Speaker 1The Telegraph TV, including the BBC, is obsessed with talent and it doesn't know how to control them. That's according to entertainment guru Lord Michael Grade.
Speaker 2In the week Russell Brand was jailed for rape and allegations emerge against David Walliams, we speak exclusively to the man who was once at the helm of the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV during his broadcasting career.
Speaker 1He tells us how he felt about once being labelled the pornographer-in-chief, why he wouldn't have tolerated Gary Lineker's behaviour at the BBC and whether TV can ever clean up its act.
Speaker 3The structural problem in the industry is that it's a very freelance industry and people who are working on shows with big stars and if the big stars are misbehaving, they're terrified of calling it out because it's their livelihood, it's their mortgage, it's paying their bills and they're freelance so they've not got a staff job to rely on. So if the show gets cancelled and somebody gets called out or if they call it out and it's not proven, you know, they're out of a job and they're almost unemployable after that.
Speaker 2It's been a week that has rocked the show business industry, TV industry, the media in general, with the imprisonment of Russell Brand for more than 10 years for rape and now allegations having surfaced against David Walliams. We're joined in the studio by Lord Michael Grade. Lord Michael Grade, a quick whistle-stop tour through your CV, Lord Grade. You started out at London Weekend Television back in the 70s. You then became controller of BBC One from 1984 to 1986. You then became the chief executive of Channel 4, 87 to 97. Famously, that was a time where it was being described as the, or you were being described as a pornographer-in-chief.
Speaker 3I was indeed, yes.
Speaker 2For some of the boundaries that were pushed by its programming at the time, which was very edgy. You then became the BBC chairman of the Board of Governors, 2004 to 06, during the post-Hutton restructuring period. Executive chairman of ITV, 2007 to 2009, and then chairman of Ofcom until very recently, 2022 to 2026. So you know your onions. And Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, in light of recent events, is preparing for a sort of showdown with TV bosses next week. She's threatening new legislation. to force broadcasters to protect young women from predatory stars, and says the industry needs to clean itself up. Now, having been in very senior positions during Jimmy Savile's crimes, during periods where other presenters, including more recently Hugh Edwards, now Brand, now Walliams, have come accused of very serious allegations and crimes, has something gone terribly wrong? Is there something terribly wrong with this industry?
Speaker 3Obviously, yes. And the problem is that many of them are very smart at hiding their activities, particularly the people. I'm Jimmy Savile. I mean, he was on a power trip. He used to occasionally pop into my office. Yes, governor. No, governor. Hello, governor. Hello, gaffer. And he was on a power trip. He was looking at me thinking, this guy doesn't know. What I know about me, you know, he's, it's all a power trip for some of them. Others, they're just stupid and arrogant. The structural problem in the industry is that it's a very freelance industry. And people who are working on shows with big stars, and if the big stars are misbehaving, they're terrified of calling it out. Because it's their livelihood. It's their mortgage. It's their, it's, they're paying their bills and they're freelance. So they've not got a staff job to, to rely on. So if the show gets canceled and somebody gets called out, or if they call it out and it's not proven, you know, they're, they're out of a job and they're almost unemployable after that. That's one of the endemic problems in the industry because it's so freelance today.
Speaker 2We will unpick that. Just the statement that they're good at hiding things and they're secretive and they're cunning. I think there is a commonality here when we link up foreign, for instance, Saville to Brand in that actually their behavior was an open secret. Back in the day, even when you were controller of the BBC, you must have heard things about Saville.
Speaker 3Never heard a thing.
Speaker 2Well, even that he was deeply creepy and weird. I mean, people regarded him as a very strange man.
Speaker 3If being creepy and weird is a bar to show business, then we wouldn't have much show business.
Speaker 2All right. Well, I'll give another example. If you used to call Jimmy Saville for a quote from a newspaper, you would phone up his flat in Leeds and he'd invariably answer. He didn't seem to have that many staff. And he would often open the conversation with a sort of joke about, she told me her age and she was over 16 and I haven't done anything wrong. And it was like, there's a pattern here, isn't there? With people, these predators seemingly creating this aura around them where they're almost taking the public for fools.
Speaker 1And just to step in there, Louis Theroux, when he interviewed Jimmy Saville, also all most directly addressed this, didn't he? He was addressing an open secret. He was asking, is there any truth in it?
Speaker 2Are there any truth to the pedo rumors?
Speaker 1The point being that the secret was open enough that he felt he could and should address it. And Saville had to swat it away.
Speaker 3If you're going to close the show down and fire somebody, they've got contracts. You've got to have proof. You've got to have evidence. And that's the hard bit. That's the very difficult bit. Just because. Because somebody makes an accusation. You know, we live in a world now, you read the papers, people are guilty by accusation in many cases. They may turn out to be guilty like Russell Brand, but the assumption is these people are guilty before they're even charged, which is a worry going forward. We're going to overreact and the pendulum's going to swing and somebody with a grievance could accuse somebody wrongly and all the hell will break loose and their careers will be finished over a slur. So we've got to be a little bit careful. That's not to defend. But the difficulty is these people have cast iron contracts and if you're going to fire them and not pay them and get rid of them, you've got to have the evidence that will stand up in court.
Speaker 1But when you come to commission someone like that, you might choose not to just on the basis, not of rumor, but taste. I mean, what a lot of our readers are saying after the revelations about Russell Brand is, I never liked him to begin with. And the nature of the comedy was hyper-sexualized. I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3And people at the time found it distasteful. Taste is everything when you're making decisions about who to employ and what shows to commission. Taste is everything. That was, for me, when I used to employ commissioning editors to make programs and producers, their taste was the uppermost in my mind. And I was taught that by Bill Cotton, who was one of my mentors, who was the head of BBC television and recruited me into the BBC. And he was a stickler. You know, he was absolutely a stickler. Who was and wasn't a BBC actor. There were certain people he wouldn't employ who were big stars. He said, they're not for the BBC. We've lost, we have lost that.
Speaker 2But then, Lord Grade, when you were described as a pornographer-in-chief, which is actually a title I'm used to because I used to work for Richard Desmond at the Sunday Express. But you were criticized at the time. So that's during the 80s into the 90s. To be fair to you, you'd left Channel 4 by the time. They are then giving brand very lucrative contracts to do all sorts of presenting. That was more in the noughties and beyond.
Speaker 1Was that over things like Dennis Potter?
Speaker 2Well, what was it over? I just want to be clear.
Speaker 1You were not broadcasting pornography, right? You were broadcasting art. Absolutely not. It would have been illegal.
Speaker 3I would never broadcast anything.
Speaker 2So was it about you commissioning art, house drama and that kind of thing?
Speaker 3No, it was mostly about a thing called The Word, which was a sort of late night student, ridiculous, extreme show.
Speaker 2Hosted by Dennis Potter. Terry Christian and famously including a section where young men and women were invited to snog grannies and things.
Speaker 3Yes, it was.
Speaker 2Tim and I were avid viewers.
Speaker 3Fairly lowbrow stuff. Right. But it appealed to drunk students after they'd come home from the curry house and the pub.
Speaker 1Right. But we were just discussing taste. Yes. And you were saying it's very, very important. Yes. And that is distasteful. And I don't appear like a moral hypocrite. We all, when we could, used to sneak downstairs and watch the telly when the parents had gone to bed and see the sort of stuff. But you made a choice to broadcast that kind of thing. And people would say it added to the environment in which people like Russell Brand arose.
Speaker 3I think you could argue that. Looking back, you could argue that. It was a time when Channel 4 was, you know, fighting for its life in a new environment, having to sell its own airtime, which it hadn't had to do before. It had a secure income from ITV and so on. And we were the channel that was there to cause trouble. And, you know, kick over the traces and do naughty things. Looking back, I wouldn't say it's a program. It's a program I defended at the time because I would never have broadcast anything I didn't feel I could defend publicly. But looking back, you know, I'm not that proud. There are many shows I'm much more proud of.
Speaker 2Also, I suppose at the time, Channel 4, and it remains in viewership, a fringe channel, what it then does is it creates. a degree of mainstreamisation. of very controversial figures. So you then go, you get Russell Brand going from sort of MTV where he decides it's a good idea to go into the studio dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after 9-11, gets sacked there, gets commissioned by some Channel 4 people to do some edgy programming there. The next thing we know, because he's then on the public's consciousness, and this is somebody who literally was on the Edinburgh fringe originally, then ends up being given shows on Radio 2, then people are surprised when something like Sax Gaits happens, when this guy has, he's a career controversialist.
Speaker 3Well, we're talking about two different things here. We're talking about booking an artist who's a bit edgy and a bit out there and that's where the taste comes in. But that's a subjective judgment. And after the horror with that prank with. Andrew Sachs. Andrew Sachs.
Speaker 2And his granddaughter Miriam. And his granddaughter.
Speaker 3I mean, you know, his feet wouldn't have touched the ground if I'd been in charge. But there you go. That was a warning sign. The second thing is his behavior towards women, which is a completely separate thing. Although it comes from the same person, his behavior towards women is.
Speaker 2But he literally broadcast his bad behavior towards women. And the BBC actually didn't react to it going out on air until afterwards. I mean, it's a bit reminiscent. More recently of, you know, death, death to the IDF at Glastonbury. I suppose looking back, because we started with Saville, how can the public have any confidence in these reports that are carried out into these horrific incidents where classically the line is lessons will be learned? They can't have been learned from Saville. If we then get brand, nothing's been learned, has it?
Speaker 1And every 10 years we have to have one of these. We have to have this big confrontation and you just think, well, why didn't you learn from it last time?
Speaker 3I think what these terrible, terrible scandals do, if you want to find some positive in these horror stories, is that I think more and more the junior staff working with these people and the victims of these people are beginning to get more confidence in being believed and speaking out. I think that's hopefully a small plus. From. that will help to eliminate this kind of behaviour.
Speaker 2But isn't another problem that broadcasters give a disproportionate amount of power to the talent?
Speaker 3Talent's always had power. But talent's got
Speaker 2too much power. It can be this easily abused. Does talent actually matter?
Speaker 1Oh, God, yes. Because sometimes when one thinks about Gary Lineker, I'm not saying he's in any way associated with this, but I mean the political controversies around Lineker. Some people argued, well, actually, Match the Day could be presented by anyone. The point is the institution. The point is the institution, not the talent. Or do you disagree with that?
Speaker 3In the Gary Lineker case, I agree with you. Right. And I think, you know, if I'd been around, he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did. Yeah. Because I think he really brought the BBC into disrepute and risked their impartiality in a way that was just, you know, unacceptable from a sports presenter. It was ridiculous. So the BBC was at fault there, very, very definitely.
Speaker 2But this idea that talent, I mean, arguably at the BBC, people are just paid too much. It's licence fee payers' money. Lots of people kind of incredulous when that list of salaries comes out as to what Zoe Ball is paid and what this person's paid and all the rest of it, point one. Point two, there seems to be this, you know, complete, I don't know, are there blinkers on this? Oh, the talent. It can just do what it likes and nobody can really rein them in because they're the talent, the talent, the talent, the talent. And therefore, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more smoke you blow up the arse of the talent, the more out of control the talent's ego will become.
Speaker 3It's about the executive's career and success and how you judge success. You know, you judge success at the BBC or you should judge success at the BBC on screen and on the radio in a different way from which you judge success. In a very commercial environment where the bottom line is everything between Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV, Sky and so on. The BBC doesn't have those commercial pressures and it's always conflicted about, you know, if we don't get the ratings, we're, you know, we're not doing our job and what's the purpose of the BBC? And if we do get ratings, we're being populist. They're always fighting that. That's a healthy battle. But where the BBC needs to go back to is to being a nursery for talent and they're going to lose talent. I lost everybody at Channel 4. I lost so many stars to the BBC that we had nurtured when I was in my nine years at Channel 4 and they went off to the BBC. Bigger audience, more money. But the BBC should be a nursery for talent, not a grocery.
Speaker 1I mean, when I ask about does talent matter, I just feel sometimes the BBC falls back upon talent as if that justifies the programme itself. For instance, I just don't understand why every reality TV show needs to have a celebrity version of it. And I often find they're not as high quality. I don't think celebrity traders are as good as ordinary people. They vary. But why does Alan Tishmarsh have to present, like, the proms? Why not give me a classic music expert? I'm not saying he's a bad person. I just feel there is a culture in the BBC of we have to slap a recognisable face on everything because we don't trust the product by it to sell itself. When actually the BBC, is something that people would go to because I'm interested in gardening. I'm interested in history.
Speaker 3You want authorship, you want authority in certain programmes. Most particularly, you know, when you see documentaries, you know, even when you look at World of War, which is one of the greatest documentary series ever made, Thames Television, ITV, the 26-part series about World War II. It was voiced by Laurence Olivier. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, it wasn't. It wasn't voiced by Anthony Beaver or Andrew Roberts or somebody who's got an authoritative voice. That is very important. I don't think we're losing that. I think that's horrible.
Speaker 1The other thing that concerns people is the hypocrisy. And I was interested in you saying that Gary Lineker wouldn't have lasted if you'd been in the job. Because it feels as if some abuses behind the scenes are tolerated, whereas sometimes differing political opinions are actually cracked down on. We have the example of Lucy Cohn, who we've interviewed on this podcast, who says that she was driven out of the BBC because she was a Jewish producer who supported Israel. Why is that sort of thing able to happen?
Speaker 3It shouldn't have. Right. What we haven't heard in the Lucy Cohn case is the BBC side of the story. And I think it's very regrettable. I think it's very regrettable that the custodians of the public interest in the BBC, the board of the BBC, have not issued any commentary on what is.
Speaker 1They have issued money. They've paid her off.
Speaker 3Yes. But did the board know? Was it signed off by the board? Did the executive come and say, we've got this problem? Why was she paid off? It suggests on the face of it that they were in the wrong.
Speaker 1But she describes, for example, people saying to her, you have to give Hamas its side of the story in Israel. Putting the politics of that aside, that shows perhaps an admirable degree of sensitivity towards balance at the BBC that isn't shown apparently in some cases when it comes to sexual harassment. That's what people find so peculiar. An organization that bends over backwards when it comes to political matters, but apparently has not been showing the same vigilance when it comes to sexual harassment.
Speaker 3On the sexual harassment issue, you have to be aware of the accusations. You have to investigate. In a forensic and professional way. And I'm not sure that people in HR or lawyers are the right people. You know, you need a detective.
Speaker 2Or you just needed, in the case of the BBC, somebody to have read both of Russell Brand's autobiographies. And then it would have all been laid bare. And Jimmy Savile's. And Jimmy Savile's. Because say in the case of Lucy Conn, I do find it unbelievable that on one hand we have Brand. And Brand reveals he is. basically completely disrespectful of women. That he wants to bed 5,000. That he's completely indiscriminate sexually and is grotesquely promiscuous. Okay. You could say it would be being a prig to suggest he might not be a suitable face for the national broadcaster. Or you could say maybe. In his book he reveals that he urinated in a cup in a studio. He reveals that he went under a desk and basically tried to sexually interfere with a newsreader while she was doing her job. He confesses that he would set up competition winners to be female for his Radio 2 show. Ensure that they could come in and see him and then try and reserve the disabled toilet so he could have sex with them. The list goes on. Apparently that's all fine with the BBC. But Lucy Conn says, Actually, I think we should probably do some more balanced coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. And somebody goes, Leave now. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 3It's terrible. As you. retire. that, it is shocking. It's a shocking indictment of the executive class at the BBC.
Speaker 2They're not led properly.
Speaker 3But it also suggests
Speaker 2they're beholden to the. This is what I'm trying to say about, are they just. I mean, there's an unpleasant way to say it, star something. Are some of these people at the BBC just so in awe of the talent that they literally cannot make the right decisions at the right times about the right issues?
Speaker 3It's a much more precarious profession than when I first came into television. And your job, your career depends on you delivering, you know, success very quickly. You know, you're allowed to fail. In my day, life was much easier. The whole financial structure of broadcasting was a hell of a lot easier than it is today. I'm not pretending it wasn't. But you were allowed to fail and you had a job, you know, you had a staff job and you had a pension. And if you got things wrong, you know, if you continue to do things wrong, they'd move you sideways at the BBC. They'd rather get rid of you. Today, you're in or you're out. I mean, it's a revolving door everywhere and that's the problem. And so you get a bit of success with a star, you'll forgive them for anything because you know, it means your career
Speaker 2will progress. Ah, now that is interesting because then as well, I was just going to say the next thing we know, this paragon of virtue, Russell Brand, is invited to go and present Comic Relief. Yeah, yeah. Even though he is a self-confessed monster. I'm reminded
Speaker 3of Tom Lehrer's comment when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Prize. He said, that's the day satire die.
Speaker 1Yes. That's right. Some of this has turned into a kind of a litigation of an entire decade of his entertainment output. Yes. Because people have been pointing out that so to move on to David Walliams, Little Britain itself made a virtue of cruelty. It was about laughing at men dressed as women, laughing at the disabled it was, again, as I said, hyper sexualized in its content. What happened to us in the early 2000s? I don't want to be too puritanical about this. I watched it. I found it very funny. I still do. But what was it about the culture of that time that we wanted to push those boundaries in that
Speaker 3way? Wow. It's about the boundaries of taste move with every generation. You know, I remember the world fell in on me when we broadcast episode three of The Singing Detective with the bonking scene
Speaker 1in the middle of it. And that's art. I mean, that's a great film.
Speaker 3Which went further than we'd ever gone on the BBC and I spent days agonizing and going over it with the writers and the producers. Remember the controversy about
Speaker 2Sean Bean and Jolie Richardson depicting the famous sex scene in Lady Chatterley's Lover. I mean, that seems Victorian by comparison.
Speaker 3The boundaries of taste move on and we have been through a sort of lads culture. Yes. You know, I think I think it probably started with page three in The Sun. Yeah. I think I think I think the sort of Rupert Murdoch view of the media is has got a lot to answer for. I think it has coarsened the nation's dialogue and reduced. I mean, I was on the Daily Mirror in the 1960s under Hugh Cudlip before The Sun emerged and at the Mirror's lunch. The Mirror was a very serious paper. It was full of fun. It had the Jane cartoon, which was a sort of silly feminist anti-feminist cartoon. Yes. But the paper had a very serious point to it, and we sold five and a quarter million every day. But the advent of Rupert, I think.
Speaker 2Well, the advent of Larry Lamb, I mean, it's immortalized in the film version of the stage play, Inc. Right. And it does show the mirror in the face of Lamb's assault on the readership and basically saying that people are interested in reading about sex. They're interested in reading about gossip. They're interested in reading about sport. Sex and television. And television, crucially, right? And then the ratings overtake. Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with people being interested in sex per se. But I suppose to Tim's point, this period seemed to be this sort of an era of a glorification of depravity. Yeah. For want of a better word.
Speaker 1Yeah. It reveled in it being borderline immoral. Yeah.
Speaker 3Immoral. I mean, I would perhaps use a different word with really without any kind of taste or any point. Yes. Really, you know, the best the best comedies, situation comedies or comedic plays are the plays that have something on their mind. I worked for a genius in Hollywood, Norman Lear, who was one of the great comedy producers of all time in America. And he always said that the more serious the subject, the funnier you can be. Yes. He said, but you have to do it with taste. Yeah. And we've lost that. And there was a lads culture and people jumped onto it. And the comedy circuit, you know, to survive on, I haven't been in touch with it of late, but to survive on the comedy circuit, you know, you had to push the boundaries. It's no different from a comedian going out in the old days in vaudeville or wherever and telling a dirty joke. And if you open with a dirty joke, there's only one way to go. The next joke has to be even dirtier and even dirtier and even dirtier. And then you end up, you know, it's just horrible. And you climax too early. That's the problem. Absolutely. But that's that's what's happened. It's just yes. It just started. There was a moment where the lads
Speaker 2culture. Well, yeah, I think comedians became the new rock stars.
Speaker 1Yes. Well, and they were also imbued with philosophical qualities that I don't think they ever really have. But people began to look at them as being sages, that they could give us an insight into human nature, which is not something I'm sure the older kind of musical for Peter Kay claimed to have. Well, exactly. But it occurs to me, I mean, one problem with this, this form of cultural production is I think it actually ruins eroticism. I mean, you mentioned things like the singing detective, which pushes boundaries about the depictions of sex. And that's partly because it's about just to explain about a man who has a profound disability in hospital who's remembering his life and he's confusing it with Pulp Fiction. And so he remembers erotic encounters.
Speaker 3He's he's confusing. He doesn't know what sex is. The kid in the tree watching his mother having sex in the field. Exactly. And he thinks it's violent. Yes. Yes. He doesn't know about sex. And he thinks this guy's being violent to his mother and it completely throws his whole life.
Speaker 1Yeah. And the point is, that is a profound insight that if you're going to show it. Honestly, and effectively on TV, you have to display sex. So I would class that in perhaps the erotic category of art. What we're talking about here is a pornography. Gratuitous. Gratuitous pornography. And I wonder if part of the reason why our culture became so gratuitous was actually paradoxically because popular entertainment went into decline at the same time. So when you were commissioning telly, millions of people were watching things like the singing detective. And so you always had to think about, we'll question the questions be asked in Parliament. Will viewers write me angry letters? Will Mary be on the phone?
Speaker 3The question always was, can I justify this? Can I defend this publicly?
Speaker 1But can you justify it to the public? Whereas post 2000, when telly goes into decline and fewer and fewer people are watching it or they're watching different things. It's more competitive. And you no longer have to care so much about alienating the mass audience because you're speaking to a niche.
Speaker 3I think you're absolutely right, Tim. I think that's spot on.
Speaker 2Absolutely. I think that's spot on, and we've lost a lot. But it's also TV, perhaps, OK, TV now, linear TV is competing with streaming giants that have bigger budgets to present bigger, more glossy programs. And that's one problem. But isn't there also a sense to which standards have slipped because you're also competing now with social media, which basically publishes with impunity and you can find all sorts of things on there. And if you're particularly chasing a younger audience, that itself is chasing people like originally pranksters, like the Sidemen, and then kind of ever more elaborate stunts. And by the way, there is a drip feed of-- well, not even a drip feed, a torrent of pornography to access while you're at it. Television has got to do hysterical things and take more risks just to keep the audience happy.
Speaker 3I think you're right. I think that one of the problems is this obsession with the youth and not just with the youth audience, but with youth in your own building, if you're the BBC or whatever. Where are the gray hairs? Where are the people who've lived through this? Where are the people, the real wise old heads that you could always rely on to control the kids? You want the kids, you want the-- but there's so many-- let's call it the lads culture as a sort of generic for what we're discussing. The people who control television and control what gets made and what doesn't get-- are people of that generation. They're all so young.
Speaker 2But that's point as well, isn't it? I mean, it's been endemic at the BBC, idiotic decisions like getting rid of Ken Bruce. And then he goes and creates-- Because he's old. Because he's old. Because, oh, we're trying to attract a younger audience. Not forgetting that the main audience-- well, first of all, not forgetting-- first of all, forgetting how fickle the young are. I mean, you can't rely on them.
Speaker 3They've never watched television. In my day, when there were only three channels or four channels. they never watch television that once they get once they get married and have kids and a mortgage they're on the sofa So you take decisions to appeal
Speaker 2to the kids who aren't going to come with you anyway and at the same time completely disenfranchise your older more loyal audience because you've got rid of the people. Mind you then I'm being I'm slightly contradicting myself because I'm saying a talent like Ken Bruce is worth preserving but then he's a man of great broadcasting quality
Speaker 3The BBC at its best is when it's doing things like Strictly you know which is a show that appeals to all ages all classes you know in the old days Morecambe Wise you know everybody from the Road Sweeper to the you know to Buckingham Palace watch Morecambe and Wise you know and the BBC at its best provides a benchmark and the gold standard of entertainment journalism and all the rest of it Is it doing that today?
Speaker 2Also haven't we had it up to here with Strictly? In the 1980s
Speaker 1didn't you cancel Come Dancing? I may
Speaker 3have done I can't remember Angela Rippon I did cancel beauty competitions You
Speaker 1also suspended and I have friends who'll never forgive me if I don't ask this and you know what I'm going to say you suspended Doctor Who for 18 months. Do you regret that now?
Speaker 3No Why did you do that? The producer came in and we were talking about next year and he said how many Doctor Who's do you want? I said none and the blood drained from his face and I said why? I said have you been to the movies lately? He said yes I said have you seen Star Wars? Have you seen Close Encounters? Have you seen E.T.? He said yes. I said I've got news for you so does the audience and this show doesn't cut it anymore
Speaker 1But that's because you wouldn't give it the budget you wouldn't give it the money
Speaker 3Well there weren't digital effects and all the things that have revived it today I mean the sorts of things they can do today with AI and digital effects lifts it into a cinematic
Speaker 1So your objection was the production quality not the program itself. Yeah. Right. It wasn't that you hated science fiction. I do hate science fiction
Speaker 3There you go. I do hate science fiction I must never the trap when you're running a network the trap is to rely on your own taste Yes. You have to understand every day you come to work you don't have a monopoly of taste. Classic example. There was my head of comedy at Channel 4 showed me a pilot of a show which I hated and I wrote him a handwritten memo which I very rarely ever did and I said this is a silly show it's got nothing on its mind it's vacuous and I went through it and I said but if you really believe in it you know go with God good luck. Yeah. And that was Father Ted. Oh no It went straight over my head There you go. But I knew enough to know that you know you don't have a monopoly of taste yet.
Speaker 1And given the success that New Who had do you in retrospect think I could have done that I could have made that kind of programme
Speaker 3You didn't have the budgets and you didn't have the technical effects the special effects, your green screen and all that stuff. Yes. That wasn't available
Speaker 2They were making Daleks out of cardboard boxes at that point Tim.
Speaker 1They couldn't go uphill. It went up the stairs in remembrance of the Daleks. Now if you knew you were Who you would know that. Do you think they were, I mean its current status is unsettled but do you think it's time for New Who to take a break? Well it This clip is going to get hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3of viewers believe me. Some shows can reinvent themselves which Doctor Who has done. It will need the next Russell T Davies to take it on. I'll tell you who else it needs.
Speaker 2Go on. Tim Stanley in the title role. It's either that or Tim Stanley presenting the next Crufts. Why not? We could do a whole monkey With canine. We could do a monkey tennis. With canine. We could have a session with Lord Grade now. I do have some ideas. A final question to you because it's been quite serious minded for obvious reasons because of everything that's gone on in recent days and weeks at Lord Grade. Can you give us your, the best TV decision you've ever made and
Speaker 3the worst? Best TV decision I ever made I think was to agree to run the Live Aid Christmas video. Yes. The Bob Geldof, a Mr. Geldof, I didn't know who the hell he was in those days, rang and wanted to get it on Top of the Pops. You couldn't get it on Top of the Pops unless you were in the charts. I said I'm not breaking that rule. Send me the video and let me look at it just to get him off the phone. I looked at the video and thought this is extraordinary. So I rang him back and I said well good news and bad news, you're not going on Top of the Pops but I'll delay Top of the Pops for five minutes and run the video at seven o'clock.
Speaker 2Love it. Wow.
Speaker 3And that was, that was one of the best from that day to Live Aid and the rest of it is just legend and that's my little part. I mean the energy of Midge and Bob Geldof to make that all happen, you cannot believe what went on. I became a trustee after that. I'm still a trustee. We're still sending money to help people.
Speaker 2And it is the season to be reminded of that song.
Speaker 3Worst decision sitting in a screening room in Hollywood. We used to go every year and look at all the pilots. Of all the new shows and obviously which ones we wanted to buy for our networks. And we're watching it at one hour drama and I'm with some senior editorial colleagues from Channel 4 and we watch this show. The lights go up and we all look at each other and that's the biggest lot of rubbish we've ever seen. Oh no. Forget it. And that was X-Files.
Speaker 2Oh my goodness me. It only ran for 400 seats. Science fiction again.
Speaker 3But I wasn't the only one in the room. We all said it was rubbish. Tim, let me guess.
Speaker 2Did you quite like Mulder and Scully back in the day? Oh yes. Lord Michael Gray, thank you very much indeed for joining us on today's Daily Tea.
Speaker 1I'll be back tomorrow for a weekend tea with the lovely Michael Deacon. See you then. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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