A Martian Spies on the Venusians at Play

When Jo’s fourth girlfriend arrived, I knew I should have gone to the pub. I stayed because I was curious to find out what women do when they gaggle. Yes, I know it’s not really a verb, but it conjures a pretty good image of what women do when they get together for a night in.

It was the birthday of one of Jo’s closest friends, so they had arranged an evening of pampering. They’d booked a hairdresser, a manicurist and a pedicurist, or at least I think that’s what they call someone who cuts toenails for a living. To me, having your toenails clipped is an annual ritual to be performed quietly on your own, with one foot placed firmly on the edge of the bath. Sometimes I remember to retrieve errant cuttings from the soap dish. Mostly I don’t.

Forgetting to pick up nail clippings is on a par with leaving all the cupboard doors open, forgetting what I’m saying in the middle of sentences, littering the kitchen table with tools from half-completed tasks, or throwing my socks on the floor beside the bed every night and only retrieving them when the pile gets big enough to trip over. I am a man, and I am wired differently to half the world’s population. Men don’t notice stuff. But we can do speed shopping.

I can never understand why women get so excited about clothes. They started talking about them the moment they walked through the door. I can buy a year’s supply in just five minutes from a single shop. If I find a pair of jeans that vaguely fits I’ll buy six to save having to go back again: it saves on the washing, too. I have eight black shirts, one for every day of the week and an extra one in case there’s a power cut. I wear the same shoes every day till they fall apart, whereas Jo has a roomful, and knows when she’s worn every pair. Neither of us throws shoes away: my trainers have been loyal to me for at least 15 years, so I haven’t the heart to discard them. Jo says she can smell them from the end of the garden.

Though clothes shops leave me cold, I can’t walk past an Apple store without buying a new toy. It will eventually end up in a drawer stuffed full of wires, connectors and old mobile phones and electric shavers. If I suddenly woke up back in the eighties I'd be completely ready for a world of analogue technology. I even have a VHS machine somewhere, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. If I could find them. I’ll ask Jo – she always knows where everything is. She has a cupboard full of nothing but carrier bags: she even has carrier bags inside the carrier bags. I always forget to take them to Waitrose and come back with another load.

By the time the manicurist had unpacked all her little coloured bottles, I realised that the ladies were now speaking a language that was completely foreign to me, so I retreated to the snug where football teams I don’t support were playing a match I didn’t much care about. Jo was happy to see me go, leaving them to intuit away and analyse each other’s emotions. I assume that’s what women do when they go to the loo together in restaurants. My friend Keith would look at me very strangely if I suggested joining him in the gents for a discussion about our feelings or the latest polo shirts in John Lewis.

So while the women put the world to rights, I watched the game, drank beer and replaced the batteries in Izzy’s baby monitor, thereby disproving the theory that men can’t multi-task. Later Jo found me fast asleep on the sofa. The batteries were on the floor.

Red Or Black?

Yesterday a second woman-beating rat crawled out of the rotting timbers of the sinking ship called Red Or Black? Are we surprised?

Well I, for one, am amazed. Having produced television entertainment most of my professional life, I am finding it hard to believe that Simon Cowell’s company could break a cardinal rule of the gameshow: that all participants must be thoroughly checked. “Backgrounds, psychs and meds”, we call them.

Background checks are simple and cheap. For less than £50, you can find out if someone has a record with the Criminal Records Bureau. Producers automatically exclude those who do because they don’t want to traumatise their victims, or give the press a scandal that might damage the reputation of the show. As the revelations of the last few days demonstrate, the damage tarnishes not just the programme, but the network itself.

I’m astonished that Nathan Hageman, who was awarded £1million at the end of the first episode, wasn’t weeded out at the first hurdle. He had been jailed for five years for beating up his ex-girlfriend, and his criminal record sits in public view for life. For £50, the broadcaster would have known not to put him on the screen at all, let alone make him a millionaire.

The “psych” test costs more, but is essential for any programme offering a big cash prize. Contestants sit for a good hour with a psychologist, who is tasked with uncovering emotional and mental flaws. This not only reassures the producer that the player can cope with the pressures of winning or losing, but also protects other contestants and programme staff. What if an aggrieved loser were to attack Ant and Dec? Anyone with the slightest hint of aggression is automatically excluded, which makes Mr Hageman’s appearance even more extraordinary. In America, the mere threat of violence whispered off-camera by a reality contestant would lead to instant disqualification.

In physical game shows or reality series like Big Brother, many other contestants fall at the medical. When I produced America’s Paradise Hotel, around 40% of the applicants were rejected at the “med” stage, most for sexually transmitted diseases – a sad indictment of our youth.

Meanwhile, as Cowell’s show’s ratings declined as fast as his reputation, derision and hostility have been thrown from all sides of the critical spectrum, even from the normally pliant industry trade press. In this week’s Broadcast magazine, the editor Lisa Campbell writes a blistering editorial headlined “How Cowell ran out of luck”. She lambasts the show: “the premise should have set alarm bells ringing at ITV about Cowell’s understanding of, and aptitude for, gameshows… try as they might, no amount of sob stories, weepy phone calls or stirring strings are going to make a viewer invest anything in a bunch of strangers whose choices display an utter lack of skill, effort or reasoning.”

Campbell’s view is echoed across the industry, and it’s easy to see why. For the format of Red Or Black? breaks another gameshow rule: that winners must be “worthy”.

Whether it’s a talent contest, a quiz, or an action gameshow, the prize must always be deserved. Contestants can demonstrate “worthiness” in a number of ways: by answering difficult questions, or performing complex or dangerous tasks; by bravely risking what they’ve won so far to gain more; or by generating sympathy from the viewers who follow them on their perilous journey.

Red or Black? offered none of these. Supposedly based on the story of Ashley Revell, a professional gambler from Kent, who bet all his possessions, including his clothes, on a single spin of the roulette wheel, these contestants invested nothing to win their prize. It is simply a game of greed and chance, nothing more. Thankfully the programme’s viewers, who are a lot cleverer than producers sometimes give them credit, saw right through it.

The Day The World Changed

 
The messenger’s bike was chained to a green lamppost. Red, white and blue plastic roses and an American flag stuck into the grey dust on its handlebars, it stood waiting patiently for its owner to return. He never did. The bike had become a symbol of the thousands of innocent lives thrown away. It’s my most haunting memory of 9/11. That and the stench, acrid and lingering, the smell of burning concrete, which still permeated downtown Manhattan a month after the horror.

Down in the hellhole behind the hoardings, the remains of the twin towers were piled like a huge smoking bonfire, many stories high. Out of them, two iconic metal structures, like the ruined facades of a huge cathedral, pointed towards the sky. How men worked in those scalding, foul conditions, I'll never know, but the searching never ceased: it would be another six months before all the debris, human and architectural, was removed.

On the streets of Lower Manhattan, there was the most haunting, sobering atmosphere. Locals, workers, visitors like me, everyone walked silently with shocked respect. The only sound was the relentless pounding and whirring of the machines and cranes down in the rubble below. Sometimes, all too infrequently, they too were muted – as another body, or part of a body, was released from its dust-covered tomb and firemen and workers stopped to pay their respects. We all knew the world had changed forever: this was the human side of the devastation.

St Paul’s Church, a few yards from the epicentre of the disaster, or “ground zero” as the news operations had called it, had become a place of refuge and recuperation.

Workers slept in the pews, food was sent it by local restaurants, pedicures and massages were offered for worn limbs or burnt feet.
I watched exhausted firemen queuing for coffee and comfort. By night, back in the clean luxury of my hotel room in Union Square, I looked across the 30 or so blocks to the floodlights where the twin towers had been, unable to get the terrible images of September 11th out of my mind.

It was one of those seminal moments, like the death of Princess Diana. Right now, television networks are full of recollections, repeats and re-enactments. Of course this is an event the world must never be allowed to forget, but we should beware lest overfamiliarity weakens the shock of those terrible images; the live television pictures that day were the most appalling the world has ever seen.

We watched the world change in high-definition clarity, thanks to a perfect blue sky over a smogless morning. Everyone remembers where they were: I was in my London office, on the phone to Jane Root, one of the BBC’s Controllers, when the second plane hit. A pause, and then “Oh my God”, we said in unison, and Jane added “I’d better go” as she rushed off to cancel her programme schedule. I remember the fear and the rumours in my office: would London be next?

I came to New York a month later because ABC had asked us to make a Christmas special for them. Challenge America, it was called, based on the British show. Erin Brockovitch became Anneka, but we needed a project. The problem was where to start: there was so much devastation, yet most workers in the city were still digging for bodies at Ground Zero.

So we restored a little theatre close by and threw a party for the children of the victims. It was the first building project in the city since the disaster, and Mayor Giuliani came to launch it. But it was just a tiny drop in the ocean, and seemed an inadequate response to the enormity of the problem. We mended their theatre, but the looks on the faces of the children showed that it would take so much more than a television programme to rebuild their lives, so cruelly destroyed on that horrible day.

The Visitor

The small crowd waiting at Arrivals turned and stared as the voice boomed out: “Is this Tom?”

She was just 5 feet, slim and muscular, her tiny frame buried beneath an enormous rucksack, yet the voice was deep and rasping, like rusty hinges on a heavy door. She must have been well over 50, with lines of care etched into her sundried face, yet she wore the short leather skirt, boots and tight lacy top of a teenager. This was Maria from Venezuela, and she had come to stay.

It was an innocent enough comment in a Californian gym that brought her into our lives. She was a personal trainer, and the woman being trained was Jo’s distant cousin. Maria was planning a trip to Scotland: did she have any suggestions?

“Gee, you must go visit Tom and Jo – they live in Scotland.” A pardonable error: even friends in London think Newcastle is near Aberdeen. Innocuous emails were exchanged: Could we look after her dear friend who was such fun and wanted to see some Scottish countryside? Of course we could, but we’re not actually in Scotland. Never mind, she’ll come for two nights. Oh dear.

On the short drive from the airport, we had scarcely put the red gravel driveways of Ponteland behind us before she told me she was divorcing her husband, had just been through the menopause, and was going to seduce a Scottish landowner whose advances she had rejected in her 20s, but who was almost certainly still in love with her.

Her command of English was as rusty as her voice, but she substituted what she lacked in vocabulary with a rich mix of Anglo-Saxon expletives. She had flown all the way from Florida with some terrible two-year-old in the next seat, except she didn’t use the word “terrible”. She had wanted to shoot the child, and would have done so if she had brought her husband’s pistol -- she demonstrated by pointing an imaginary gun at my head. I hoped Izzy would be on best behaviour.

Safely home, she greeted Jo like her best friend, patted Izzy gingerly on the head and slumped into a chair. I offered her a glass of wine. She shook her head to say no, but her voice said “just a little”. I opened a bottle of Chilean sauvignon blanc to make her feel at home (I know, but it’s close – well, as close as Newcastle is to Aberdeen), and mouthed at Jo “What shall we do with her?”

Then we heard the sobbing. We turned to see Maria, wine glass already drained, with red-rimmed eyes. “It was so good then,” she wailed, and then recounted, in details so graphic that I can’t begin to describe them here, her entire sex life from puberty to a fling with a minor Hollywood actor. Strangely, although I’d only poured a single glass, the bottle was half empty. An hour later I was restocking the fridge.

Jo and I went to bed early and left her mumbling incoherently at the dogs. Then, at around 2am, we heard loud thumps and bathwater running in her bedroom. “Oh my God, she’ll drown – do something”, said Jo. “I can’t go and see her in the bath”, I protested, so Jo padded upstairs and I heard a muffled scream.

“She was dancing stark naked with the bath overflowing”, said Jo. “I dragged her into bed and she passed out”. I think in my sleep I asked if she had a good body, because I remember a pillow hitting me on the head.

I’m ashamed to admit a host of important meetings appeared in my diary overnight, so Jo looked like thunder when she realised she’d be taking Maria to the Roman Wall herself.  Somehow we survived another night and I poured her onto the Edinburgh train with a bottle of good malt whisky as a gift for her landowner. I doubt it survived the journey. Good luck, Scotland.

Taking To The Skies

 

There’s no messing with Lord Stevens. Well over 6 feet tall, back straight as a redwood tree, the former head of the Metropolitan Police has a no-nonsense tone in his voice that has inspired respect and loyalty in equal measure throughout his distinguished life. He has charmed prime ministers and presidents, sat in judgment of the British Army and the RUC, and advised the government on international security. Now he was sitting in our dining room, staring across a plate of my homegrown beetroot, and frowning at me.

“Nonsense”, he barked, and I felt myself wilt. All I said was that I wished I’d taken flying lessons when I was younger, but was now too old and fat. The conversation had moved on from rioting (who better to invite for lunch after a week of lawless disorder?) to his other specialist subject and greatest passion, apart from his wife Cynthia.

John Stevens was literally born into flying. His father Cyril was

The S stands for Stevens

the founder of BKS, the airline that pioneered commercial flying out of Newcastle airport, and John took his first flight in a cockpit at the age of 4. He is President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, holds a commercial pilot licence and various stakes in planes that he flies to his numerous board meetings around the country.

Newcastle Airport when John Stevens was a lad: note the snow

“You’re never too old to fly,” he said. “You will come up with me this week: I promise you’ll be hooked.” The voice was insistent: not “can”, but “will”. “I have a fear of heights”, I protested in vain.

That much is true: Sam, my 13-year-old, knows not to try to get me onto Oblivion at Alton Towers, I’m nervous on a stepladder changing a lightbulb, and my neighbour takes pity on me when it’s time to trim the wisteria.

But I do have a boyhood fascination with airplanes, and Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington is very good company so, before head could engage with tongue, I heard myself say “I’ll be there”.

That’s why on Thursday I found myself in a cockpit with headphones and a steering yoke as John, sounding just like the pilot of a 747, was requesting permission to take off from Runway Seven Zero at Newcastle Airport. A black raincloud drifted towards us from the West. Although he flies regularly, he’d meticulously read out a list of pre-flight checks, inspected every inch of the single-engined plane (yikes, only one engine) and removed every last drop of condensation from the fuel tank.

We listened to air traffic control as a Thomson holiday jet in front of us lifted off for the sun. Then a moment of drama as the jet struck a bird and officials raced up the runway checking for debris. It was ten minutes before we could get airborne, but by then John had so calmed me down, we could have flown to the moon.

Immediately after takeoff he handed me the controls. “Let’s find your house”, he suggested, so I eased the yoke to the left and followed the Wansbeck. It was far more responsive and exciting than my car, like driving in 3D, and a few minutes later I spotted the garden below us. I was glad I’d mowed the lawn.

Izzy and Jo waved from a window as we circled overhead. “That’s Daddy in an airplane”, said Jo, and Izzy shouted “He’s going to Los Angeles”, that being the only point of a plane that she knew.

Later, John demonstrated something exhilarating called a touch and go, setting us down in a neighbouring meadow before zooming up again. We soared through the rain clouds to 7,000 feet, and then all Northumberland lay circling below us. There were no hills: all the ups and downs of life just seem to flatten out when you’re flying. I could have stayed up there forever.

Dreaming of blue skies

John was absolutely right: I’m hooked.

After The Riots: Time For An Educational Rethink

Izzy is already proficient in Maths and English. Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration. To be precise, she can count to 16 (when climbing the stairs to bed) and, when asked her age, replies “I’m two…” before pausing and adding “and a half”.

Although that’s about the only evidence of her prodigy, Jo and I are, as you can imagine, typical proud parents, glowing happily when others say how bright she is.

Long may it last. In just four weeks, she will enter Britain’s educational system via the nursery class at our local state school. From then, we’ll be trusting teachers to help deliver her into adulthood both literate and numerate. If Carol Vorderman has her way, she will be learning numbers until she is 18. And, if I have my way, she will be writing her first novel at 12. And a half.

The events of the past week have turned the political spotlight onto how we bring up our children. 11-year-olds running amok on our streets, arms full of stolen trainers and iPhones; gangs of teenagers throwing missiles at unarmed policemen: where have we gone wrong?

It’s easy to blame parents and schools. I bet you a pair of Nike Air Prestos that most of the parents of the delinquents in the news wouldn’t understand the first concept of responsible parenting, because they themselves were denied it. What boiled over onto the streets of Hackney and Croydon is the product of mistakes by successive generations: not just politicians, educationalists but ourselves, for voting in governments that have done nothing to change the way our society rears its children.

Sadly, for the young people in the courts last week, it’s probably too late: we can beat sticks and apply sticking plasters to cover the mistakes of the past, but it’ll be a tough haul to transform the entire Big Brother/X-Factor/National Lottery generation, where fame and fortune come to the lucky and the loud (or to the dishonest), rather than to those who work hard and respect others.

But where to begin? I think we should start with Izzy’s age group and pressurize the government to add a new requirement to the National Curriculum for primary schools. In addition to numeracy, literacy and science, let’s ensure that our children are taught crucial life skills, like social responsibility, caring and sharing, strength of character, the importance of honesty and respect for other people’s culture and possessions. These are essential moral values that ultimately will underpin a new order in our society, values which can be passed down the generations. Of course, like most middle-class parents, these are things we already teach our kids, but not all children are so fortunate.

When I was 10, about a month before taking my 11+ exam, I was pretty confident. My parents had encouraged me, my primary school delivered, I was a high flyer. In my class there was an overweight boy with ginger hair and freckles called Paul. He was soft, kind and laughed a lot. He also cried when the bullies hit him. One day I found him in tears at the back of the classroom. When I asked what was wrong, he said that he knew that he was “thick” because everyone said so. He would fail his 11+, and he was scared of the big boys at the secondary modern school.

For a month I worked with him after school, trying to teach him things I had mastered at the age of 5. Despite my feeble efforts, he failed the exam, another piece of rejected flotsam on the outer edges of our educational process.

I always wondered what had happened to him. Many years later I found out he had served two years in prison after being wrongly convicted for the manslaughter of a six year old. “Mentally unstable”, they called him in the press. Another inevitable victim of the current system, I’d say.

Why Is Britain Treating Artists Like Criminals?

A few months ago two young Argentinian tango dancers, Ismael Ludman and Maria Mondino, had a bad experience at Glasgow Airport. Now what I don’t know about tango would fill several libraries, but I’m told these folk are big in the dance world.

Argentinian tango isn’t like the flouncy stuff you see on Dancing With the Stars. It’s exotic and erotic, sinuous and sexy. With their upper bodies welded together, the dancers intertwine, their legs making graceful arcs around them. It’s fascinating and beautiful, and Ludman and Mondino are two of the best exponents. They travel the globe giving workshops and they’re quite well-known in Scotland, apparently, which is why they were invited to tour a few village halls and other small venues.

Sadly, the UK Border Agency had other ideas. The couple were held at the airport, refused entry and sent home. Just two casualties of a new immigration system that is making a mockery of Britain’s claim to be a magnet for international culture.

I only know about this because I was in Kirk Yetholm on Saturday night, where a public meeting, chaired by my daughter, was held to highlight the problem. There were artists, writers, musicians, gallery-owners and film-makers, even a true-blue-blooded member of the House of Lords, and they were all concerned about a system that is threatening to turn Britain into a cultural ghetto.

In 2008, our government introduced a new points-based visa system for non-EEC immigrants. It’s similar to the one that works successfully in Australia, except that in Australia there’s a special category that allows short-term visits by artists, writers and performers. Australians think it’s important that their country’s cultural diet is enriched by the work of significant international artists. Yet, despite Britain’s claims to be at the heart of cultural exchange, when they brought in our new immigration law, the government simply forgot about the arts.

Big festivals, like the Edinburgh International Festival, are given special status, but smaller events, like a book-signing by an award-winning American writer at your local Waterstones, or an appearance by a international director at a film festival in Hawick, requires a “licensed sponsor”. No sponsor, no entry, and the cost of each licence and visa runs to hundreds of pounds.

Sometimes the artist would have to travel hundreds of miles to get a biometric test – a ludicrous expense if you’re just performing for one night at a village hall where a few people like to tango.

The situation is now absurd: an international writer or a photographer on a tourist visa faces deportation if they so much as open a notebook or take a single snap; an established artist can’t even come to visit his own exhibition of paintings.

Musicians and poets from Africa, artists from Russia and China, and now Argentinian tango dancers, have fallen foul of the rules, and the world’s greatest living pianist, Grigory Sokolov, has simply deleted the UK from his touring itinerary. These are people of genius, whom we idolize for their extraordinary creative talent, and then we let the staff of the UK Border Agency treat them like illegal immigrants. They aren’t stealing employment from us, we invite them to our shores to enthrall us with their art.

According to the meeting in Yetholm, the government simply needs to create an “artists and entertainers visitor” route to solve the problem, and yet, despite a crescendo of complaints from every part of Britain’s cultural establishment, Theresa May’s Home Office remains oblivious and Jeremy Hunt’s Culture department is doing nothing to help.

The Argentinian tango dancers have got their revenge, however. There’s a magical YouTube video of them performing around their suitcases in the airport, a tribute to our pointless bureaucracy and the jobsworth mentality of the UKBA. Do take a look, before you write to your local MP.

The Perfect Holiday Hotel

There’s nothing quite like an English country holiday, especially if, like us, you’re staying in a luxury establishment. The scent of the roses outside, crisp linen on firm, comfy beds, superb cooking, with vegetables plucked fresh from the chef’s garden: that’s my idea of a good time. An informal, relaxed home-from-home.

I’m writing from one of the most beautiful tourist areas in the UK. Although it’s well past 11am, Jo is deciding whether or not to order breakfast. There are beaches and hills close by, acres of wild heathland within strolling distance, the food is wonderful, there’s a playground for Izzy: in short, we’re having a ball.

We only made the decision last Friday to take a week off. Jo said that July was so gloomy, we should have a proper break, just the three of us. Somewhere remote, without internet or mobile phones, but fairly near the sea, with nice country air. And no more than a three-hour drive from home: Izzy and long car journeys don’t go together.

Jo first suggested a B&B. In America they’re like boutique hotels, with four-poster beds, luxury furnishings and bedlinen, and free wine and cheese at 5pm. Then I reminded her of our experience on Arran. The sheets were pink polyester, the tiny pine wardrobes could hardly contain our belongings, the bed was soft as a sponge and the landlady tut-tutted loudly outside our door if we were a minute late for breakfast. Porridge is punctual, she said. Never again.

Besides, we wanted to bring the dogs, so we opted for self-catering. Although we only needed one bedroom and a cot, as we were booking with just a day’s notice, we didn’t expect to be spoilt for choice. It says something about the recession that there were several options, mostly tiny converted farm cottages, or wooden chalets with balconies.

I used to own a holiday let. The furniture was 20 years old – when we bought a new sofa we’d send the old one to the rental property. The beds were solid and cheap, the linens, towels and saucepans a job lot from a discount store. According to the agent, it was top notch, well above the norm, clean as a whistle, and so it was booked almost every week of the year. The clients seemed perfectly happy with these facilities: they weren’t to know that the entire place was filled with rejects.

Jo and I reckoned we could put up with a pine kitchen and lino flooring, tiny shower room, saggy bed and threadbare sofas with throw-covers, because we were on holiday. After all, you only sleep, eat and play Scrabble in the place. Who cares about comfort? We’d enjoy the scenery and the seaside, Izzy would love it and all we had to do was try to keep the dogs from bringing sand onto the carpets. And it was only £700 for a whole week in a Scottish bothy with a sea view (from the attic window) and gas central heating (meter controlled).

Then we looked at the weather forecast: torrential rain on the West Coast. And we looked at our nice comfy house, and said, “Let’s pretend”.

That’s why, yesterday morning, Jo woke to a perfect cappuccino from room service. The chef prepared poached eggs and smoked salmon and then we headed off to an almost deserted, sun-drenched beach near a pub with the best fish-and-chips we’ve ever had. We met the nicest people on our trip, and have a different excursion planned for every day this week. In our exclusive hotel, the internet is switched off, and the restaurant offers a vast menu featuring only home-grown produce. The furnishings seem to mirror our own taste precisely, and, as we’re the only guests, the service is immaculate. Best of all, it’s entirely free.

Thank you, Northumberland: we’re having a great holiday at home.

Growing Up

Izzy looked serious for a few moments, then gazed up at me beaming. “Daddy, I did it”, she squeaked. “You’re kidding,” I replied. “No, did it. I get off now.” And she did, and there it was: proof that my little girl was growing up.

“Yay – go Izzy”, I shouted, like an American at a baseball game, and our palms met in a triumphant “Hi-Five”.  “I wee-weed in the potty”, she reminded first me, then everyone she met for the next hour. As she was spending the morning at my office, that was a lot of people to impress.  A major milestone finally passed: nothing could signify more strongly the passing of her babyhood.

It’s exciting, yet seeing your child grow up is a bitter-sweet experience. As each tie of parental dependence severs, the more vulnerable she appears. How do little humans actually survive life without us? They’ll be reading next, then crossing the road, then having boyfriends. Before Jo and I know it, we’ll be discussing universities and, eventually, her moving out.

The truth is, humans are the only species in the animal kingdom where offspring are never truly allowed to quit the nest. I know that my Mum, 90, still worries desperately about me, 59, as much as I worry about Ben, 30 this week (another milestone), let alone tiny Izzy, 2, who’s head barely reaches my knees. The thought that anything might happen to any of my kids makes me physically wretch.

I remember the near misses: like Ben’s scooter accident in Barcelona. The call from his friend, whose voice failed to conceal the panic, the rush to the airport, the sight of his blood-covered face on the stretcher outside the operating theatre. Of course I’d warned of the dangers of bike-riding, and I’d always refused to buy him one. What else could a Dad have done? You know how headstrong youngsters are.

So I can’t begin to imagine the grief of Mitch and Janis Winehouse. They’ve watched helplessly as their beloved daughter self-destructed. In 2008 Mitch gave that sad, resigned television interview: “She won’t die of a drug overdose, that’s too quick. She would die from emphysema, if she didn’t check her behaviour, a slow, painful death, gasping for air.” How could they have saved their (in Stephen Fry’s words) “poor, unhappy creature”?

The fact is, no amount of parental vigilance can guarantee a child’s protection from cruel Fate. Over in Norway, 150 parents are in mourning, their children stolen from them by the madness of an evil fanatic.

It’s impossible to describe the excruciating, eternal agony of the loss of a child. I simply can't imagine the pain of one of my wife’s friends who, a few days ago, took her beautiful son, just nine months' old, to childcare. An hour later, she received a phone call that froze her blood: he’d stopped breathing.  An only child, his tiny light was snuffed out without warning or explanation. For his poor parents, it’s the start of an unbearable, inconsolable torment.  That’s why this weekend we’ve been hugging little Izzy even more than usual.

It’s a cliché to say that life is fragile, fraught with risk. But we’re treasuring every tiny moment as she grows up to face her own uncertain world.

Lunch With The Devil's Daughter

All right, I have a confession: like Dave Cameron, I too have schmoozed with Murdoch.

I just thought I should put this on public record in case The Guardian exposes me. I don’t want this blog’s reputation to be tarnished by revelations of my former misdoings, so I’m coming clean. Murdoch had lunch at my house and I once had two glasses of rather nice Chablis chez Murdoch. Both events happened in 2002, when Rebekah Brooks was Editor of the News of the World, though I don’t think she knew about them – unless one of her hacks had violated my Palm Pilot.

There, I feel better now it’s out in the open. I hope you’ll forgive me and continue reading my blog. Please don’t call for me to be arrested, or avert your gaze if you spot me at the fish counter in Morrisons. It was a long time ago, after all. And the Murdoch in question wasn’t Rupert, but Lis: Elisabeth to the rest of you.

She’s the dark horse (well, blond, actually), who may be the key to the survival of the Murdoch regime. Named after her matriarchal grandmother, she earned the respect of independent television producers by resigning from her Dad’s empire to make her own way, launching Shine from a gloomy converted church in Notting Hill Gate.

Like the rest of us, she struggled for years to persuade broadcasters to throw her the odd commissioning crust. She found out the hard way just how tough it is to break through the walls of arrogance and risk-avoidance at places like the BBC and Channel 4. She did manage to sell some shows to Sky, thanks largely to a generous output deal (BSkyB owned 5% of her business, so it was obliged to give her some crumbs) – but she was determined to make it on her own, and later raised squillions to buy some major production companies to add to the business. I was absolutely delighted when earlier this year she persuaded her Dad to cough up around £300million to buy Shine, and his daughter, back into the News Corporation fold.

Right now, with politicians calling for the head of his son, he needs Elisabeth to help avoid the death of the dynasty. She’s tough, outspoken, connected, honest and fiercely independent. And she said she liked my cooking, which gets a big tick from me. I suspect she’ll come riding in like a white maiden and save the day for the old Aussie codger.

Despite the terrible mistakes of his newspaper underlings, I’ve always had a certain respect for her Dad. Anyone who takes on the establishment and wins, defying the crusty bigots on the way, gets my vote.

A couple of years ago I heard him speak at one of those turgid broadcasting conferences. We’d been dozing all day while young besuited things droned on about the future of media, and then in bounced this 80-year-old with more foresight than the rest of them put together. He’s a man of huge energy, who almost single-handedly transformed the world’s media landscape, bringing more creative diversity into the entertainment industry than any government-led initiatives over the last 50 years. He created a new network in America when people said it was impossible, and wiped out the official BSB satellite station with his upstart Sky, giving us multi-channel broadcasting as his legacy.

Without Sky, life with Izzy would be one long CBeebie, so we thank God for Rupert every day. Above all, he vigorously supported the loss-making Sky News, which has won more awards for its excellent, unbiased reporting than the vastly better-resourced BBC.

Frankly, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with him owning Sky and taking ITV into the bargain, but then, I’m not a politician. And my vote can’t count anymore as I’ve already supped with the devil. Well, lunched with his daughter anyway.

The Photographer In The Hedge

He must have been hiding in the hedge. From the angle of the photograph, there was no doubt about it. I had only telephoned her an hour before, so how on earth did he know we’d be there? It’s a sunny afternoon, I’d said. Let’s have a glass of wine in the garden: it’s private, and we need to talk.

At the time I put it down to chance: maybe the photographer was prowling the streets of Chelsea and just spotted us – over a six-foot high garden fence. Of course I’ve no way of knowing for sure, but the revelations of the last few days have finally offered another explanation for that photograph many years ago.

It was during a most unhappy time of my life. I’d like to write it off as just a misspent youth, but I was old enough to know better. At the time I probably called it a mid-life crisis, a few months before my 40th birthday. Now I look back with shame.

Me and a television celebrity, caught in a hotel in Los Angeles. The media maelstrom that followed caused the disintegration of my first marriage and nearly destroyed my career. Was it in the public interest? Well the paper thought the public were interested, for they gave it plenty of coverage. But public interest? Hardly. I was just a producer, she a presenter. We had a summer location fling: it ought to have faded with the autumn leaves. But in the glare of the headlines, it felt like the end of the world.

I’ll never forget the feeling of impotence and vulnerability when the tabloids turned on the spotlight. Convinced I was being being followed 24 hours a day, I kept my curtains closed, scanned my rear view mirror for pursuing vehicles, and always used a mobile phone instead of the landline, for fear of phone tapping. Big mistake.

I guess all they wanted was a picture of us together. But we both felt we’d given our spouses and children enough pain without exposing them to that additional indignity. So we avoided the paparazzi and kept our heads down.

We’d escaped from Los Angeles by hiding in the back of a car and driving like the wind to the airport. A lovely British Airways official, who’d seen it all before, brought us in through the staff entrance. At Heathrow we sneaked into separate taxis with scarcely a goodbye.

A rabbit caught in the headlines, I checked into an anonymous apartment hotel. For almost two months I looked over my shoulder, scanning the horizon for lenses, avoiding eye-contact for fear of being recognized. It was an illogical, crazy existence. In reality, nobody cared but me. I should have gone home and faced the music, picked up the remnants of my life.

One day I bumped into Jeremy Paxman. “How are things?” he asked. “Terrible”, I replied, “what with all the tabloids and everything”. He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. The man who knew everything about the news, who every night read out the newspaper headlines on Newsnight, had completely missed the end of my world.

That made me feel much better: my story was just old news. I moved into a flat, then one day rang her and we arranged to meet. Except the photographer came too. Hacked? Who knows. Invaded? Most certainly.

It wasn’t the News of the World that published the picture, by the way. I’ll wager there’ll be more redtops under the magnifying glass once the public gets its inquiry. I just hope that, in time, the tabloids begin to work out a new balance between their freedom to publish what really is in the public interest and the basic right of every individual to simply live in privacy.

Potty Training with Russell Harty

"So what was your first impression of Russell Harty?"

It wasn’t a trick question, and I should have seen it coming – on Thursday, ITV brought me all the way to London for an interview about the late chatshow host. But it still caught me unprepared.

Amazing Grace Bashes Harty Shock

I’d carefully rehearsed in my head all my usual anecdotes about Diana Dors, Oliver Reed, Dirk Bogarde and the myriad other celebrities Russell had interviewed during the years I was his producer. I had a store of tales of encounters with Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd and other long-deceased comedians, or prickly meetings with Hollywood super-egos like Shirley McLaine. I’d rehearsed in my head what I would say about Russell’s national notoriety following the Grace Jones incident, about the rent boy story in the News Of The World, and his subsequent illness and death.

I wanted to talk about his humanity and humour, his vulnerability and honesty. But recalling an image of when we first met? I couldn’t even picture where it was. At the BBC? In a Notting Hill restaurant? In Russell’s basement flat with its bachelor-yellow walls and walnut grand piano? Memory plays such tricks with your brain, it’s hard to be precise about events of thirty years ago. That’s when the BBC summoned me back from a year’s sabbatical in India to become Russell’s producer.

At that time my first son Ben was barely an embryo: Russell later became his godfather. By the end of the third series of chatshows, he was talking in sentences and just about potty trained – Ben that is: Russell never used a sentence when a whole paragraph would do. Potty-training Ben was easier than producing the mercurial Mr Harty: though, sadly, I can’t recall any of that process either, to my wife’s frustration.

Izzy relaxes after a long session of potty-training

Right now, Izzy is talking fluently, saying American words like cookie, sneaker and diaper in a posh English accent. Especially the last, for now the time has come for her to cross the divide and cast away the Pampers. Yet I find I have absolutely no recollection of how to achieve this vitally important stage of parenthood.

I can clearly picture Ben’s white disposable nappies – no cartoon characters or triple layers in those days – but the fog of forgetfulness won’t let me recall how we banished them. As a result, I’m distracted from my writing by the sight of Izzy running across the lawn, shorts round her ankles and Jo in hot pursuit carrying a plastic pink Peppa Pig potty, urging her to sit down. She catches her, too late of course. The dogs witnessing this display appear to be laughing as much as I am: I just hope the image stays in my brain for long enough for me to be able to share it with Izzy’s first boyfriend.

Back in the ITV interview, I suppose I could have invented some neat anecdote. That’s what they do on talk shows. Nicely honed stories, told to the researcher beforehand, noted down on the question cards. “You’ve had some strange acquatic experiences haven’t you?” comes the host’s unsubtle prompt, and out pops a pat answer about scuba-diving with David Jason.

Russell hated all that. He liked to interview people, not names. Celebrity didn’t make people interesting, personality sometimes did. Which is one reason his interviewing technique was often criticised: he liked people, not reputations or press releases. At times that could sound curt, even rude, but his bluntness derived from interest, not sycophancy.

Russell Harty 1934-1988
(with faithful M&S pullover)

So instead, I descended into the blank of my memory, and pulled out Russell’s dark blue Marks & Spencer pullover and his blue-grey sensible shoes. He wore them every day, in the office, in restaurants, at home. Not at all the garb of a star. So I said he appeared to be, well, "unstarry". It sounded most inadequate, but it was absolutely true.

Chip Off The Old Block

When my eldest son Ben was little, he became a magician.

He called himself Benjamin Bonkers and would entertain our friends’ younger children with toy rabbits and hats. Until, one day, he accidentally set fire to his sister’s hair and Mum banned him from further performances. So instead, Ben set his heart on becoming an actor.

We did all we could to dissuade him. As a producer and director, I know how difficult it is to scratch any sort of living on stage or in front of the cameras. Did he want to be unemployed for most of the rest of his life? The producers have the creative ideas and do the hiring, I told him, the players are mere employees at the bottom of the creative food chain. That’s not strictly true, of course – a good actor can be the making of a successful project – but his mother and I were getting desperate.

After enduring several years of interminable school plays, during which we failed to discern the slightest hint of latent stardom, we finally suggested he might consider following his Dad into a career behind the cameras. Ben snorted with derision at the suggestion. I produced popular down-market shows like Challenge Anneka and Star for a Night: fit only for BBC1 on Saturday nights. He was an artiste. Visits to television studios and location left him cold. We sighed and waited.

Sure enough, after A-Levels, the inevitable happened. He announced that he’d decided to study film and television at university. And, to my great relief, he shone. He has a cinematic eye I never quite developed, and he’s great with crew and actors. He’s directed commercials, won prizes for his short films, and he’s very good with comedy, perhaps the most difficult genre of all. He has a penchant for the surreal which more than matches my own, and this year he finally achieved his first major goal when he was asked to direct an hour-long network television drama. Sure, it was only BBC1 on Saturday night, but his episode of Casualty was a tour de force. It made me cry, and that was the programme, not just the sight of my son’s first onscreen credit.

Last week, en route to the Edinburgh Film Festival where he’s making contacts for his first feature film, he dropped off in Newcastle to give me my Father’s Day present. It was the ultimate gift: he directed one of my films.

It was just a short project (I say “just – in this recessed climate, any work is useful for a production company), but it was pretty ambitious. It involved all the things Ben is good at, like comedy, actors, and a surreal script. In the kitchen of a dingy basement restaurant in the city centre, with the cast caked in fake blood and sweat, I heard him shout “Action!” for the first time and I can’t begin to measure the pride. We were, for one day only, a father and son team.

It’s hard to express quite how that feels. Working together with your firstborn is something that transcends ordinary human endeavour. Now I think I understand the satisfaction that butchers and grocers must feel as they add “& Son” to their own name above the shopfront. As an old block, it was great to see my young chip bossing around the actors and crew just like his Dad. The weirdest feeling was that he now has my voice. In the edit a few days later, it was impossible to tell us apart.

"Best Leave It To The Expert, Dad..."  [all photos by David Bridges]

The final result is as good as I could have hoped for. Viewing one particularly nice shot, I asked Ben, “How did you do that?” Quick as a flash came the response: “It’s not magic, Dad”.  Quite.

My Worst Christmas

FOR SALE

The BBC has announced the sale of one of Britain’s most iconic buildings: Television Centre. For me that vast circle of studios, like a giant question mark topped by glass-fronted offices, stirs up mixed emotions. Set in the wasteland of Shepherds Bush, within spitting distance of QPR’s football ground, it was the scene of the highest points of my BBC career, and also the lowest. For this was where, in 1971, I spent the most miserable Christmas of my life.

As a student desperate for any start in television, I’d secured a vacation job in the mailroom. They put me in a section called “Incoming Mail”. There were 15 middle-aged women and me. Our job was to open every letter sent to the BBC.

Quite why we had to do this, we weren’t sure. Nobody actually told us to look for anything – like evidence of communists, Payola, or ITV headhunters. We just opened the envelopes, stapled them to the contents, and put them in mailboxes to be delivered by men with trollies round long the circular corridors. This repetitive job turned out to be a perfect career springboard. For, by surreptitious reading of the mail, I soon identified all the key producers. All I had to do was meet them.

The head of the mail service, a man called Mr Beasley, with a voice of gravel and a heart of gold, took me under his wing and let me play the “lost post” game. If I spotted a letter to a person I wanted to meet, he let me hold it back from the mail run and go upstairs to deliver it myself. In this way I met the man who gave me my first proper job after university.

In the 1970s ‘TC’, as it was called to all who worked there, was the most exciting place in the world. The circle comprised 8 busy studios – 4 large, 3 small, and, at the bottom of the question mark, behind the familiar BBC Television Centre sign, the biggest studio in Europe, a cavernous space full of lights, cameras and memories called TC1. In my meal breaks I would rush upstairs to the observation galleries and watch the filming of Top of the Pops and Doctor Who. Sometimes friendly studio managers let me inside to see some of the most famous names on television performing their stuff: from Morecambe & Wise to The Two Ronnies.

10 years after I joined the mailroom, I became the director of the General Election, the largest programme ever produced from the building, which simultaneously utilised every studio except TC1. That had been reserved for an entertainment series called “The Hot Shoe Show”. I was the producer of that programme too.

This was undoubtedly the high point – the following year I handed in my resignation and started my own company. But, back in 1971, my enthusiasm for life in this incredible building was marred by an unfortunate incident involving, as happened all too often in my life, a beautiful woman.

At university I had fallen in unrequited lust for a blond first-year called Nicky. Having pointedly shunned my advances all term, one day she asked if we might share a flat in London over the holidays. As the only ‘flat’ we could afford was a single-roomed bedsit, I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d be sharing a room with the most beautiful girl in the world: it was the best Christmas ever.

Sadly, on the first night, my world disintegrated. Paul, tanned and Australian, lived in the room next door. It took him less than 20 minutes to seduce my Nicky. The walls were very thin. On New Year’s Eve they stayed in for a night of romance and I trudged, in freezing rain, to seek solace in the bar at Television Centre. It was shut.

By 2015 it will have closed forever: but the memories remain.

Cutting The Beeb Down To Size

I recently found myself in a vast empty office building near Manchester, as one of the first guests of a new BBC empire. The signs weren’t up, painters were still glossing the skirting boards, men in overalls were wandering round with clipboards, and a few early staff arrivals were looking for the Costa Coffee shop. Everything smelt new and optimistic.

It’s an impressive development: towering glassfronted buildings and a fully equipped studio complex overlook the calming waters of Salford Quays. Several BBC departments are moving there, including Sport, Children’s, and a chunk of news output including Radio 5 Live and the BBC Breakfast programme. It’s a nice gesture by a London-centric organisation, although it probably won’t make much difference to us independent producers isolated in the North East.

The building was freezing, not just because it was in Manchester, but because noone had yet worked out how to turn down the air-conditioning. For the cluster of young, ambitious creatives it must be an exciting new world. Yet amongst the new arrivals I met there was talk of only one thing: the cuts. ‘Delivering Quality First’ is the catchphrase – how can the BBC maintain its programme quality whilst slashing 20% of its budget?

Nobody knows how this target will be achieved: advice has been solicited from all and sundry, and decisions are expected soon. Over the last few days, media pages have buzzed with rumour and yesterday the new Chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, hinted that some sports coverage and maybe a whole television channel might be at risk. We already know that over 1,000 jobs are vulnerable within News, so two Salford departments could be losing staff even before they’ve unpacked their suitcases.

According to Lord Patten, the World Service is safe. So that’s a relief then: people in India will still get their BBC programmes, even if we can’t watch Match of the Day.

The thing about Delivering Quality First is that it’s hard to define “quality”. Is it entertainment for millions of families to enjoy on a Saturday night? Or a concert on Radio Three, heard by just a couple of thousand? The influence and volubility of the Radio 3 audience is in inverse proportion to its size, so it would be a very brave executive that tries to cut so much as a single cello from a BBC orchestra.

The thing that I find strange is the way this exercise has been undertaken. Despite the cuts, the BBC has a guaranteed income of many billions for the next six years. With such a level of risk-free financial security, most business leaders would start with a blank sheet of paper and first work out what sort of service its customers would expect for the money, and then cost and deliver it. The current strategy is to ask how the existing BBC can deliver the best of what it already does, more cheaply.

Rather than “Should we be keeping BBC 4 as well as BBC 2”, wouldn’t it have made more sense to ask: “What is the public’s demand for factual programmes, and how best can we meet it?” I find it odd that we have daytime programmes with miniscule budgets on two separate channels, and yet thousands of great programmes lie unrepeated in the BBC Archive – I know which I’d rather watch on a wet afternoon. I also don’t understand why the BBC spends hundreds of millions on a separate channel for 16 to 24 year olds, most of whom don’t see the relevance of television in their tweeting, texting lives.

Consensus will be impossible. I just hope that, when the white smoke comes from White City, and the decisions are announced, the BBC remembers that it’s a broadcaster for the whole nation. Whatever cuts it makes, it must continue its commitment to the North: starting with that empty building in Salford.

Cheryl Cole and The X Factor: The Final (Geordie) Word

I went to the wrong school. That’s my excuse when friends down South ask me why, despite an entire childhood on Tyneside, there’s scarcely a twang of Geordie in my speech.

Quite how I avoided the accent is a mystery: it was my background music for more than 20 years. I can tune in and understand every word perfectly: I can even communicate with Kevin, our house painter, when he’s in full flow. His accent is so strong it renders Jo utterly speechless with admiration and incomprehension. I’d be a brilliant Cheryl Cole interpreter.

In fact, my wife swears that my hidden Geordie dialect emerges after I’ve had a couple of pints of Tyneside Blonde down our local pub, but I know that it’s not very authentic. Sure, I may find “upaheight” a more economical use of language than “it’s up there on the top shelf”, or fret that my wife “blethors” or about the “clarts” which perpetually adorn Izzy’s wellingtons. I may conjure up an entire vocabulary of Geordie abuse when United are a goal down, but I can’t reproduce the fluent, passionate language of the Angles and the Venerable Bede, the delicious (but sadly endangered) burr of the people of Redesdale and the North Tyne, where I spent every teenage weekend, or the sharp, expressively precise language of Tyneside, my home until adulthood and ambition drew me south. No matter how many pints I consume, I still call a "short" a "shirt", and I probably always will.

Mind you, Jo’s from California, so she’s scarcely one to judge. Nor is Mike Darnell, the President of the Fox network. He lives in a nice house in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, a permanently sunny, botoxed world as far removed from Newcastle as you could possibly imagine. According to some tabloids, he it was who decided to first axe and then reinstate our Cheryl Cole for the US version of The X Factor. Now they say the final decision has been made: Cheryl is out. And all because of her accent.

Personally, I don’t believe a word of it. Darnell’s a genius: he virtually invented reality television; he understands better than anyone how to create a popular hit; and he adores the English – he jumped when I brought him Amanda Byram for Paradise Hotel (OK, she’s Irish, but it all sounds the same in Calabasas). Did he really worry that Cheryl’s speech might be an impediment?

There’s something terribly fishy about this whole U.S. X-Factor Geordie-hating story. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Paula Abdul was involved. Many thought American Idol improved when she finally departed. Quite why she’s back in Cowell’s good books I can’t imagine, but I doubt Paula would want to be upstaged by someone prettier and wittier. If Cheryl had returned and Paula stayed, you can bet fur would fly and tears flow. And I doubt Fox would have insisted that Cheryl had emergency elocution lessons: self-defence more like.

Perhaps she should have developed her own mid-Atlantic drawl. I find it almost impossible not to impersonate people when I’m with them: from Americans to Italians, Brummies to Belgians, my accent flows with the crowd. According to Jo, I’m particularly embarrassing when I’m abroad. In Italy I only have to step off the plane before I lapse into Italianglish, flinging my arms around and shouting loudly at waiters.

Jo claims I don’t speak a single word of actual Italian. She’s wrong: I speak fluent musical notation: “Andante Sostenuto, Affretando, Subito Pianissimo”, I cry with confidence once the Chianti takes hold.

Admittedly, these words aren’t much help when you’re trying to order squid or sea bass, but I’m sure they’d be pretty useful if I was asked to be a judge on the Italian version of the X-Factor. And I know I’d be perfectly understood, because I’d be speaking them without the slightest hint of a Geordie accent.

Geordie Shore

"If you’re a Geordie, you need a tan: no true Geordie goes around looking like a ghost". That pearl of wisdom came from one of the cast of Geordie Shore. It was one of the few coherent sentences in the first episode.

For those who don’t normally watch MTV, here’s the plot: four pneumatic North East girls with fake tans are in a posh house with four bare-chested boys and a fridge full of booze. They get drunk, vomit, and have sex under duvets. That’s it.

It’s appalling. The cast generates no empathy, their characters portrayed as ignorant, unattractive and interested only in getting laid.

Putting a whole new spin on the slogan Passionate People, Passionate Places, this is possibly the worst kind of publicity for our region. It portrays Newcastle as home to loud, loose, shallow, orange-tanned morons.

This kind of reality television is far from new. In fact, I have a terrible confession: I kicked off the whole phenomenon in 2003 when I produced a show in the United States called Paradise Hotel. The concept was similar: put young people in luxury and they’ll soon drive each other mad. We shot it with multiple hidden cameras; there were relationships and tears. It was a ratings triumph.

There was a big difference, though: we didn’t use booze to generate the drama, instead relying on clever casting. A plain, rather overweight boy called Dave and a strange but gentle girl called Charla were set within a company of busty blondes and beach bums. For an entire summer the show was on everyone’s lips – people threw Paradise Hotel parties on elimination nights. When Charla ditched Dave in the final episode, it made the New York Times.

The following year MTV produced Laguna Beach, with spoilt kids from Orange County. It was about romance, unrequited love and rivalries, set against a backdrop of wealth. But in 2009 MTV decided to reinvent the concept as something more gritty. Their target was the working class Italian-American community of Jersey Shore: loud and uninhibited, without self-consciousness or shame. It broke ratings records and now they’re repeating the formula over here, with what they consider the ultimate dumb, drunk stereotype: the Geordie.

Our local media has buzzed with indignation. “Why Newcastle? They could have done it in Liverpool.” Well one reason is that the production company is based in Liverpool and they’d be drummed out of town if they did this to their own city. They also produce The Only Way Is Essex.

“This isn’t a true picture”, say the critics. Are they blind? Take a tour of the Bigg Market zoo any weekend evening. Jo and I often drive visitors there to see the animals: men and women naked, urinating openly in the street, unspeakable acts taking place in broad daylight.

So who is guilty? Not MTV, for sure. What is our elected council doing to protect the image of our city? Licensing countless clubs and bars to serve unlimited drinks at a pound a time? Turning a blind eye to the weekend debauchery? Well now we’re reaping the consequences. We’ve got our party city, and a reputation to match.

How can Newcastle limit the damage? The last thing it needs is an MP asking questions in the House of Commons. More publicity equals higher ratings.

Those really offended by Geordie Shore might learn a lesson from Paradise Hotel. It was the biggest hit of the summer, but wasn't renewed. The reason: just a few conservative people wrote to complain about the show to the network’s key advertisers who, fearing the association would damage their brands, pulled their commercials. Without ad revenue, the network was forced to cancel the second series.

One of the advertisers of Geordie Shore, on the web if not the TV series, is the health drink Lucozade. The company that makes it, GlaxoSmithKline, says it is “committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer”. I doubt that its chairman, Sir Christopher Gent, would think this aim was being furthered by a television programme that idolizes young people who get utterly intoxicated on cheap vodka and indulge in loveless sex with complete strangers.

Sir Christopher is in his 60s and has two young children. It's unlikely he knows that his adverts for Lucozade are helping to pay for Geordie Shore. Any real Geordies reading this might like to enlighten him.

Till Death Do Us Part

You have to feel sorry for 60-year-old New Yorker Robert Fitzpatrick. After blowing his entire life savings on posters predicting the end of the world last night, he woke up this morning to find he was still amongst the heathen.

It must have been a bitter blow for him and thousands of American believers who’d been convinced by the California preacher Harold Camping that it was “Rapture Day”, when they’d all be transported up to heaven as huge earthquakes destroyed the rest of us left down here on Earth.

Robert had spent $140,000 putting up thousands of posters around the New York subway and bus system. I assume all believing bus drivers had considerately taken the day off work: after all, if any of them had been raptured off a moving vehicle, it would have caused no end of traffic chaos down Broadway.

Camping had worked out the date using a series of complex calculations based on the anniversary of Noah’s flood (7,000 years ago on Saturday) and various biblical passages. As a result, thousands of Americans sold their homes and valuables and quit their jobs, all clearly surplus to requirements in the afterlife, and handed over their money to Camping’s church. It’s reported that he raised tens of millions from believers over the last few months.

They weren’t put off by the fact that he got it completely wrong last time: he originally said that the Rapture would happen in September 1994. In fact, apart from the 5,000th performance of Cats on Broadway, there wasn’t a lot of seismic activity anywhere that month and, denied his Journey To The Heaviside Layer, the discredited minister went off to lick his paws and invent a new date.

This latest prediction has resulted in a roaring trade for poster manufacturers, end-of-the-world party organisers and also for a company in New Hampshire called External Earthbound Pets. For just $135, paid in advance, they agreed to collect and care for any furry friend left behind after its owner had been raptured away. No Armageddon, no refund.

The fact that Harold Camping’s absurd prediction gained such traction is a tribute to the extraordinary gullibility of the human mind. Is there nothing that people won’t believe, given a bit of hype? From fad diets to reality television, from conspiracy theories about Bin Laden to the journalism in the Daily Mail: people believe all sorts of nonsense as fact. It’s just as well – without fantasy, wouldn’t life be intolerably dull?

At precisely 6pm last night, just as the world wasn’t ending, Jo and I were at a wedding reception drinking a toast to the bride and groom. As they began their new life together, Jo and I were thinking about that daunting phrase “till death do us part”.

We agreed that, when you love someone so much that you can’t imagine life without them, the best way to go is probably to share some God-invoked end-of-the-world scenario. The mere thought of separation is more than either of us could bear, so it would be good to know we were victims in the same Armageddon. We’d have loads to gossip about as the conflagration hit: it’s always exciting to be a witness at a breaking news story.

But then we realised we’d have a problem: how to ensure we’d be together after the big event. You see, Jo is Jewish and I’m Church of England. As we can’t both be right, there’s a real risk that one of us ends up alone on the wrong side of the fence, looking after the pet-minding. Unless, that is, we’re both on the wrong side and we should have turned Buddhist. Still, as the Grateful Dead song goes: “I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe, at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride”.

Don't Scare The Turkey

The hare is dead: frankly, it never looked very alive to me.

The news that BBC1 has decided to axe its infantile game show “Don’t Scare The Hare” after just three disastrous and expensive episodes must come as no surprise to anyone who has actually seen it: which isn’t many (the ratings have plumbed new depths for Saturday night viewing).

For those who haven’t, it’s a show with dubbed laughter, a strange and superfluous music track, a scary presenter with giant glasses and a cap hiding his baldness, and an animatronic hare which trundles around the studio like a dalek. Grownups play children’s games and if they fail, the hare runs off “scared”. Oh, and someone wins some money.

Wow: somebody actually sat in a darkened room and came up with this drivel, and the BBC paid them a couple of million quid to stage it. It looks like cheap Bulgarian children’s television. Suspecting that it was designed for two-year-olds, we tried it out on Izzy. She didn’t last twenty seconds, angrily demanding we switch to Peppa Pig. The BBC clearly cast the wrong animal in the lead – it should have been a turkey.

Mind you, all producers have made them: turkeys, that is. When Mark Thompson quit the BBC as director of programmes, at his leaving do he gave a speech about his career highs and lows. Robot Wars, which I produced when he was running BBC2, was a high; but the lowest of the lows was a Saturday night game show called Happy Families.

It seemed like a great idea at the time: Gladiators had just completed its first series on ITV, and arena shows seemed to be the in thing. So, rather than lycra-clad superheroes with false names like Jet and Wolf, I came up with a show that pitched extended families against each other. We staged it at the London Arena: a barn of a place so big we had to build giant games to fill it. In the middle were two metal cages in which the contestants imprisoned their grandmothers. The contestants had to “Hoist up their Grannies” a hundred feet to the top of the building. Yes, I was responsible for this nonsense.

The show opened in the roof, with a giant roller coaster made up of hand-powered bikes. One by one each family member pedalled furiously to link up with the others into one long hand-powered train, which began a terrifying descent to the ground, hitting more than 40 miles an hour on the bends with no safety net. I was scared that we might dump an entire family onto the heads of the audience. Sometimes the bikes got stuck and the contestants were suspended in mid-air: one woman broke her arm on the pedals. We also built absurd games like “Terrorball”, in which someone had to answer trivia questions about their family while being spun upside down. There was even a game for the family dog.

I was terrified one of the grannies would suffer a heart attack. In fact, the biggest problem was incontinence: you wouldn’t believe how many times they needed to go to the toilet during filming. Each time the wretched cage had to be slowly winched down so they could be released. We went wildly over schedule, frequently filming into the night, by which time the audience – all 5,000 of them, had drifted off home. So instead of a mass spectacle, we had to shoot everything in close-up and cut in shots of audience cheering from the afternoon.

Right now I feel the pain of Don’t Scare The Hare’s producer. After so much effort, realising you’ve created a turkey is no fun. But at least the hare won’t be lonely, as it lies buried in the Saturday night television graveyard: it will have two granny cages and a load of rusty hand-pedalled bikes for company.

Maybe We Should All Become Scottish?

McGutteridge of Blog

[The Scottish Nationalist Party had a landslide victory in the Scottish elections last week: we live only half an hour from the border]


I’ve started to collect Scottish £5 notes. They’re kept in a shortbread biscuit tin with a picture of Edinburgh Castle on the lid.

You see, once the divorce with England takes place, I’m assuming Scotland won’t want the Euro as its unit of currency, so I thought a few Scottish pounds might prove useful.

They’ll be hard to spend, though, as I predict the new currency will be divided into its original pre-1707 component parts of doyts, bodles, placks, bawbees and merks, which nobody will be able to understand without the calculator they’ll sell to immigrants and tourists at passport control.

But it looks like Scotland’s the place to be. Maybe we should relocate now? I’m sure Jo won’t mind moving to an even colder farmhouse. The weather’s not really that much worse, if you wear a warm enough overcoat in summer. And the food is, well, hearty.

I suspect she might have problems with the language, though. It’s taken her three years to be able to communicate with the locals here; we had a Scottish workman in the house the other week and her look of incomprehension was priceless: he was only asking the way to the toilet.

Nevertheless I’m sure there’ll be loads of advantages for us: Izzy will qualify for free everything for life, including university lectures, medical prescriptions and eye tests. Also, she won’t have to pay a penny for me to stay in my old people’s home in Peebles.

I hope they’ll grant us residency visas. Joseph Gillan, my great-great grandfather, was born in 1808 somewhere in Lanarkshire. That makes me one-sixteenth Scottish and Gillan is my middle name: surely it must count for something?

In fact, most of Jo’s American friends are convinced we live there already, and our London friends think we may as well, so remote is our Northumbrian farmhouse. They must all picture us in kilts.

That’s how we used to paint the SNP: all beards and sporrans. In fact, as the election results showed last week, most of Scotland’s population, across all parts of the social spectrum, now supports the SNP. There’s no other real option: all the other parties are irrelevant minority also-rans in Scottish politics. Whether these people will also support independence from England when the referendum is held in a couple of years is another matter. If the SNP continues to play the game so well, and Labour so badly, a vote for separation should be a tartan shoe-in.

You don’t have to be a political analyst to know that the consequences of Thursday’s vote will be far-reaching in England, and it’s nothing to do with independence, which is neither here nor there to most of us south of the border. Labour’s worst performance for 80 years saw its Scottish powerbase destroyed; even if this were partly reflected in a Westminster vote, they’d find it numerically impossible to be elected in London ever again, so reliant is the party on its Scottish MPs.

Already the rise of nationalism has affected my own industry. The BBC reserves a major chunk of its programme budget for what it calls “the nations”, and most of that goes to Scotland. It means that if I want to make an entertainment programme, the easiest way to get it commissioned is to say that I want to film it in Glasgow. It’s a lie, of course: I’d rather film almost anywhere else, but they’ve built an enormous state-of-the-art television centre there with our licence fees and they’re desperate to fill it.

Two of our last three prime ministers were Scottish and Cameron almost is: it’s clearly the fashion. Speaking of which, the editor of my newspaper, who comes from Aberdeen, wears a very fetching kilt at black-tie dinners. I must ask him where I can get one for my new Scottish persona, once I’ve saved up enough £5 notes.