Turned Out Nice Again

by Louis Barfe

  Less subtle but equally funny was a Fry monologue about his vision of Britain, closing one of the second series shows. ‘I see many towns and many villages, and I see family heritage amusement theme fun parks, which will smell of urine and vomit. . . . As yet, it is only a vision, a vision of family heritage urine and fun amenity vomit. But soon, soon, with luck, sincerity and steadfast voting, it may become a reality.’52

  The stars and writers of the show felt very comfortable with Ordish as director, but wondered if they had his full attention, given the year-round slog of fielding the Jim’ll Fix It postbag. ‘It was such an institution that it never stopped. The mailbags never stopped coming in, it was always ticking over. It certainly got up Hugh Laurie’s nose that I was always also doing something to do with Jim’ll Fix It while I was doing their shows. Which was a shame, because I loved doing that stuff. We did a Christmas show and then I did two series, so it wasn’t as though there was a terrible rift.’53 For the second series, Ordish co-produced with Fry and Laurie’s Cambridge contemporary Nick Symons, while continuing to direct the show. A third and fourth series were made, both wonderful, but not quite as wonderful as their predecessors.

  If, however, a single series had to be chosen to represent the demise of the old school of light entertainment and the rise of the new order, it was Filthy Rich and Catflap, a situation comedy written by Ben Elton, aired on BBC2 in early 1987 and never repeated. It was sold as the sequel to The Young Ones, and, while it contained three of that series’ principals, and placed that show’s disdain for mainstream entertainment at the centre of the stage, it stands alone, requiring no prior knowledge. The Rich of the title was Richie Rich, a vain, pompous, talentless, hammy has-been/never-was former continuity announcer, unafraid to use illegal tactics to get his pasty, pig-nosed face on television. Played by Rik Mayall with manic glee, he was accompanied by his unsanitary, resentful minder and flatmate Eddie Catflap, played by Adrian Edmondson, and a show business agent, the alcoholic roué and pornographer, Ralph Filfthy, who made Max Bialystock look like Mother Theresa (‘Look, daughter, I’m a dying man. I may not live through this fag.’) and was portrayed beautifully by Nigel Planer.

  During the course of the six episodes, Rich was: blackmailed by the Nolan Sisters after being found in their dressing room; booked very reluctantly as the replacement for Bernie Winters on Ooer Sounds a Bit Rude – a game show bearing more than a passing resemblance to Blankety Blank; and moved to throw a dinner party for Tarby and Brucie to celebrate his decade in show business. (‘The years and the tears. Come and celebrate Richie Rich’s ten fabulous years of success, from third dummy in the window in Are You Being Served to his very own carpet ad.’) He was also: inclined to kill his own father for financial gain; booked to appear as a stand-up comic in a Soho peep show (‘A peep show, Filthy. What if Tarby finds out? I shall be thrown out of the Royal Order of the Charitable Self-Publicizing Showbiz Bog Otters.’); and finally rewarded with his own show, after he becomes a tabloid journalist and forces every other entertainer into hiding by writing lies about their private lives.

  The targets were obvious, but the whole matter was set out explicitly by Catflap in episode three, in response to Rich’s proclamation of platonic love for Jimmy Tarbuck, ‘the cheeky chap from the’ Pool, everybody’s pal, the jolly, gap-toothed Scouser with a twinkle in his eye and a smile for every honest Englishman’. The minder declares:

  Look, if there’s one thing I hate in British entertainment more than you, it’s that vast army of ex-stand-up comics who did one half-funny gag on Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the middle sixties, and have made a fortune doing game shows ever since. ‘Oh, good evening, your name is Cynthia, and you’d like me to patronize and humiliate you on the off-chance of winning a Teasmade.’ Cheeky chappies? More like complete and utter bastards, if you ask me.54

  Although Ralph Filthy, Richie Rich and Eddie Catflap were fictional characters, played by comic actors, and much of what they said was motivated by the simple desire to get laughs, there can be little doubt that there was a kernel of very genuine anger at both the comic and political establishment. And yet, the show was a BBC variety department production, nurtured by Jim Moir and produced by Paul Jackson, who had demonstrated his continuing commitment to mainstream comedy by producing Cannon and Ball at LWT. Moir’s faith was repaid by the presence in episode four of Jumbo Whiffy, the BBC’s bluff, matey, portly, bum-slapping, drink-sodden ‘head of nice entertainment’, to whom Rich attempts to sell his quiz show format, All-Star Golfing Secrets. ‘It’s meant to be me,’ admits Moir, still clearly amused by the whole matter. ‘It was Ben Elton pulling my leg. I know Ben Elton very well and like him very much. I was honoured it was played by Mel Smith. It’s up to us to say if it’s a caricature or if it bears any resemblance to the real person. But Jumbo Whiffy was a head of light entertainment somewhere in the BBC who may or may not have talked like this. The real Jumbo Whiffy commissioned Filthy Rich and Catflap, and read all the scripts beforehand, so was well aware.’55

  As television edged into the nineties, its entertainment side had remained largely true to the pattern set by Ronnie Waldman in the fifties. The executives who gave the dangerous new talents of the alternative comedy scene their breaks were, at most, one degree of separation away from Waldman himself, having been appointed by his appointees. Variety was a broad church, and it had proved able to withstand almost every pressure exerted on it, internal or external, by adapting seamlessly to every new development in entertainment. It seemed to be an impregnable fortress, but soon the whole broadcasting establishment was under siege, from both without and within.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Goodbye to all that

  For much of the eighties and early nineties, the whole broadcasting establishment was under political siege. The Conservative government was quick to regard every critical comment made in a programme as evidence of an insidious left-wing bias. Moreover, having taken on the miners and the newspaper print workers, by 1987, Mrs Thatcher was gunning for the broadcasting unions, referring at one Downing Street meeting to the television industry as ‘the last bastion of restrictive practices’. As with Fleet Street, these unions wielded a lot of power and sought to keep salaries artificially high. One industry joke stated that the difference between an LWT videotape editor and an Arab oil sheikh was that the sheikh didn’t get London Weighting. An end to the unions’ stranglehold on the industry would be welcome news to senior television executives. Indeed, when members of the ACTT (the Association of Cinematograph Television and Allied Technicians) walked out at TV-am – the ITV breakfast contractor – in 1987, chief executive Bruce Gyngell kept the station on the air with management and administrative staff taking over technical duties, and sacked all of the strikers. Gyngell’s actions were a bloody nose for the strikers who felt sure that the management would return to the table, desperate to minimize losses. However, the TV-am strike-breaking avoided a catastrophic loss of advertising revenue and proved that a service could be maintained with minimal skilled staff. The development was an important fillip to the reforming Thatcher administration, but few in television were prepared for the root and branch reforms that transpired.

  Ever since the Pilkington Report, commercial television had been tightly regulated and expected to make its fair share of unprofitable programmes, under the banner of public service television. Mrs Thatcher saw no reason why the television industry should not be completely market driven. The Broadcasting Act of 1990, steered through by home secretary David Waddington, was the means by which her end was achieved. It abolished the Independent Broadcasting Authority, replacing it with the Independent Television Commission and the Radio Authority, which were to be far less interventionist bodies. Most crucially, whereas franchises had previously been awarded on the basis of programming proposals and boardroom clout, the Act ruled that they were to go to the highest bidder in each case, as long as a vague, nebulous quality threshold was passed. The main concerns for qualit
y were whether what the ITC judged to be a tolerable service could be sustained. This ruled out several of the highest bidders, whose financial commitments to the Treasury would, in the ITC’s view, be too onerous to allow a proper level of programme investment. After extensive lobbying from the Campaign for Quality Television, a pressure group that included several television executives and the comedians Rowan Atkinson and Terry Jones, Home Office junior minister David Mellor managed to include an ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause which allowed the ITC a degree of discretion in awarding the franchises.

  Unfortunately for them, two of the Act’s strongest supporters within the television industry ended up being its victims, when the results of the franchise applications were announced in October 1991. TV-am lost its breakfast television franchise, its £14.13 million bid having been bested by the consortium that was to become GMTV, with a £34.61 million bid. Thatcher famously wrote Bruce Gyngell a letter apologizing for the unintended consequences of the legislation with regard to his company, which came as cold comfort indeed. Television South (TVS), which had taken over the south of England from Southern in 1982, lost its franchise in 1991, despite its chief executive James Gatward being partially responsible for the legislation in the first place.

  Gatward had long thought that his company should be admitted to the top table of the ITV network, with Thames, LWT, Granada, Central and Yorkshire. TVS, by virtue of the affluence of its audience, was one of the network’s biggest generators of advertising revenue. Brian Tesler, deputy chairman of LWT at the time of the franchise battle, takes up the story:

  It was Jimmy Gatward’s fault. TVS was the second highest earner of net revenue on the network, and he had no guarantee of any shows, because the big five were guaranteed. He was furious. We needed him at the weekend because the other guys, the seven-day contractors, were making all their money during the week. The weekend didn’t matter to them, and we couldn’t make everything. We couldn’t guarantee that everything we made was going to be a smash, so I needed help from the regions – TVS, Scottish, Anglia. We encouraged them to make things: Sale of the Century, Tales of the Unexpected. The others were happy to sell their shows in. James wanted a guarantee. He called the managing directors of the majors in for dinner: ‘Before we sit down to eat, I’d like to make a little presentation to you.’ Now he’s got Bryan Cowgill – Thames; Paul Fox – Yorkshire; David Plowright – Granada; Bob Phillis – Central; and me. He does a presentation with slides, to people like Cowgill and Fox, showing how well TVS is doing. Its share of this, its share of that, therefore it should be the sixth major. Unbelievable, and of course [it] totally put the backs up of Fox, Plowright and Cowgill. Didn’t put my back up because I wanted his shows, but I’d said to him ‘They won’t buy this, James. Do a deal with me, which guarantees that you have part of my output for the network. You’ll never be a sixth major. They won’t buy it, but we can arrange it so that you get your shows on. I need your shows, for Heaven’s sake, so you’ll be all right.’ But he was ‘No’. He had every right to be. Second wealthiest company in the whole system. At the dinner afterwards there was a bit of a frost.

  Three days afterwards, he says ‘I’m having lunch with [home secretary] Douglas Hurd and I’m going to put my ideas to him. Would you like to come along?’ I said ‘Oh, why, do you know Douglas?’ He said ‘No, I’ve never met him before in my life. I phoned him and I said I have some ideas.’ The chutzpah of this guy. And he put his case to Douglas, and Douglas Hurd said ‘What do you think?’ I said ‘Well it is true that he makes more money than anybody else except Thames, and he has a case, but a) the other guys won’t agree and b) I don’t think it’s necessary to go that far. There are other ways of doing it. Working in liaison with another major, ideally us, because we’re the smallest.’ Douglas went away and that started the hare running.1

  Gatward’s downfall had been his expansion into America, buying Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM production company at the height of the market for $320 million, far more than it turned out to be worth. Despite topping all other bids for the franchise at £59.76 million, TVS did not pass the quality threshold, as it was felt that it would be paying out too much to maintain programme quality. LWT itself survived with a bid of £7.58 million, its only rival London Independent Broadcasting having bid £35.41 million, but failed to pass the quality threshold. LWT had undergone extensive reorganization, dividing into three separate businesses – an ITV franchisee, a production arm and a studio facilities company – as well as arranging a ‘golden handcuffs’ deal of share options for its senior executives.

  Previously an unthinkable outcome, Thames – the warhorse of the network – failed to retain the London weekday franchise, being outbid by Carlton, which had begun as a technical facilities provider and studio owner. It differed in one important aspect from its predecessor. Thames had been a fully staffed and equipped television company, whereas Carlton was to be a publisher-broadcaster, buying in all of its programming from independent producers, just as Channel 4 had since 1982. This was despite having as experienced a producer/director as Paul Jackson in the job of programme director. Central looked to be sitting pretty, having correctly gauged that it would be unopposed and bid a mere £2,000, but when ownership rules were relaxed in 1993, allowing companies to own more than one franchise, Central became vulnerable to a takeover, Carlton being the victor in 1994. At the same time, London Weekend succumbed to a hostile takeover bid from Granada, always its biggest rival in the ITV network, which also took over Yorkshire and Tyne Tees.

  These takeovers, and the handover of commissioning and scheduling to the new ITV Network Centre, caused a massive shift in the light entertainment power base of the ITV network. Central – as might be expected from ATV’s successor – and LWT had been the two main providers of LE, but now they were owned and controlled by companies whose strengths were in other areas. Granada was noted for its drama and documentaries, while Carlton had not distinguished itself particularly in anything, and was proving to be a sitting duck for critics. The traditional LWT corporate attitude had been to spend whatever it took to get a show right. The Granada culture had been, even in the days when ITV had been that infamous licence to print money, more parsimonious. Marcus Plantin, who worked for LWT as a head of LE, then Granada as a head of production, observes that ‘the fiscal control at Granada is quite something’.2

  Prior to the Granada takeover, John Kaye Cooper, as LWT’s controller of entertainment, had presided over a stable of hit shows. You Bet was still running, and it had been joined by The Brian Conley Show, a Saturday night variety show with music and sketches, featuring Conley as various characters like stuntman Dangerous Brian and puppet-beating children’s TV presenter Nick Frisbee. However, LWT’s biggest hitters at this time were the impressionist and comedian Michael Barrymore and the sporting endurance contest Gladiators.

  Kaye Cooper had been one of Barrymore’s great sponsors, first using him in Russ Abbot’s Madhouse at the end of the seventies. Through the eighties, Barrymore made guest appearances on other people’s shows and was the host of the Thames game show Strike It Lucky, so he was a well enough known name to fill theatres nationwide. It wasn’t until the early nineties, however, that his manic intensity was harnessed successfully for TV. The winning formula had been to pair him with members of the public, firstly in Barrymore, then My Kind of People and My Kind of Music. He shared with Bruce Forsyth the ability to set non-performers at ease, while sending them up gently with asides and looks, but he also had a vulnerability that the ultra-professional Forsyth has never displayed. Forsyth always remained a star, an untouchable, but, for many punters, Barrymore was ‘one of us’.

  Even when Barrymore came out as homosexual, a situation that many closeted performers avoided, fearing that it would end their careers, the reserves of affection held by a vast majority of the viewing public did not run dry. Stewart Morris was directing Barrymore’s first day of location filming after the news had broken, and thought there was poten
tial for a frosty response:

  When the gay bit first hit the press, I was filming him the next day in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon, for My Kind of Music. I thought ‘What is going to happen?’ There must have been 300 press. I’ve never seen so many cameras and film cameras. I thought ‘They’re going to crucify him.’ And the Whitgift Centre was crowded to capacity. The room used as a dressing room was right at the top and as he started coming down the staircase, the applause went on for several minutes. They loved him and it never stopped. No matter what he did, they still loved him.3

  The early nineties changes in the ITV network’s working practices were mirrored by similar upheavals at the BBC. In 1987, LWT’s director of programmes John Birt had joined the Corporation as deputy director general, tasked with getting the news and current affairs output – thought by many on the Conservative side to be a hotbed of left-wing bias – under control. In 1993, he succeeded Michael Checkland as DG and turned his attention to all aspects of programming. In Birt’s view, the Corporation was a mass of inefficiency. Internal markets – under the heading of ‘Producer Choice’ – were the answer. Many of those who preceded him cavil at the suggestion that the BBC was a wasteful organization. ‘We were a tight ship,’ says Jim Moir:

  We fought for those budgets in the commissioning process, and then used bottom line accounting to balance the books. Nevertheless, if you have won a pot of gold in the commissioning process and came out evens it begs the question did you win too big a pot of gold at the commissioning process? And by taking that pot of gold, were you denying some of the bars to other departments? There was a concern and there always will be a tension in organizations, that LE have upped the ante: ‘No wonder they can bring it in, because they’re too well-funded.’ That I think is what controllers are there for, to make sure that their bottom line accounting is correct between light entertainment, drama, news, etc. We lobbied hard as well, in order to give the very best of shows. Once we had our budgets agreed, we policed them very vigorously indeed.4