The Dead Side of the Mike (3 page)

‘What committee?'

‘This Features Action thing.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘You see, the thing about it is, John doesn't want it to be just BBC staff. Thinks we're in danger of getting too insular. Says we should involve creative people from outside too. Well, Helmut Winkler had got Reggie Morris set up – do you know him? – he did that big feature on Nietzche which was nominated for the Italia Prize.'

‘No.'

‘It was called
Zarathustra Meets Übermensch
. . .'

‘Still no. In fact, even more no.'

‘Anyway, Reggie's suddenly rung through to say he can't make it – pissed, I imagine – so we haven't got anyone representing the writing end of Drama features. So I told John about the smashing job you'd done on Swinburne and he said, Great, you'd be ideal.'

One decision Charles had taken very early in life, in fact while still at school when he had been elected on to the committee of the Drama Society, was that he would never again be on any committee for anything. Committees he knew to be time-wasting, long-winded, inconclusive and mind-blowingly boring. One of few advantages of his footloose life as an actor was that he did not have to take part in regimentation of that sort. Committees should be left to that unaccountable group of people who actually enjoyed them.

So he started to make his excuses, but was interrupted by the arrival of the pin-striped suit which had been identified as John Christie. ‘Charles Paris, I'm delighted you're going to be with us,' he said with the unctuous charm of a Tory MP opening a garden fête.

‘Yes, well you see, the thing is . . .'

‘John, shall I get a couple of bottles to take over? I mean we can have a drink at this job, can't we?'

‘Of course, Mark, of course. I do want this to be totally informal. Not BBC at all. In fact I've organised a few bottles of the old Sans Fil over there.'

‘Oh great. If we run out, I can come back for more. Come along, Charles. The meeting's over in BH. In John's office on the Sixth Floor.'

So Charles went along. As he caught up with Mark, he asked, ‘What's the old Sans Fil?'

‘BBC Club wine. It's French for “wireless”.'

‘SO WHAT WE are saying is, okay, stuff Management. Let's forget all the old prescribed answers and see what we can come up with by just gathering a few of the real creators together. Let's think laterally. Are we going to do better by sticking with the current
ad hoc
way of making occasional features or by starting a department formed just for that purpose?'

As John Christie concluded his opening address, Charles was again struck by the political image. The candidate was still opening the fête, smiling at everyone, on everyone's side, concerned about everyone's minor ailments, defending everyone against Them and obscuring in a welter of solicitude his own identity with Them.

An earnest thin-faced young man picked up the gauntlet. ‘The point is that in the current climate, none of us has any time to make features – certainly not in News. We're too busy producing the day-to-day programmes. If we ever got any thinking time, I'm sure we could come up with the goods.'

‘Exactly,' said John Christie, though Charles felt he would have said that whatever opinion had been expressed. ‘That is why we have here a representative selection of creative programme-makers to find out how that sort of time can be made.'

‘Huh,' objected a girl with a grubby T-shirt and Shredded Wheat hair, ‘you call it representative, but I notice there are only four women here.'

John Christie opened his hands in what was meant to be a disarming shrug. ‘Sorry, love. When I said “representative”, I didn't mean representative of society as a whole; I just meant representative of creative programme-makers within the BBC.'

That didn't go down any better. ‘I see, you are saying that men are more creative than women.'

‘No, I didn't mean . . .'

‘Come to that,' objected a young man with wild eyes, beard and teeth, ‘I don't see many black people here. Or gays.'

‘Who's counting?' came a limp voice from down the table.

‘No, but there should be some blacks. I mean, we live in a multi-racial society.'

‘Yes,' said Mark Lear, ‘but we work in the BBC, where, as we all know, our concession to a multi-racial Britain is one coloured newsreader, a doorman and half the canteen staff.'

The line came out rather crudely. Obviously it had been meant as a joke, and Charles wondered whether Mark was drunk. He had a vague memory from their previous acquaintance that Mark didn't hold his liquor well.

John Christie dispensed unction on to the ruffling waters of the meeting. ‘Now come on, we're only at the stage of preliminary discussion. I'm sure when we get into more detailed work, we can decide what is the optimum composition of our work-force. This is just an exploratory meeting.'

The objectors shrugged back into their chairs with Well-don't-say-I-didn't-warn-you expressions and the chairman continued, ‘Let's try as far as possible to keep the discussion to features and how they are best made. Don't let's get side-tracked. Any thoughts?'

‘I think we're doing features already. We always have been on
Woman's Hour
; just don't give them fancy titles.' This was from a lady of a certain age and a less certain shape. ‘I mean the programme we did recently on hysterectomy was a feature by anyone's definition.'

‘Yes, yes, I'm sure. But the point at issue is whether that sort of programme would be improved by having more time and resources available for its production.'

‘I suppose it might be a bit better, but on the whole things that just have to happen come out best. At least that's what we find on
Woman's Hour.
All that's needed to create good features is creative writers and producers. This moaning about lack of resources and time just sounds to me like bad workmen blaming their tools.'

The girl in the T-shirt wasn't standing for that. ‘Even the most brilliant workperson in the world needs some sort of tools to play with.'

‘I didn't know workpersons had tools; I know workmen do,' came a facetious murmur from Charles's right. They had been introduced before the meeting started. Nick Monckton, Light Entertainment. It seemed that everyone present felt obliged to slip into his or her departmental stereotype. Nick felt it his duty to supply the jokes.

The girl either didn't hear or chose not to hear the interpolation. ‘And by tools, I mean not only time and money, but also co-operation and encouragement from above. I mean, I came up with this great idea for three one-hour features on force-feeding the suffragettes, and HSP(R) had the nerve to say he didn't think it fitted into a course on Parliamentary Democracy.'

Charles appealed silently to Mark and received the whispered gloss, ‘Head of Schools Programmes (Radio).'

‘I got the same reaction to my Buddhism in the London suburbs idea,' objected someone. ‘H. CAMP turned it down.'

‘Same thing with my radiophonic
Crucifixion in Space.
Both CR4 and CR3 were frightened of it.'

‘Well, the Gogol musical idea got up as far as DPR. HDR just didn't understand it, basically. I think at one stage DPR was going to refer it to MDR, but AHDR reckoned that would be publicly questioning HDR's decision, so sweet F.A. happened.'

Charles was beginning to feel he had somehow drifted into a game of Etruscan Scrabble and was relieved when John Christie once again chaired them into silence. ‘Look, I know we've all got lots to say, but let's try and keep it one at a time, shall we? And I do think it important that we keep the discussion as general as possible. I mean, I'm sure you've all got pet projects which would fall into the features category – indeed, I hope you all have, because that means that I've invited the right people – but let's try to keep off individual and departmental hobbyhorses for the time being. Let's just try to think how it would all work out in an ideal world.'

‘In an ideal world we wouldn't work for the BBC,' said Mark Lear with surprising savagery. But the rest of the meeting took it as a joke.

A small man with a large moustache came in over the laughter. ‘I think, I hope, that is, pardon me, but, speaking for a moment with my regional hat on, I think there is a danger that we are all going to forget the important creative resources we have in the regions. I don't know that we've all met, but I am, to those of you to whom I am unknown, not to put too fine a point on it, Harry Bassett from Leeds, and I do, er, hope that, when the chips are down, we won't ignore the veritable mines of talent which we have been, as it were, mining for some time in Leeds and the other regional centres, that is, in any discussion we are having to which what I'm saying might be of relevance, if you take my point. And I'm not just harking back to the days of E. A. Harding and Geoffrey Bridson in Manchester or Cecil McGivern from Newcastle. I'm talking about the, as it were, here and now.

‘I mean, no one's denigrating the fine work done in London, but I think, in a sense, it always seems to me, speaking off the record, that London is only one of many centres of creative radio and there's an all-too-ready tendency to dismiss the regional contribution as something that is not, in any real sense, as it were, of great importance. I mean, we may be, in a manner of speaking, out of town, but we're by no means and not in any sense, out of ideas, if you take my point.'

It was apparent from the impatient expressions of the rest of the meeting that they did all regard the regional contribution as completely irrelevant, but John Christie, salting away votes for some future election, smiled charmingly and said, ‘Yes, of course, Harry. I'm very glad you brought that point up. But perhaps we ought to start, before we get too deeply embroiled in production details, with the artists involved in the creation of feature programmes. I thought it very important, for this meeting, that we should spread our net wider than just BBC staff. There's a dangerous tendency for us to regard what happens here as something on its own, totally divorced from the general world of the arts. So I'm very pleased to have with us some writers and performers whose opinion on the true creative issues will, I think, be invaluable to all of us. We are lucky to have with us the composer – dare I say
avant garde
composer? – Seth Hurt and –'

‘I don't really regard myself as part of any movement,
avant garde
or –'

‘No, well, I don't think it's necessary to get bogged down in definitions. What I was –'

‘Definition, and particularly self-definition, is very important to me as an artist. I regard the music I write as unique and I rather resent being bunched into some blanket category with a lot of self-indulgent experimenters, who –'

‘Yes, well I'm sorry to have got you wrong there, but if I could just move on, we're delighted to have with us Dave Sheridan, who, I'm sure, will excuse me for describing him as at the more popular end of the artistic spectrum . . .' The disc jockey inclined his head graciously. ‘. . . But I do think it's important that we don't lose touch with popular culture. We also have Ian Scobie, whose work as a presenter and interviewer in the news field I am sure you all know, and the famous actor, playwright and great specialist in the poetry feature world . . .' He glanced at his notes. ‘. . . Charles Paris.'

Charles looked at the floor to avoid seeing them all mouthing, ‘Who?'

‘So I think it might be very instructive if we were to hear from some of them as to how, as artists who might be employed by the BBC, they would best like to see feature projects set up.'

Charles continued his scrutiny of the carpet tiles. The only thing he had to say was that he thought he probably shouldn't be there and was there any chance of one of the wine bottles being passed in his direction as his glass was empty.

But, fortunately, Dave Sheridan willingly took up the challenge. ‘I think, speaking as a kind of outsider, who has worked in a great variety of different styles of radio all over the world, there is an excellence in BBC programming which is unrivalled, and this –'

‘Oh, but there's a lot of shit too,' observed Seth Hurt, who, despite his unwillingness to be categorised, Charles had already pigeon-holed as a repellent little tick.

Dave Sheridan rode the interruption with dignity. ‘If I may finish. Sorry, I have to go off in a moment to pre-record the opening of tonight's show, so I must be brief. The point I was coming to was that features are a wonderful way of bridging traditional gaps between popular and more esoteric forms of culture and I would hope . . .'

He continued to develop his theme with skill and coherence. There was a lot more to him than the public stereotype of a disc jockey. Beside him, Nita Lawson's head nodded to reinforce his points, occasionally murmuring, ‘Right on, Dave'. But Charles found his mind wandering. He shouldn't have come. He knew that all he had wanted for that evening was to get drunk, and yet somehow here he was stuck in the spiralling tedium of a committee meeting in whose subject he had no interest at all. To compound his gloom, he saw the feminist up the table trickle the last of the wine into her glass. Good God, how long would this thing go on? Already an hour and a half had passed and they still seemed to be waffling round preliminary remarks. Surely they'd stop before the pubs shut.

He contemplated just getting up and leaving. After all, he didn't know any of them and he wasn't going to be of any use to them if he stayed. Maybe he could leave as if to go to the Gents and forget to come back . . .

‘. . . and maybe you have something to add, Charles?'

He looked up to see John Christie and the rest of the meeting focused on him. Dave Sheridan had finished his peroration and gone off to pre-record the opening of that night's show. Charles had been chosen as the next creative contributor.