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.

Fincham controlling ITV marketing is like the Taleban taking over Top Shop

Ye gods. I almost choke on my caramel macchiato as I read on mediaguardian.co.uk that ITV’s marketing head, David Pemsel, has flounced out after being asked to report to a certain Director of Television. Fincham’s head must be getting so big it’s no wonder he seems incapable of lifting his mobile to his right ear to return my fucking phone calls.

It’s been the mother of all turnarounds for Peter. I remember him ringing me from a biking holiday in some godforsaken corner of Europe shortly after the Queengate affair, weeping like a schoolgirl over the shafting that The Bishop had administered (with evident Jesuit relish), and swearing blind to me that he was done with “the liars, tarts and arseholes who run this filthy business”. And yet here he is, just three years later, spraying further largesse over the delectable Christine, commissioning more of Lambert’s cynical poop and cosying up to The Grocer and The Postman.

Now I’m not exactly renowned for my love of our Marketing brethren, but it’s hard not to feel sorry for Pemsel. For starters he has a surname that might better serve as a brand name for pile cream. And he’s been pushing water up hill for years in trying to develop a coherent brand identity for ITV, when really we all know the only logo that’s fit for purpose is a picture of Simon Cowell smashing an immaculately waxed fist into the face of your typical C2DE viewer while Ant and Deck pick their pocket from behind.

It’s true that ITV’s saccharine and frankly powder puff marketing efforts haven’t exactly been wowing the Promax juries of late, but handing over the sweetie jar to Fincham is the equivalent of letting the Taleban take over Top Shop. Because commissioners (and producers for that matter) are really the LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH to look to for a remotely objective assessment of a programme’s merits! You'd be far better off asking Paul the Octopus which shows to give the 100 TVR treatment and which to bury deep, like rotting fish heads, in the multi-channel listings where their stench will hardly register.

Besides, most programme makers interest in marketing boils down to a single, neanderthal question… can I have a poster? A poster that preferably adopts the Ronseal approach to creativity by limiting itself to revealing the programme’s title (in six foot high letters), the time and date of transmission (three foot high), the broadcasting network (one foot high) and a head shot of any recognisable talent (in whatever tiny space is left). It’s very much the Australian approach to advertising - It’s a pie! It’s got meat in it! Buy one!

Still, now I’m about to join the ranks as a humble producer and no longer have the power to veto a marketing brainwave with a quizzical arch of a single eyebrow, perhaps I ought to be celebrating this slight rebalancing of the relationship between those who make the programmes and those who merely promote them. Anything that knocks those jumped up little twats, in their cargo pants and K-Swiss sneakers, down a peg or two, is surely to be celebrated.