office. None of these outbursts would normally have the slightest effect on events. Indeed, in the past, the louder the international community has shouted, the more entrenched Mugabe has become. And the more contemptuously he has treated the West, the more his African neighbours have appeared to respect the revolutionary qualities which brought him power.

But on Saturday I received an email from a correspondent who sends me regular communications from inside Zimbabwe. And for the first time in many months, I detected a tone of optimism. The key to freedom in Zimbabwe has always been South Africa. And over the past ten days there’s evidence that South Africa has begun to change course. Partly because the exodus of cholera victims across the border is now turning into a flood, mostly because the ineffectual and Mugabe-worshipping President Mbeki has been ousted, there appear to be signs of serious pressure for change. It’s reflected in the South African media, in the statements of its politicians, and in its refusal last week to send Zimbabwe $30million of agricultural aid until the politicians have banged their heads together and implemented the power sharing agreement.

All this coincides with calls by other leaders in the region for Mugabe to go. On Saturday the foreign minister of Botswana said they should starve Zimbabwe of petrol and diesel, which would immediately neuter Mugabe’s henchmen; Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister, said “It’s time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power”. It’s not a moment too soon.

According to my correspondent, if this pressure continues to grow, it will finally push Zanu PF to release its monopoly of power, and emasculate the tyrant President. And, miraculously for such a blood-stained region, this will have been achieved without the intervention of international troops or a bloody coup. The power-sharing compromise agreement, which is supposed to make Morgan Tsvangirai Prime Minister and chairman of the Council of Ministers, is only a transitional situation, but one big step towards the restoration of true democracy in that battered land. I suspect Zanu-PF will continue to fight all the way against anything that gives their opponents real power. But with South Africa holding the last few tenuous strings of Zimbabwe’s survival, it’s likely that common sense, and Morgan Tsvangirai, will prevail.

The next two weeks are crucial, and events in Zimbabwe could still go either way. Not just for the tens of thousands of people threatened with cholera, but for the entire country and the region. Noone can ignore the events going on in Zimbabwe, not even a writer in faraway Northumberland. So the more pressure we as a nation can exert, the better. Let’s hope it’s not another false dawn.

Sergeant's Last Waltz

She’s a tough nut, that Arlene Phillips. As the whole audience rose to their feet at the end of John Sergeant’s last waltz on Saturday night, even fearsome Bruno and latex-faced Craig were smiling. However, the Queen of Mean sat there with lips tightly clenched.

Arlene has always been severe. Sarah Brightman once told me that she was frequently reduced her to tears when she was in Arlene’s group Hot Gossip. Phillips is the “Strictly” in Strictly Come Dancing, and I can assure you it’s no act.

I’ve known Arlene since the early 80’s when, hoping to spice up a dance series I was producing called The Hot Shoe Show, we hired her as a choreographer. There was some opposition to the appointment: this was a serious dance show for BBC1 viewers. Starring Wayne Sleep and Bonnie Langford, we’d managed to attract choreographic greats like Christopher Bruce from Rambert, Derek Deane from the Royal Ballet, and the musical theatre choreographer Anthony Van Laast (who went on to stage Joseph and Mamma Mia).

Some feared Arlene’s hip-thrusting style would be too lightweight for us, and her reputation for being a hard task-mistress was also a worry. However, she actually brought us variety, pace, and some really challenging work. But boy was she serious about her art, and her costumes used up all the red and black PVC in the BBC costume department. She was very into black and red. I once went to her house in Hampstead: the entire floor was “carpeted” in black rubber tiles. She’s not a woman to be messed with, Ms Phillips. In private, she’s actually very soft and friendly, but in the rehearsal room, she can be a tyrant.

It’s not surprising that the dance world is cut throat. You start (as Arlene did) at the age of 3 being dragged to ballet classes by your enthusiastic mother. Then, the better you do, the harder it gets. There’s no summit at the end: the more mastered your technique, the more a choreographer will feel inspired to test it. Pain and injuries, calluses and rejections – the life of a dancer is tougher than any sportsperson.

Despite being unable to put two feet together (my dancing would make Sergeant look like Nijinsky), it was a privilege for me to work as a director with some great choreographers and dancers during the 80s. Spending months with David Bintley creating the film Hobson’s Choice with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, or directing some of Frederick Ashton’s short pieces with Sleep and his troupe, gave me an insight into contemporary dance and ballet which grew to a lifelong passion. I remember the excitement in 1987 when I first saw, and filmed, Matthew Bourne’s nascent company Adventures in Motion Pictures.

However, my enthusiasm for dance has never extended to the ballroom, so I don’t agree with Arlene that Strictly is “all about the dance”. For me, ballroom dancing is all about ludicrous posing and flesh hanging out of skimpy costumes, and an audience waiting to applaud some bit of technical competence they recognise, like in figure skating (another form of dance which leaves me cold). Sergeant’s stiff perambulations around his blond partner have been a ray of sunshine for viewers in the relentless storm of bad news. Frankly, I’m glad he spent his rehearsals reading The Guardian; none of us really wanted him to rise above Level One or it might have spoiled the fun. Arlene’s sense of humour failure simply ensured that the no-hoper became a hero.

Her black mood was understandable: her Britannia High show on ITV is now viewed by only a couple of million diehards, yet on Saturday 12 million sat through the “proper” dancing waiting for Sergeant’s finale. I wonder how many will stay for the rest of the series, now that the real star has quit. Saturday nights will be colder and darker without him.

We Are Most Amused

Last weekend, as George W Bush and the leaders of most of the world’s economies scratched their heads to find a cure for the financial plague, as raging fires engulfed multi-million dollar homes in California and as England’s rugby players were devoured by the Australians, I could have sworn I heard Eric Idle singing “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. Then I blinked and sure enough, there he was, emerging from a pile of dying swans on a stage in South London. In the midst of catastrophe and doom, Eric’s chirpy little face shone through. And sitting in the audience, laughing with his subjects, was the future King of England.

I don’t know if Prince Charles was looking forward to his 60th birthday: I’ve only four years to go before mine, and I’m certainly not planning any jamboree. Apart from the free buspass, it’s not the sort of milestone you usually want to celebrate. Charles has been hanging around all this time waiting for his first proper job, and there’s still no sign of it just as people his age should be thinking of retiring. His sons’ joke about them measuring up the stairs at Highgrove for a Stannah Chair Lift is probably a little too close to the mark.

So Saturday night’s ITV show “We Are Most Amused”, in aid of the Prince’s Trust, which brought together Idle, John Cleese, Robin Williams, Rowan Atkinson, and a host of great standups, must have cheered him up no end. Cleese has a home in Montecito, California that must be covered in burning ash right now, yet he seemed pretty cheerful; so was Andrew Sachs who, despite his encounter with Russell Brand, rolled back the years as Manuel. It was a glorious romp. But what I found odd about the show was the comedy. You’d have thought that bringing together some of the world’s best comedians and recording them during a week when the world is in turmoil would lead to some pretty cutting edge stuff. Not so. It was soft and safe. Not one recession joke, no jibes at Brown. Just the usual easy targets, like Bush and Obama. Comedy usually reacts quickly to big events, but these times are so serious, even the comics don’t know how to play them.

They say there’s nothing like a good laugh to raise the spirits. That and a letter telling me that my mortgage payments have just halved because of the falling bank rate. Prices are already tumbling at Tesco, the stock market is holding steady and my broker’s told me to buy shares again. The falling pound has made my business more competitive. I’ve had three offers of new credit cards in the last fortnight. Next week there’ll be tax cuts for all. But will I be off to the shops? I very much doubt it.

There’s the problem in a nutshell. The national mood is currently so black, we’ll be banking the lot, or more likely stuffing it under our mattresses. A friend of mine at a television network has told me that advertising spend is down by half. Millions of cars are sitting unsold in forecourts and yet, however much they drop the price or give us free credit, we’re not tempted. House prices have already fallen, but noone’s buying.

This recession is not a statistic, it’s a national state of mind. Right now an insidious fear has spread throughout the developed world. It started as a corporate collapse, now it’s a crisis of confidence. There’s a danger that all Brown’s tax breaks will simply fill Britain’s piggy banks. In my view there’s one solution to this: we need a right royal party. Or perhaps a coronation. Now that would lighten the mood.

The Horror of the Somme

Clearing out some cardboard boxes in the garage yesterday, I unearthed my Dad’s old school cap. Tucked inside was a little blue book, dated June 1920. “The Elysian War Roll” was a list of all the pupils from Dad’s school who had fought in the war, which had ended just 19 months before.

618 names, from Alabone to Young; 10 Military Crosses, 23 Mentioned in Dispatches; 89 Fallen in the Service of their Country. There on page 25 I read “H.T. Gutteridge, Rifleman, 16th London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles). 1916, France. Invalided Out.”

Dad never mentioned the war – the First World War, that is. He always had plenty to say about the Second; and his distrust of all things German, Italian and Japanese. But he refused to speak of the time in 1916 when, at the age of 20, he found himself shipped out to the Somme. That appalling, unnecessary battle, which resulted in more than a million deaths, was arguably the most shameful chapter in British military history. It clearly had a devastating effect on my Dad.

Even in his fifties, in times of stress his stiff upper lip would crumble into a nervous twitch. When as a child I probed him about the war, he would go silent. He couldn’t be drawn on the horrors he experienced in those few months before they discharged him with what today would be called a nervous breakdown.

A sensitive, proud man, he must have been overwhelmed by the stench of filth, human excrement and death, and by the terrible scenes. Hundreds of dead strung out like flotsam on the shore; many others caught in the enemy wire. According to one witness, some looked like they were praying: “they had died on their knees and the wire had prevented their fall.”

How could he and the school friends who joined him in Kitchener’s Volunteer Army know what they were marching to, armed with just blind patriotism and a Lee Enfield rifle? One moment they were young, carefree boys from North London, the next they were surrounded by carnage. The Elysian War Roll lists their fate: P.T. Light must have been Dad’s classmate, killed in Leuze Wood (which the British soldiers nicknamed “Lousy Wood”) close to the village of Guillemont. I’ve found a photograph of Guillemont taken that same November: nothing but acres of mud and charred tree stumps.

Those back home had only a vague understanding of the conditions. My Mum knew a family called Upton whose father described how when he came home from leave, his own mother wouldn’t allow him into the house until he had stripped out of his uniform on the doorstep. Then she took a lighted candle and ran it up the seams of his uniform to burn out the thousands of lice.

Perhaps those who survived the trenches felt they shouldn’t tarnish their loved ones with the terrible blackness of their experiences, but Mum tells me that Dad wasn’t alone in not wanting to share his pain. In the 60’s and 70’s my Mum travelled the country teaching craft skills to disabled war veterans. She told me of one brave man, awarded the Military Medal, who every night woke up screaming and yet couldn’t discuss his nightmares with his wife. So Mum gave the old soldier a box of paints and suggested he tried to paint his own terror.

When Mum returned some weeks later, the man’s wife greeted her with smiles. At last, the nightmares were over, she said. Then Mum saw the painting: he had only used black and brown. The heavy strokes depicted the dark stumps of burnt trees, and to the far horizon, a sea of mud. It was a masterpiece.

90 years ago may seem like ancient history, but it is still only one lifetime. Some survivors couldn’t describe their horror – but we must never forget it.

Andrew Sachs's Granddaughter

I can’t picture Gordon Brown sitting down with a mug of Horlicks listening to the Russell Brand show. Yet in the middle of the worst economic crisis for 70 years, with catastrophe looming in the Congo, he somehow found time to pronounce on a radio programme where just two listeners had phoned in to complain. There’s no doubt Brand and Ross’s answerphone messages to Andrew Sachs should never have been broadcast: they were lewd, offensive, and would have been an invasion of privacy whether or not they had been transmitted. But did they warrant such apocalyptic reaction?

The answer depends on how old you are. The events of last week brought into focus one of the biggest problems facing the BBC: how to engage with “Youth”. Commercial broadcasters need youth audiences because advertisers demand them, but the BBC needs “The Young” because without them the licence fee will soon become irrelevant.

That’s why BBC Three was launched. According to its latest ratings, this network still fails to attract substantial numbers of its target audience of 16 to 24 year olds. Last year my development team set up focus groups with scores of young people to uncover their interests and viewing habits. The results matched the BBC’s own research: young people are hard to shock, but love being shocked; they find almost nothing on television relevant to them except Skins and Shameless (both on Channel 4) or, if they‘re back from the pub in time, Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps. In other words, they craved shocking comedy. Enter Russell Brand.

This isn’t a new problem for the BBC. When I was a producer on Nationwide, being the youngest member of the team at 24, I was given a weekly slot to produce which my bosses imaginatively called Young Nation. It was November 1976, so I booked the Sex Pistols. We recorded an interview that was (to me) hilarious, but utterly untransmittable. So I told Malcolm McLaren that we’d have another go but, if they actually wanted any publicity from us, they’d have to toe the line. Anything offensive would be cut out. They got the message, and I got the first interview with the Pistols.

Bill Grundy was not so lucky. They went on live, and Bill was drunk. It ended his career. But my interview was so bland, I doubt it did anything for Jonny Rotten’s record sales.

The big challenge for the BBC is how to reach this elusive demographic without alienating the vast majority of us now too old to “get” juvenile shock humour. Or rather, we do get it, but we simply don’t find it funny any more. Even Jonny Rotten now does adverts for Country Life butter; yesterday’s anarchists are today’s Mail On Sunday readers.

I’ve listened to the whole of the Ross/Brand piece on You Tube and I found the series of apologies, each compounding the original offence, to be quite amusing, probably because it’s a well-tried sitcom technique. However, the underlying premise and the dialogue reminded me of embarrassing nights of drunken mirth (and regretful hangovers) in the Student Union. By contrast almost all young people I have spoken to found it funny and can’t understand all the fuss.

Not that you’d believe this if you read the tabloid that stirred up middle England. Yesterday The Mail on Sunday ran the headline: Exposed -- the BBC and the Myth of ‘Yoof’ and reported a BPIX survey alleging that 71% of young people found the broadcast “unacceptable”. BPIX is a mysterious organisation. Their website has been “under construction” for years; unlike legitimate polling organisations, it publishes no supporting data, nor the complete questions asked. Yet the Mail uses it, in its own words, to “blow a hole in the BBC’s argument”. I bet Mark Thompson wishes someone would blow a hole in the Mail on Sunday.

Electioneering

I love elections, particularly those that bring real political change. Next Tuesday night I’ll be glued to the box till the early hours with my American future-wife and future-mother-in-law, expecting Palin to be consigned to Alaskan obscurity and the accession of the first black president of the United States.

I think my fascination for the democratic process began in San Francisco when I was 20 and marching for George McGovern behind Jane Fonda. Quite a way behind in fact: there were about 20,000 of us. I guess the sight of so many hippies protesting against the Vietnam War was too much to bear for conservative Middle America; McGovern lost by a landslide.

Two years later I was a trainee journalist in the vast BBC election studio, sitting just behind Robert McKenzie and his Swingometer. I’ll never forget the excitement of the first result, with Robin Day growling at his guests and David Dimbleby calmly in control. I was in the producers’ room of that same studio in May 1979 when Thatcher came to power. And in 1983 I directed the whole of the BBC’s election coverage as Thatcher romped to her second term.

However I think my most memorable election was in the winter of 1979. Regular readers of this blog may recall how I left my job on Panorama and drove east in an old campervan in search of love and the Dalai Lama. I ended up marrying my first wife in a Tibetan ceremony in the Himalayas, but on our way to Nirvana, we completely ran out of money, largely because we had to ship our VW campervan on a tiny Chinese wooden dhow across the Arabian Sea.

We arrived in Delhi stony broke, and resigned ourselves to selling the van and hitching home. Luckily we were befriended by the BBC’s Bureau Chief Mark Tully. One day he announced over lunch that the Indian Prime Minister, Choudhary Charan Singh, had resigned. Indira Gandhi, ousted in disgrace just two years before, was hot favourite to return to power. When Mark told us the date of the election, I realised that in Britain the result would be announced at 8pm on a Monday evening, just as Panorama was going on air. I telexed my old boss in London, and an hour later the machine clattered back with the command: “Hire crew and start filming. Get interviews with Mrs Gandhi, the Prime Minister and the President.”

Our financial troubles were over. However Jilly and I had been on the road for three months; I had long hair and a scruffy beard; we wore ripped jeans and were living in the Tourist Camp, surrounded by vegetarians and clouds of marijuana. It wasn’t quite the image for the BBC’s flagship programme.

With gritted teeth, I went to Connaught Circle and ordered a baggy cream linen suit; a printer ran up some BBC business cards. But Jilly and I were determined not give up our lifestyle altogether, so we spurned the BBC’s offer of moving into the Imperial Hotel. Instead, every morning, a white stretch Mercedes slipped past the rainbow vans in the Tourist Camp to take us to the Presidential Palace. Eventually the urge for a hot shower got the better of us and we persuaded the manager of the Imperial to let us stay in the hotel car park and use the facilities.

For six weeks we followed the Gandhis: Indira, the most charismatic woman I have ever met, and her scary playboy son, Sanjay. On January 15th we sat in our van and heard Mrs Gandhi’s victory speech on the World Service. Her opponent, a man in his seventies, hadn’t stood a chance. Hopefully next Wednesday we’ll be celebrating the defeat of another septuagenarian, and the dawn of a new era in world politics.

Zeitgeist Surfing

I’m giving up television production and learning brick-laying. If I read Alistair Darling’s “spend our way out of the recession” plans correctly, soon the only jobs going will be on building sites. After the Olympic site, Crossrail and Heathrow’s third runway, the odds on getting the A1 north of Morpeth “dualised” have risen dramatically.

This return to Keynesian-style economics is predictable. The worst thing the Government could do is sit and wait for unemployment to hit three million and the recession to walk right into Middle England’s living rooms; especially with an election due in 2010.

We all mocked when Darling predicted the scale of the crisis. Now, with Brown the Hero of the Western World, the Chancellor is preparing us for the second phase of the drama. The stock market was eerily calm last Friday, but we’re really only in the eye of the hurricane. There’s worse to come.

One surprising outcome of this maelstrom has been the lack of any constructive response from the Conservatives. Apart, that is, from David Cameron’s ludicrous assertion on Friday that the crisis is Gordon Brown’s fault. A claim so hypocritical it’s almost breathtaking. Apart from the fact that it was Cameron’s city cronies who were the lead architects of the malaise, if any single political leader is to blame for the events that have engulfed us it’s Margaret Thatcher, whose policies started the process that led directly to the current crisis.

Actually I don’t actually blame Thatcher at all. For this would give politicians far more credit than they deserve. Thatcher didn’t invent the economic revolution; like all great politicians, she sensed a swing in public mood and then ran with the flow. Thatcher’s legacy served us pretty well for the subsequent twenty years, so could anyone seriously expect Brown to suddenly shout out “Hang on a minute, let’s stop people spending so much”? Even though the signs of impending doom have been there for years, you can’t really blame him for not putting on the brakes. Let’s be honest, we’re the ones who ran up the credit card bills and extended our mortgages, not him.

This month the tide has caught up with Brown. He’s the right man at the right time, and it’s making the Cameron/Osborne duo look like irritable schoolboys. Brown’s problem is that this performance will only run for a limited season. When we come out of the eye of the hurricane, when manufacturing shuts down and service industries go bust, it’s everyone to the lifeboats. So spending our way out of the problem is, for him, the only solution. If he can avoid a deep recession, my hunch is that we’ll see an election by next Spring.

If I’m wrong, and Brown hangs on for the inevitable economic upturn in 2010, then it’s anyone’s guess who’ll come out on top. Brown’s public image is perfect for these dour, gloomy times. But the trick for both parties will be to predict the future. I’ve written in this blog before that television producers try to predict national mood swings – a colleague of mine called it “zeitgeist surfing”. We create ideas that we hope will hit a popular nerve by the time they become programmes. Likewise with politics. The leaders who go down in history are those, like Churchill, Thatcher and Blair, who successfully match their policies to the mood of the nation.

So what will be our frame of mind in 2010? I foresee two possibilities. One is we’ll all need a jolly good party; shares in Mothercare and breweries will go up, and the Tories could do a lot worse than installing Boris as leader. Alternatively, we might just crave a new era of social responsibility. In which case, Brown needs to learn how to smile, and Cameron will have the uphill task of creating a new, caring persona.

Grey TV

My thanks to Angus Long, Director of Embryonyx Ltd, for sending me this email regarding my previous entry:

"I found your column on the subject most entertaining. However perhaps you could lightly inform the TV buyers and advertisers that they are wasting their time on the 18 – 49 year olds.

Apart from the fact, they’ve never got much disposable income, this demographic group it is on the wane.

What they should be looking at is targeting the older viewer and attracting the grey pound. It is estimated that Europes senior citizens are set to grow by 60% over the next 40 years to 103 million.

In the UK alone

• There are 20 Million over 50 today
• More people are over 65 than under 16
• By 2021 over 65s will account for 50% of the population
• 25% of the online population
• Over the next 20 years the over 50s market will grow by more than 30%
• A collective spending power of £196 Billion
• 80% of the nations wealth & 60% of all savings
• Each month 50,000 people turn 50

How many will be watching TV and what do they like to see? Not big brother that’s for sure."

The Battle For Regional News

Today marks the 35th anniversary of my first day at the BBC. In 1973 I walked into Broadcasting House as a news trainee. Today I’ll be in Cannes, inside the enticingly named Palais des Festivals.

It’s far from palatial: a stifling conference centre set over a multi-storey car park. I’ll be in the basement with 13,000 international television executives. It’s basically a giant farmers market, except that some of the sellers have spent millions promoting their wares with extravagant advertising and lavish parties in the seafront hotels. I’ll be carrying a few DVDs of the show we’ve spent the last fortnight editing in Newcastle, and staying in a self-catering apartment behind the main drag. At least I can save the cost of drinks in the bars on the Croisette, where a tonic water can set you back ten pounds.

Television sales markets are dispiriting places for producers. The programmes that we’ve spent months or years crafting are dismissed as mere “product”, counted in hours and bundled up to be sold to broadcasters for you, the viewers. Well, not all of you, only those in the ratings charts.

I passed out of America’s “key demographic” on my 50th birthday. There the charts only count people aged between 18 and 49; three quarters of the population may as well not exist. Television isn’t about producers, or viewers; it’s about advertising revenue and demos and survival in a world where a new channel launches every day. How the industry has changed since my first day in 1973.

There were six of us trainees. We were given staff numbers and our first lecture. We were told we were destined for the top, Director-General even, and would be guaranteed senior jobs in the Corporation for life. That is, provided we didn’t commit either of two cardinal crimes: bounce a cheque at the BBC cash office, or forget to pay our licence fees. Three of the six must have toed the line, for they stayed for most of their careers. Tony Hall was runner-up when Greg Dyke became Director-General a few years back, and Chris Graham eventually left to run the Advertising Standards Authority; Bill Rogers is still there in charge of Radio News. Broadcast journalism was indeed a career for life. As secure as banking.

Last week, ITV announced that more than 400 jobs in regional news would have to go. The kind of television made locally up here in Newcastle has little connection with the television sold in Cannes. That market is about canned products produced to fill the schedules; regional programming is about what people really want to watch.

The writing’s been on the wall for our regional structure for some time. In four years our analogue transmitters will be switched off: we’ll only have digital television, so ITV will have no more command of the airwaves than Dave or Living. We viewers will be in control and by then one of the most popular parts of the schedule, our regional news, will have gone forever.

Which is why we need to join the battle to keep it now: not on ITV – its path to become a solely commercial broadcaster is already set. We need ITV to supply us with big expensive family shows like The X-Factor, so commercial sense dictates it should be relieved of the regional burden. But if you, like me, believe that local programming is important, we need to start lobbying now for an alternative to the BBC offering. If Channel Four really wants a slice of our licence fee, it should use it to axe Big Brother, stop targeting the same youth audience that every other network is courting, and instead offer a service for the rest of us. Starting with local news and regional programming made for the people who pay for it, not for the salesmen in Cannes.

Up Close and a Bit Too Personal

“The scenery needs ironing”, I said as I watched the playback in our edit suite in Newcastle. “Look, there are creases all over the curtain – and you can see footmarks on the floor at the back”.

This week for the first time I saw the world in high definition. We’ve just shot the pilot episode of Loveland, our new Cilla Black dating show, and because Sky One broadcasts in “Hi-Def”, we’ve had to film the whole thing in this shiny new format. The problem is, it’s a brand new system, and it’s not easy to get right. It’s a bit like putting on a new pair of glasses – somehow the world doesn’t look quite the same.

I don’t want to burden you with my problems, or blind you with science (largely because I haven’t got beyond the beginner’s class myself), but in conventional television, all black is, well, black. So when you build scenery for an entertainment show you pull a black cloth, called a cyclorama, round the back of the studio, paint the floor black, and when the lights are on, all the paraphernalia of the production process is instantly hidden.

We’ve relied on this trick for years. Put some lights on in front of a black background, and through the camera lens even the smallest studio looks enormous; like smoke and mirrors, the scenery sort of floats in space, a technique that’s part of the magic of television entertainment. Watch the X-Factor and you’ll see what I mean. Film the same studio in high definition, and you’ll see every cable and flaw – even the stitching in the black cloth. Thankfully Cilla still looks radiant, whatever format we film her in.

Yesterday three separate brochures were stuffed through my front door offering bargains on “Hi-Def Ready” television sets. This is, of course, the real reason why high definition has been developed: to make us buy more televisions (and also, presumably, to contribute to the credit crunch by adding to the burden on our credit cards). Now we’ve all gone widescreen and digital, do we really need this extra accessory?

Allow me to offer a word of professional caution to anyone thinking of buying one of these. Don’t imagine that it’ll give you a “better” picture. New technology may produce a sharper, more revealing image, but it isn’t necessarily the right picture, and it may well not be what the director intended you to see. Take feature films: some new televisions offer something called “100MHz”, which means they produce images twice as fast as a normal television. That’s not always a good thing, because it’s twice as fast as the television station is broadcasting the pictures, so the television set has to “invent” every other frame you see. As a result, it can turn a beautifully crafted, Oscar-winning multi million dollar feature film, shot at 24 frames per second, into something which looks like cheap video*.

However Hi-Def is great for some subjects. Sport, for example. I’m writing this with half an eye on glamour model Nell McAndrew running as Wonderwoman in the Great North Run; later this afternoon I’ll be trying to read Joe Kinnear’s lips as he rants at the players during Newcastle’s match against Everton. Both experiences would be transformed by Hi-Def technology. Reality programmes look freakily real, and wildlife programmes come alive: you can see every drop of blood as the lion gets its gazelle.

And speaking of bloodletting, I can’t wait for the Newsnight studio to start using high definition. If there’s one subject that deserves closer scrutiny, it’s politics. There’ll be no hiding place for Peter Mandelson when Paxo starts attacking. However thick they pile on his studio makeup, the Hi-Def cameras will expose every piece of spin, every back-track, every nasty little innuendo, right up close in the whites of his eyes.

[* Here's a more detailed explanation for those who don't believe me:

TVs run at 50MHz, but television is "filmed" at 25 frames per second. So there are two "fields" per frame. Each field is half a picture - odd lines in one field, even lines in the next. Because of the speed of the process, the human brain combines the two fields into one picture, which changes 25 times per second. However, sometimes you can notice a slight flickering out of the corner of your eye (when you see a tv screen from the side, for example). Having a TV at 100MHz gets rid of that because it combines the two fields (i.e. odd and even lines) into one picture, or scan. The downside of this is that with a moving picture, you can get jagged lines on the screen. You notice it a lot when there are closing credits running from right to left across the bottom of the screen. The odd and even images don't line up because the scrolling credits are moving too fast. Some TVs get over this with a kind of "Advanced" mode, which gets the TV to predict what the picture is going to do. This sorts out the credits problem, and makes pans more smooth - though sometimes the tv predicts the movement incorrectly and it can make it all look very weird.

But in a feature film, which was originally shot at 24 frames per second (I know, it should be 25, but it's always been 24 - movies on telly are speeded up ever so slightly to allow for the extra frame), when the TV predicts the frames, or when it smooths out the pans, this isn't the image the director and cinematographer intended. It effectively makes film look like video. Yuk.

My solution: disable the 100MHz facility!]

The Next Big Thing

In November 2004, I was at a retreat in Santa Barbara with my American development team toying with a new television concept we called “Live Your Life For Half The Price”. We had a vague feeling that average Americans were uneasy about their levels of personal debt, and about the baggage of other liabilities they were carrying. We wanted to find out what would happen if people tried to live their lives a different way. I can’t put my finger on why we felt this might make a good subject for an entertainment series, or why anyone would be remotely interested in watching it. It was, on the face of it, a pretty gloomy notion, which ran counter to the current trend for shows about property, home improvements, cooking, or becoming a pop star.

Inventing new television formats is all about finding the next big thing. You get a hunch, a little glow of inspiration, which you try to justify by finding evidence elsewhere in popular culture – a song or a fashion style or an article in an obscure publication. I imagine fashion designers must go through the same process: you sense that pink will be the new black, but have no idea if the public will start wearing it. In the early 90’s I sensed an approaching wave of nostalgia (obvious, really, considering the approaching Millennium), so I wrote a quiz show called “Today’s The Day”; Martyn Lewis hosted it every afternoon for seven years on BBC2; then in 1995 I sensed that technology was becoming cool so I developed Robot Wars; it took three years to sell to a network, but eventually it became a worldwide hit, spawning a host of other techie shows like Scrapheap Challenge and Monster Garage. But doing a show that effectively said “capitalism has gone too far, let’s get back to basics”, and in America? How was I ever going to sell this?

I asked our junior researcher to dig up some facts. Was this strange hunch about financial instability some misplaced gut feeling, or was there anything tangible? For years, television and newspapers had been inundated with adverts persuading people to consolidate credit card debts by increasing their mortgages. Now credit card companies were responding by offering people more and more credit. Had people really overstepped the mark?

It took the researcher just a couple hours to find the answer. He dug up a report that revealed that 36% of all Americans were in debt over their heads. This was defined as having more than $10,000 of debt with an income of less than $25,000. And that was just credit card debt. “There’s more”, said the researcher. “Apparently 2% of all Americans are going to lose their homes and 1% will go bankrupt. Next year and every year.” In the 90’s people earned more than they spent; now credit cards were turning the entire social economy on its head.

I looked at him, incredulously. “That’s absurd”, I said. If the figures were even close, the effect on the economy would be seismic. We checked and double-checked. The facts were there, in black and white. The following week the New York Times published an article about how credit card debt was spiraling out of control. Then in December there was a similar report on Fox News. We knew we were on to something.

The series was never made. “Too depressing”, said the networks. Shame, really; right now it would be a sure-fire hit. But I guess in 2004 it would have been dismissed as naïve anti-capitalist invention.

But if it took my researcher, who was a game show developer, not an economist, just two hours to find the terrifying truth about how society and our banking system was heading for the rocks, why has it taken our governments four years to do something about it?