Big Beacon, page 19
My mum was not called Paula, but by lying I had stopped sounding like I was being sarcastic.
The offices at Broadcasting House are all on the upper levels, overlooking the open-plan newsroom below. As we rode up in the lift, I scanned the newsroom for Naga Munchetty but was unable to see Naga Munchetty. And while I wouldn’t say this ruined my day, it would have been great to see Naga Munchetty.
Up in the production offices, any fears I might have had that I’d be ring-rusty instantly melted away. Being back at the BBC was like slipping into a warm bath. And though the person who’d just got out of the bath was big John Baskell, I tried not to let that image bother me.
11.30 a.m.
My first stop was to see John Baskell’s This Time co-presenter Jennie Gresham. In this business egos can be fragile and I was long enough in the tooth to know that the arrival of a seasoned pro like myself could easily put noses out of joint. And while Jennie had had her nose put out of joint before (by the cosmetic surgeon who performed the rhinoplasty that to this day surprisingly few people seem to know about), I was not about to be the next to do so.
Though Baskell was the undisputed king of the show, Gresham more than held her own. She’d second-seated for five years, and with her glossy brown hair, gym-bunny figure and eyes frequently referred to as ‘like Princess Diana’s but brown’, had a look best described as ‘mainstream glamour’.
As it turned out, she wasn’t there for another hour and a half because ‘Jen doesn’t tend to arrive until about 12’. When she did swoop in, clutching a Starbucks coffee that must have been completely cold given how long it takes to get into the building, it was straight into the production meeting for that night’s show.
12.00
Whether you call it 12, midday or noon doesn’t really matter. I prefer midday, but I know those with a private education enjoy saying noon. As I say, doesn’t hugely matter. But that’s what time it now was.
And so to the meeting. Helming things was producer Howard Newman. Softly spoken, yet to notice that he was balding at the crown, but surely to God aware that he needed to trim his nose hair, Howard was known within the corporation as a safe pair of hands.90 As he was introducing me to the team, and I was making each feel special by varying the ways in which I said ‘hi’,91 it dawned on me just how completely the composition of the Beeb’s staff had transformed in the years I’d been away. In my day the cliché of an organisation run by producers called Charles or Henry could not have been more true. Today? These were totally different people. Finlay. Jude. Seb. Saskia. What a breath of fresh air.
As Howard ran through the items on that evening’s show, I sat there nodding, taking it all in, and occasionally going ‘mm, mm, mm’. Jennie Gresham had plenty to say too, with thoughts on interview strategy, durations for various segments, and suggestions on the show’s running order. Was it possible that everyone was sitting there thinking she lacked the experience needed to be getting involved in editorial issues, and that if she was going to insist on drinking that coffee she should at least remove the lid rather than slurping it through the plastic feeding hole? I don’t know, I didn’t really have a view on that, but the meeting was fine and I was happy to be there.
Just before people dispersed, I stood and said a few words, which I wasn’t specifically asked to do, but also I wasn’t specifically asked not to do, either.
‘Alright, guys, listen up. Saskia, eyes on me. Finlay, text on your own time, please. Here’s the headlines: I am not here to tread on any toes. This Time is the John & Jen show. Muggins here? I’m just a humble stand-in, here to serve, simple as. So, before any rumours start swirling around, whether about me being brought in to replace John or whatever, forget it. Ain’t happening. All I’m doing is filling in while he gets over the massive heart attack.’
It was a good opening and, while I hadn’t realised the team hadn’t been told about the massive heart attack, I felt that overall I was making the right impression.
‘Meantime, me and Jen are going to be working as a team, but remember this: if push comes to shizzle, she’s the boss. Capisce? I don’t want anyone coming to me saying, “Alan, what shall we do about x?” or, “How would you like y?” If decisions need making, it’s producer Howard in the first instance, then Jennie. And if either of those guys want to run a decision past me, then they will do so, but that’s for them to decide. For anything else – industry advice, help with camera angles, having a tough time at home – just holler. I’m here as a resource. Use me. Alright, let’s have a great show. Hop it.’
3-5 p.m.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. There were chats with the wardrobe department, the social-media team and a frank, and at times heated, exchange with the make-up artist about preferred shades for my face.92
There was time too for my assistant to read aloud the cards and messages from well-wishers, as well as my joint-best friend Grant Shapps. A huge spray of flowers arrived from Ross Kemp – a symphony of pinks and lilacs, very much his calling card. But the vast majority of messages came from members of the public back in Norfolk. To have the love and support of my community, and to know that they took an interest in if and when I was going to make it back on the BBC, meant more than I can describe and fully vindicated the cost of paying for the billboard in Norwich town centre.
6.30 p.m.
Time to set my hair, change into my suit and, before either of those, dust my balls down with a good-quality talc – an invaluable tip to prevent on-screen itching, passed on to me by Aled Jones, a man whose own itching is worse than most because, of course, his balls are shaved.
6.45 p.m.
I was now into my vocal warm-ups and bracing myself for my assistant to ask why I was making those strange noises, despite the fact that I must have told her what a vocal warm-up is fifty times.
6.55 p.m.
I walked out into the studio. Whether it was the familiar hum of the lights or the smell of the cameras or the smell of the cameramen, I was suddenly overcome by sheer elation. I just felt at home. We all have places where we get a sense of belonging. For me: the Norwich Range Rover dealership, the showers at a John Lloyd gym, any branch of Richer Sounds, the showers at my local swimming baths, and for a time in the late-nineties when I was having mental-health problems, Disneyland Paris. But here, in a BBC TV studio, I felt it too.
On set and with two minutes to go, I invited the crew to join me in taking the knee. I’m not sure they heard me, though, because the only person to do it was the sound guy, and I think he might have just knelt so he could change the battery pack on my mic. Plus, one of the cameramen was a cameraman of colour, and I think if someone takes the knee and you’re a person of colour then you have to join in, don’t you? Pretty sure you do, anyway.
6.59 p.m.
‘Can I have a glass of water, please? My mouth is dry,’ said Jennie. As a broadcaster, it’s important to stay hydrated. We’ve all heard Radio 5 continuity announcers with under-moistened mouths slopping and slapping their way through links. A more experienced presenter might have taken the time to drink sufficient fluids before now, but she’s just a kid, she’ll learn. I gave her my glass and she gulped from it gladly.
And then, as the floor manager who acted like he was my friend even though I didn’t know his name, stepped forward …
‘We go live in five, four …’
… a very strange thing began to happen. All external noise seemed to disappear. The only sounds now? Those from within. Heartbeat. Breathing. Nasal whistle.
It’s happening. The moment I’ve waited so long for. It’s really happening.
Thoughts tumbled around my head like trainers in a washing machine, except in place of the trainers were the faces of all those who had doubted me, so it was a bit like the video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ but, as I say, combined with a washing machine. Round and round they went, round and round. Chegwin. Rantzen. Henman. Wan. And – no surprise, this – Edmonds. Soon enough – again, no surprise, this – they had all become Edmonds. (Apart from one that had turned back into a trainer, which, when I looked again, wasn’t a trainer at all; it was a shoe with a Cuban heel, exactly the kind of heel worn by men who are self-conscious about their height. Funny, that.)
Yet rather than the urge to ring them up and gloat, the desire for revenge which had dominated my waking hours for so many years now simply lifted away. I forgave them. I forgave them all. Apart from Noel Edmonds.
And with that, as the sound of the This Time title music bulldozed its way back into my consciousness, I was back – I was back in the big time.
7.31 p.m.
The show had finished. I was in a lift, the gentle ‘pong … pong … pong’ sound to indicate its arrival at a new floor shook me from my reverie.
A man asked me how the show had gone. I told him it had gone well, because it had. The chemistry between me and Jen had been on-point. The banter was sassy and fresh. And as for the seeds of bitterness, petty rivalry and passive-aggression that would one day tear us apart and lead me to claim that she would smother her own grandmother just to get on the cover of the Radio Times? Barely noticeable.
A chat with leopard-seal expert ‘Dr’ Alice Clunt had gone equally well. Yes, her expertise was undermined by her decision to wear jeans and a loose top instead of something more formal, but Jen and I did our best to help, teeing her up to give answers that weren’t just in the interesting-without-using-big-words sweet spot BBC One viewers demand, but also counteracted the vegetarian mum-in-a-café vibe her wardrobe choice so powerfully gave off.93
The showpiece piece of the show was a showpiece interview with an anonymous so-called hacktivist. That too had been a triumph. I’d been told that the format of the conversation would be one on one, with me interrogating him up on the raised interview area while Jennie waited for me quietly on the sofa. For what it’s worth, I felt Jen played just as important a role in that interview as I did. By sitting quietly and suppressing her natural urge to interrupt, she showed great professionalism, and I, for one, respected that.
The conversation had gone exactly as hoped. Just as I’d intended, it culminated with him losing his composure and walking off. People seem surprised when I say that, but it’s an open secret in broadcasting that all political interviewers explicitly want the person they’re talking to to have a hissy fit and leave – as that means you’ve ‘won’ the interview. Some, such as Victoria Derbyshire, are simply downright disagreeable. Me? I simply wouldn’t accept the guy’s bullshit, said so and yeah, he saw his arse.
Convention dictates that the interviewer then has to respond by looking sheepish and scared – relax, this is just a cover action to make the walk-off seem unintentional. No, I couldn’t have been more relaxed, nay pleased, with him storming out. It made for electric television, although I suppose all televisions are electric.
As my director and producer fell to bits in my ear, and as Jennie looked at the camera then looked towards me then looked at the camera then looked towards me then looked at the camera then looked towards me without ever actually saying anything, I remained icy calm.
I implicitly understood its potential to become a moment of watercooler TV (or ‘watercolour TV’ as my assistant inexplicably calls it). You see, I knew that with John Baskell at the helm, viewing figures had been on the slide. (And though the man in Audience Data who showed me the spreadsheet said they had been steadily going up, he hadn’t corrected for the fact that the UK’s population is growing. Hence a small increase in net viewing figures actually equates to a real-terms drop. So, as I say, things were on the slide.)94 What the show needed was a shot in the arm. Something to make reviewers sit up and take notice. And when I pursued the fleeing nerd, sit up they most certainly did. And take notice they most certainly did, too.
As I had given chase, I began to call out, ‘Will you finish the interview now, please?’ Through the backstage area, into the BBC’s extensive network of state-of-the-art corridors, and all on live TV, the refrain came again and again: ‘Will you finish the interview now, please? Will you finish the interview now, please? Will you finish the interview now, please?’ And – in a coup de théâtre – I had ultimately completed the interview in a moving lift containing then-BBC Diana-alike Emily Maitlis.
I hadn’t known she’d be there. On entering the elevator, I had a vague sense of there being a lamp or perhaps a light to my left. Yet when I glanced over, instead of the glow coming from a lightbulb or LED, it was coming from Emily Maitlis. And that sense of brightness wasn’t just coming from the tan and the blonde hair. A lot if it was, but I genuinely believe some of it was coming from Emily’s, well, ‘Emilyness’; that drive, ambition and unquenchable desire to succeed that has now seen the former lead presenter of Newsnight leave the corporation to be one of three presenters on a podcast.95 Made by the company that owns Capital Radio and Heart FM, part of Emily’s deal is that she also has to read out the adverts.
Then? Roll credits!
Pong! In the lift, the man thanked me for my précis of the show then asked me how I felt. And that’s when I realised I felt …
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The man got out and the lift doors closed, leaving me alone in the moving cuboid. Why wasn’t I feeling anything? This was everything I’d worked for. And it had gone brilliantly. Messages of congrats were flooding in thick and fast, so that my phone alerts were sounding like a geiger counter as it gets nearer the source of radiation. ‘Brilliant!’ said a well-known sports presenter. ‘Best TV ever!’ said a senior politician. ‘Woo-haa! Yeah baby!’ texted one former presenter of Ready Steady Cook. ‘Absolutely fantastic,’ said a different senior politician. So you can see, lots of messages, all of them real.
Moreover, I was paying a boy called Rudy – nephew of the late Pete Gabitas – fifty pounds to keep watch outside Noel Edmonds’s house and report any reaction to the show, and sure enough the boy was sending me texts like, ‘Target slamming living room door’, and, ‘Target gesticulating angrily’, and, ‘Target looking sad/jealous’.
This should have been swelling my chest and trouser with absolute delight. But I’d actually never felt more alone. Even the Maitlis encounter had largely passed me by – that weekend, a friend said, ‘What did she smell like?’ and I realised I’d forgotten to smell her.
It seemed that deep within me a schasm had formed, a yawning gulf of emptiness. I ask again – why?
At first, I put it down to the warm malt drink I’d had in my dressing room just before the show. At a certain age, a cup of Horlicks can have the same effect as a beta blocker – indeed, a friend of mine on the Norwich Chambers of Commerce says the calming, numbing effect of the milky drink once caused him to sleep through a swingers party that had been organised for his sixtieth.
But it wasn’t that. I felt alert and composed enough. I just felt … detached. The joy I’d expected to be spurting through my system simply wasn’t deploying. And that might sound like the ‘struggling with inner demons’ bit that people put into books to make them sound more interesting, but it’s true. Next morning, even my assistant noticed I was off my eggs, and my squash opponent pointed out that my hair was lank and lacking volume.
Now, some of that reserve will be out of respect for John Baskell. Lying prone in a hospital with wires coming out of him like an IED, he was, after all, the reason I was there. While I was being injected with renewed opportunity, John was being injected with thrombolytics to help break up any clots blocking blood flow to the heart. And I didn’t for a second forget that. Typical me to be thinking of someone else, but that’s just what I’m like. Another example was when I sent a box of chocolates to a bereaved friend in 1995.
But it wasn’t just sympathy keeping my joy in check. No, the ultimate prize of getting back on primetime just didn’t hit home like I’d thought it would. This was something else. I’d been so preoccupied with whether I could, I didn’t stop to think if I should. Should I be making a triumphant return to primetime television? Should I be making a few people eat their words? Should I be earning a salary that better reflects my talent?
Clearly I could. I had done. But should I?
This should have been my finest hour. But something was missing.96
* * *
85 While I’m permitted to reproduce a single line of lyrics from any given song under what’s known as ‘fair use’, I’m told quoting a longer tract of the song may trigger a royalty payment to Gary Barlow, something I’m not prepared to sanction as he would absolutely love it.
86 Same applies here.
87 This is the sum total I am going to quote. Again, this falls under fair use and means Barlow doesn’t receive a single penny in the way of compensation, although that won’t stop me receiving a curt letter from his ‘legal team’ (mum). ‘Take that’, Gary!
88 But suffice to say the portion of the journey that took me through central London was dominated by the sight of pedestrians with wretched lives.
89 Ireland.
90 If you exclude the occasion when, on a show he was producing, a member of the production team fell to their death from a lighting gantry.
91 ‘Hey’. ‘Hi’. ‘Morning’. ‘Hello’. ‘Hullo’. ‘Hallo’. ‘Wassup’. And a well-meaning but ill-advised ‘namaste’.
92 Her preference was to match as closely as possible my own skin tone. Mine was to be bolder, to lean in to the oranges and browns, to trust in the make-up. And while I’ve literally never met a make-up artist who argued to use less foundation rather than more, here it seemed I had found one. In the end the solution was surprisingly simple. I let Debbie apply the foundation and powder exactly as she saw fit, using her decades of experience and her deep knowledge of the best ways to marry skin tone with cosmetic products to achieve a warm yet natural look. I then waited for her to go for a fag and finished the job myself. And watching the broadcast back later I was pleased with the shade I had achieved. Was I a little heavy-handed? Perhaps, but a bit of extra colour was no bad thing given I was sitting next to Jennie Gresham.
