Tuesday 25 January 2011

Telly-types have the same insatiable mania for self-decoration as Hermann Goering


It’s 38 days, six hours and some chronological loose change since my last contact with an executive with sufficient rank and budget to commission a TV programme (I don’t count bumping into Fincham outside Booze Brothers on New Year’s Eve loading 200 Superkings Menthol and six dozen Jägermeister jelly ‘shotz’ into the boot of his car).

But just when I’m wondering whether the industry has been wiped out by zombies or relocated somewhere warmer (the British Antarctic Territories?), two tickets arrive for the first awards ceremony of 2011.

Telly-types have the same insatiable mania for self-decoration as Hermann Goering. Even the most self-effacing types, like the BBC’s Head of Religion, Aaqil Ahmed (the only senior BBC bod I know actually to be born within a whippet’s sprint of Salford), experience a Jekyllian conversion during awards season and start angrily demanding joint custody of BAFTA statuettes from award-winning producers.  

Like A-level grades, the number of awards continually inflates in a forlorn attempt to prove standards are rising. Categories become ever more obscure: Most Damaging Exploitation of a Minor; Most Cynical Use of Family by a TV Chef; Best Sneer by a News Anchor; Most Misguided Commission involving a DJ called Chris (don’t bother entering… it’s Channel 4’s in perpetuity). 

Yet the chances of most of us actually winning an award decrease in inverse proportion. Judging panels are as exclusive, clandestine and bitterly contested as Fight Club, with membership restricted to a mafia of senior broadcasters and indies, who defend this privilege with peculiar handshakes and extreme prejudice and twist everything from the truth to your nipples to give their own programme the best chance of winning.

For these and other reasons, I wouldn’t normally come within a £100 taxi ride of this particular event, which is run by the magazine that published such a grubby libel when I left the employ of a certain broadcaster last spring (for the record I was under the influence of nothing stronger than cough syrup, no baby animals were injured and no criminal charges pressed).

Since The Indie Awards died a death (the Reptile House at London Zoo was no longer available and they couldn’t find another venue equipped to deal with all that venom), The Broadcast Awards has become the main night in the calendar when independent producers come together to berate each other’s successes. The Grosvenor House will be heaving with producers speaking with forked tongues and slithering around a smattering of commissioning editors like vipers around Indiana Jones’ size 12s. Channel controllers don’t exactly relish braving this snake pit, which explains why last year’s Channel of the Year award was collected by a stoned and semi-naked junior cast member from Skins.

Unfortunately, attendance at even such a limited networking opportunity is compulsory for a producer whose remuneration exceeds the value of his commissions in the last nine months by a factor of 4.7396-to-1. With my business partner Lucinda “saving herself for The Emmys”, I ponder inviting the Right Hon. Mrs O, but the only person I’ve ever known to parade his wife at the coalface is The Infant Prodigy, wee Davy Elstein, and no good ever came of following his example. Alternatively, I’d love to take another tilt at The Fitzrovian Venus, but as a commissioning editor for a channel in the higher reaches of the Sky EPG that gorgeous creature won’t care for the view from table 119 where we’ll be sniffing urinal cake not the sweet smell of success.

Which means I’ll probably be reduced to a man-date with Camp Bradley, Admirable Production’s runner/researcher/resident-slave and formerly ‘Mr Showbiz’ for Good Morning Gold Coast on Queensland Community TV. Brad should be dizzy enough with gratitude to forget that the only thing we’re paying him is the price of a weekly travelcard.

Just possibly, the humiliation of being relegated to sit alongside the once-were's and never-will-be's could be the spur to greater things. In twelve months time I hope to be collecting an ugly, plastic doorstop of my own rather than the endurance record for longest gap between conversations with a commissioning editor.



Wednesday 19 January 2011

Is Dorothy Byrne the bastard offspring of Dylan the Rabbit?

Justin Webb seems like a decent enough cove and I, for one, won't stoop so low as to attempt to make comic mileage out of his admission that he is the lovechild of the 1970s newsreader Peter Woods. 

But pondering whether there's a format to be made out of it (and oodles of lovely money) is quite another matter. 

I'm thinking about a twist on the genealogy formats so prevalent in today's schedules, in which a member of the public or minor public figure - such as a Radio 4 news presenter - goes back through their family tree to discover which priapic or sexually incontinent celebrity is the joker in their gene pool. Who Do You Think Your Star maybe? 

Justin's confession has also got me speculating on which other stars of the modern broadcasting firmament may be related to some of the dodgier icons of the late 20th Century.

Is George Entwistle the product of a torrid one-night stand between The Who’s legendary bassist and a particularly myopic librarian from Stevenage called Vera?

Was David Abraham’s mullet the result of an experiment in the Timotei Hair Care Lab to examine the growth properties of elephant dung mixed with whipped cream and nitrous oxide using hair samples provided by Kevin Keegan and Jeremy Beadle?

Surely Jeff Ford's genes don’t lie. He's clearly the offspring of GLC firebrand, Red Ken, isn't he?

Does Dorothy Byrne provide the final proof that there was more than meets the eye to the onscreen chemistry between Dylan the Rabbit and Florence from The Magic Roundabout? And is Janice Hadlow the missing genetic link between Jane from Roddy, Jane and Freddy and George from Rainbow?

Was Natalka Znak all that was left after an explosion on the Scrabble production line in a Hasbro factory in Wisconsin?

Is Ben Stephenson in any way related to Mr Bean?

Does the existence of Richard Woolfe raise questions about exactly what Dale Winton’s mother got up to in the 1970s?

And is there the slightest truth in the rumour that that blond reprobate Kevin Lygo is the legitimate second son of former Vice Naval Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Raymond Lygo KCB?

Actually... on second thoughts. No. Sorry. That last one’s just totally implausible…




Who's the daddy?

Ben or Bean?








Thursday 13 January 2011

Jay Hunt's Gentle Touch with TV Talent

So, thanks to the sainted Miriam, TV’s dirty little secret is out.

Not that we needed the Countryfile tribunal to tell us that the upper echelons of this wonderful industry of ours are ageist, sexist, misogynist, disabilist, atheist, homophobic, xenophobic, cacophobic (look it up!), AllyRossophobic and more than just a little bit poxy. We were already privy to that.

What these shenanigans reveal to us is in all its breath-taking glory, is Jay Hunt’s gossamer-light but steely touch with on-screen talent. Like a funnel web spider sinking its fangs silently into a helpless bluebottle or a raptor tearing the head off a rabbit with a twist of its razor sharp beak, it truly is a natural wonder, combining effortless grace with ruthless potency.

By some strange quirk of fate I’ve never crossed paths with Jay professionally, although I’ve long admired her attributes from afar. Strictly speaking we were colleagues at the BBC throughout the first half of the nineties, but I could say the same for David Icke and Mr Blobby. Since then she’s always been a few steps behind me, coming to Five a couple of years after my brief sojourn in Dawn’s bosom and landing her latest job a matter of months after my final defenestration from Four.

From what I hear Jay is a loving spouse and a wonderful mother. She’s probably exceedingly kind to babies and old ladies. But when it comes to dealing with the vulnerable and needy creatures that populate our TV screens, this is one cold-hearted chihuahua. Quentin Letts, in his infamous bitchfest in The Daily Mail, described our Jay as a ‘killer kitten’, but what he surely meant was ‘kitten killer’. Beneath her ribcage beats a fossilized walnut.

Much is made of her Aussie roots and quite rightly. She appears as tough as year-old kangaroo jerky, the sort of flinty-eyed, sharp-featured, straight-talker so beloved of our cousins Down Under. She takes her place in the first rank of antipodean hardnuts, alongside Ned Kelly, Agro the Saltwater Crocodile, Aussie Rules footballers and BSkyB’s legendary bruiser, Sam Chisholm.

If Jay is more than averagely steely by Aussie standards, then she’s a hunk of teak in terms of the UK television industry. I’d wager the contents of Jonathan Ross’s swear box that she’d succeed in one-on-one combat with the best of British broadcasting beefcake, effortlessly taking down a tag team of Stuart Cosgrove and Kenton “Ten Tonne’ Allen before polishing off our very own Obelix the Gaul, Addison Cresswell, even after he’s taken his magic potion.

It should come as no surprise that Jay can take a notoriously hard line when it comes to on-screen talent; like a particularly vindictive elephant she’ll hold a lifetime’s grudge against any presenter foolish enough to cross her. Witness that foolish poppet, wee Claudia Winkleman, wide-eyed and witless on The Film Programme, who’s never recovered from the shellacking Jay gave her when she had the temerity to flirt with the entertainment department at Channel 4 (I bet Claire Balding is now wishing she’d had a dose of that tough lady love). It was the same with Xander Armstrong who was told he’d “never work in White City again” if he slid so much as an inch of experimental arse cheek onto the Countdown presenter’s chair. And for one rotund ‘comedian’ (he rhymes with Maims Gordon), who on receiving the knock back on a proposal decided to apply his very ample charms to the then BBC1 controller, only to receive the tersest of texts in reply: “When I say no, I mean no!”

Now, before the sisterhood starts organising a lynching party, I should say that I don’t consider any of this to Jay’s detriment. And I suspect it won’t matter a fiddler’s twig to her new employers at Channel 4, where there aren’t any female faces on screen much over thirty, let alone fifty, obviating any need to replace them with younger models (although a few of the Bright Not-So-Young Things in commissioning should be quaking in their boots).

There has been fevered speculation about the ‘game changing’ nature of this ruling for the wider industry, but I’m pretty sure my fellow independent producers and I won’t be rushing to commissioning editors any time soon with a talent reel brimming with a fresh trawl of post-menopausal totty. The waters run deep in television and it’ll take more than a cold swirl of bad publicity to shift the prevailing currents.

Mind you, I might just give Miriam a call. She’s become that rarest of rarities in the industry – virtually unsackable. In the unlikely event she ever does get to front another TV show for the BBC you can bet one of Jay Hunt's kitten-heeled booties it’ll be a long-running commission.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

I don't want a thank you note... just a bloody meeting!

For an industry so irredeemably middle-class in its make-up, television is surprisingly lax in its observation of that most defining of middle-class rituals – the writing of thank you letters.

It’s five weeks now since a dozen festive packages were dispatched on Admirable Productions behalf to the offices of various controllers and commissioning editors and I’ve yet to receive a syllable of acknowledgement. The only proof these ribbon-tied smart bombs even reached their intended targets has been an email from the Remuneration and Reward team at BBC People asking me to verify, in line with section 8 of its Declaration of Personal Interests Policy, that a gift box that arrived on the 6th floor of Television Centre has a monetary value of less than £25.

Of course, what every controller and commissioning editor really wants for Christmas isn’t sold by Fortnum & Masons. If you’ve a Nigel or Nigella under long-term contract or a series rating several points above slot average you can post them desiccated Llama snot in a used condom and you’ll still be treated like Santa Claus, Willy Wonka and Jimmy Savile all rolled into one.

Unfortunately, after nine fruitless months, Admirable boasts neither of these advantages. So I’ve spent my first festive season as an independent feeling as twitchy as Nick Clegg at a student anarchists’ bonfire party as I’ve tried to navigate the nightmarish politics of gift giving.

Like much else, it was simpler in the old days. When I worked in broadcasting the only gifts my assistant had to purchase were for presenters and, like most children, these overgrown Pollyannas are easily pleased. With ‘talent’ the only criteria is price; you can give Gordon a dose of scabies and he’ll be as happy as a rat with a gold tooth as long it was caught at Tiffany’s (he’ll be doubly happy if you tell him he cost more to infest than Jamie).

But the “Gucci route” is not an option for the humble producer, even those conveniently related to multi-billionaire media moguls. This kind of crude-but-effective bribery is out of fashion, with the BBC undergoing one of its periodic bouts of mortification under the wintry grip of The Bishop and the new Haircut at Horseferry Road trying to prove he looks equally fetching in a hairshirt.

In these austere times a gift to a commissioning editor has to say so much more than “because you’re worth it”; it has to speak volumes about your ability to be creative with a limited budget. Send a budget holder something safe but unimaginative, like a scented candle, and they’ll pigeonhole you as ‘a little bit daytime’. Put it in a Jo Malone box and they’ll worry that if they commission you not enough of their budget will end up on screen.

The line between success and failure is exceedingly fine. Take the example of the former commissioning head at Five who on being told that Christmas was no longer a funded slot splashed his own cash on a jam making course and dispatched impeccably gift-wrapped pots to the entire PACT directory. What did that say about him? He was aiming for sweet and fruity, but the reality was acid and poisonous and likely to scald when hot.

This is work best suited to women. After twenty years of marriage I find it hard enough to get my presents to speak a word of comprehensible English to the Right Hon Mrs O, let alone murmur multi-lingual love poetry to a dozen middle-aged TV executives. But there are female producers of a certain dress size and less certain vintage who excel at these kind of soft skills. One of these W11 Viscountesses is rumoured to keep a personal shopper on the payroll and guard with homicidal jealousy a little black book containing the birthdays of every terrestrial and multi-channel controller from Gerald Cock to the present day, plus the dates of birth and bar mitzvahs of their step kids, style advisers, shitzus and significant others.

So what did I end up sending? That’s a trade secret, but suffice to say I sourced everything from www.shoperotica.com (your pleasure is our passion!). And what do I hope that says about me? That I’m fun, fearless and flexible enough to fit any slot from a 5 minute quickie to a two-hour marathon, at my best after dark, happy being hand-cuffed to a format and eager to reach a climax on a Saturday night.

And my other tip? Well, I actually didn’t bother giving anything to the controllers and commissioning editors themselves, but sent all my gifts to their long suffering assistants. It won’t guarantee me 8 x 60 mins in peak at £150k an hour or even a thank you letter, but it might just get me a bloody meeting.

The small independent's New Year Blues

Oh January! As The Two Ronnies’ favourite Scottish songbird* so memorably warbled… Don’t You Come Around! And tell February to sling its hook while you’re about it.

Go-getters like my wife, The Right Hon. Mrs O, greet the new year with the same relish and salivation that Signor Berlusconi brings to a game of spin the bottle in a Sardinian sixth form college, indulging in a frenzied orgy of self-improvement. But for lesser mortals, it’s the absolute dregs, the coconut eclairs lying unwanted at the bottom of the Quality Street tin.

And for small independent producers, amongst whose suffocating, submissive ranks I very reluctantly find myself for the first time in more than three decades working in television – like a noble beaver evicted from his cosy lodge and forced to slum it with his rat cousins – this time of year is the very worst of all.

Even the Endemols and All 3 Medias of this world struggle to reach anyone when the only people working at the broadcasters are the cleaners, press assistants and the man at the BBC who logs complaints about the number of repeats. Everyone else is on a seemingly never-ending Winter break: ITV execs somewhere hot but obvious, like Barbados or Dubai; Channel 4 bright-sparks on their ashtanga yoga retreats in a communal yurt on Easter Island or conserving sea slugs in the South China Sea; BBC bods visiting maiden aunts in Cromer; BSkyB’s foot soldiers on a command and conquer mission to a distant galaxy; and, Five’s rag tag army chained together in a specially constructed dungeon underneath The Thames near London Bridge.

Not that I’m especially looking forward to the resumption of hostilities. With Hurricane Jay making landfall in SW1 and Canny D and Zai scuttling up the greasy pole behind her, the proposals we’ve got skulking in various inboxes will surely be swept away by the winds of change. I won’t even get to drown my sorrows with a decent lunch at The Wolseley this side of Valentine’s Day, with anyone who’s anyone bound to be following the latest prune and raw egg diet and eschewing the sedative properties of the grape in favour of Satan’s wee (sparkling mineral water).

Whisper it quietly in The Hospital Club, but I’ve spent the festive fortnight working. In my former reincarnation as the most high caste of all God’s creatures – a full-time employee of a major broadcaster with a final salary pension scheme – the only time I set foot in the office when the Radio Times Christmas double issue was on sale was to sign my end of year expenses. But those glorious days of plenty are over, as my business partner Lucinda spelt out for me at our office Christmas lunch, aggressively jabbing her Pret a Manger turkey sandwich in my face for added emphasis.

Austerity may be the new black, but at Admirable Productions it’s not fashion but necessity. Lucinda’s latest squeeze, Damian the Analyst, has reviewed our draft 2010 accounts and declared us ‘technically insolvent’. Lucinda is already hinting that her alimony pot from Bill the Banker is running low and that if we want to keep trading I may have to dip into my precious redundancy.

Which may explain why, for the last month, I’ve hardly left the dingy Farringdon garret that passes for our London offices and world headquarters. I’d like to have a stack of new proposals to show for my labours, but my source of inspiration – the weekend supplements – have been full of nothing but slush, actual and metaphorical. I’ve stopped hoping for Julian Assange to leak something genuinely useful, like the combination to Danny Cohen’s cold robotic heart.

Instead, Lucinda and I have been working on our relaunch. From next month Admirable will have a new business plan, a new name and new offices in the shadow of the M4 within a sulphurous belch of Osterley, as close as possible to the epicentre of evil without our skin beginning to blacken and shrivel.

Changing our name is drastic, but it’s not as if Admirable is awash with brand equity with just a single one-off doc for Living on the History of Burlesque – advertiser funded by Mr Thong! and all our friends at the Chinese Underwear Marketing Association – to show for nine months of operation.

Taking our cue from our fellow independents, there are a number of renaming routes we’re exploring: the upbeat (Shine); the megalomaniacal (Studio Lambert); the ironic (Love Productions); the gnomic (Tiger Aspect); the what’s-that-got-to-do-with-TV? (Shed); and, the bet-no-one-else-has-thought-of-this (Libidinous Aadvark). If we follow RDF’s lead and use our initials we could style ourselves L.E.S.B.O, which won’t open doors at BBC Knowledge but might just endear us to the inmates of Big Dicky Desmond’s dungeon.

* Barbara Dickson, not the bearded tit.