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.