Mark Steyn: On Getting Sacked From the BBC

Almost exactly six years ago, I was sitting in the BBC studios at Rockefeller Center, just before the start of a weekly talk show I used to host for Radio Four. With the minutes ticking away and the guests arriving, the head of BBC New York was niggling with me over some line in the script he didn’t care for — not an unusual occurrence but one which seemed to be distressing to our token American researcher, Nancy. Eventually, she could control herself no longer: “Hey!” she said. “First rule of broadcasting: don’t f--- with the talent!”

The otherwise all-British production team looked flummoxed. “The talent” is the American term for what the Corporation calls “the presenter”, and at the BBC f---ing with them is a way of life. The latest victim is “Feedback” presenter Chris Dunkley, who was informed just before Christmas that, although “Feedback” would be returning in the new year, he wouldn’t. I salute Dunkley for declining to finish the remaining two weeks of his stint and quitting on the spot — not like my wimpsville ex-colleagues on “Kaleidoscope”, who, after the programme’s demise had been announced by the network a year in advance, sat it out on death row in hope of a last-minute reprieve, notwithstanding the fact that the network bigshots had ostentatiously made it known that no presenter of the old clapped-out “Kaleidoscope” would be considered for a slot on the exciting new-look arts show.

Funnily enough, the exciting new-look arts show seems to have plenty of room for the old-look, clapped-out “Kaleidoscope” producers. At the BBC, the problem is always the presenter. So, when Gerry Anderson, of Radio Four’s “Anderson Country”, was axed, the editor and production team simply renamed the show “The Afternoon Shift”, brought in a new presenter — Gerry Afternoon, if memory serves — and carried on as before. Whatever one feels about the tedious Ulster whimsy-monger, surely the real mistake was made by the executive pen-pushers who came up with the bright idea of giving Radio Four’s first-ever one-man daily show to a fellow with virtually zero experience on the network.

Still, ask not for whom the Greenwich Time Signal pips, it pips for thee. Four years ago, I too was served with a one-way ticket to Anderson country. A few weeks before the new series of the above-mentioned Saturday-evening New York show was due to start, I was sacked. The only explanation came from Anne Winder, head of magazine programmes, who told my assistant in London that she’d seen a book review I’d done for The Mail On Sunday in which, en passant, I’d made a few jokes about BBC New York’s recent move to less lavish accommodation in a disused abortion clinic — from which Miss Winder had concluded that I was unhappy with the new office facilities. So the network decided it would be kindest to abort me in the first trimester.

Rest of the article.

I would have done a Dunkley and refused to host my remaining shows, but, to my surprise, I found I didn’t have any. At the time, I also presented the movie edition of “Kaleidoscope” on Wednesdays: for some years, before the start of each quarter, they’d send my assistant a letter enquiring as to when I’d be in London and schedule me accordingly. But, with a horrified gasp, we realised that this time round the quarterly letter hadn’t come: my eight years on the show had come to an end without so much as a “Dear Sir or Madam, We regret to inform you…” My cancer of the career, as they call it in American showbiz, had spread to every string on my bow.

It was not an amicable termination. My attorney in New York was obliged to threaten legal action to prevent them using my old signature tune - which probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but it gets to the heart of the issue: to what extent is the presenter responsible for the programme’s identity? It would seem self-evident that, after 13 years, insofar as “Feedback” has an identity, it derives largely from Dunkley - from his stewardship, reputation, authority, interviewing style. But that’s not how Radio Four think of it: they see it, as that old programme title “The Afternoon Shift” suggests, as just a shift - that any old casual labour can be brought in off the street to do.

One recalls, among many examples of classic BBC departures, the late “Start The Week” controversialist Kenneth Robinson. Personally, I always felt that his “controversial reputation” was intended to absolve the rest of the programme from the requirement to be in the least bit interesting. But nothing became his “Start The Week” like the stopping of it. One morning, Robinson turned up to be told his services would no longer be required, and, to add insult to injury, then had to sit through Richard Baker’s bland perfunctory thank-you at the end of the week’s show. From off-mike, Robinson raged, “It’s a bloody disgrace after 17 years.”

“Yes, well, there we are,” purred Baker, and on came the ten o’clock pips. In the vault at Broadcasting House a few years back, I happened across the recording of the incident: it’s a telling comment on the show that the only moment BBC Archives thought worth preserving was the clumsy ejection of a regular contributor.

A few weeks later, one of the departmental executives involved in the decision had a new answering-machine message: “I’m too busy to come to the phone right now. But why not call Kenneth Robinson? He could use the work.” A “presenter” is so called because he rarely has any future: the real, enduring “talent” is behind the scenes.

Thus, not long afterward, Richard Baker took what he apparently thought was a temporary break from “Start The Week”. Like so many before him, he was to discover that BBC holidays come with one-way tickets.

Anyway, a few months after my demise, I was passing through New York and bumped into my old producer, who took me to Starbucks, bought me a cappuccino and offered me a job writing jokes for my replacement, whose opening monologue it seems left something to be desired. “Get lost,” I said. “Then people’ll say, ‘Hey, this new fellow’s much funnier than that Mike Stain guy was.’ Why would I do that?”

“Take it or leave it,” he shrugged. “You’re dead at this network. I can’t give you away.”

But that’s the odd thing at the BBC. A presenter is never really dead: no sooner do you slide down some slimy duplicitous executive snake than you’re back on the bottom rung of the Corporation ladder heading up. I once mentioned in some column that the colossus of easy listening, Radio Two’s urbane charmer David Jacobs, had learned of his own downfall by hearing it announced on the news bulletin immediately preceding his show. As his celebrated Ray Conniff signature tune faded away, the usually unflappable Jacobs sounded very flapped: “Well, I must say, ladies and gentlemen, in 40 years as a professional broadcaster, I’ve never heard anything quite so…” Etc.

A week after I’d made passing reference to this incident, a letter arrived from Radio Two’s deputy supremo indignantly denying that he and his colleagues were a bunch of heartless bastards and explaining that, in fact, things had been arranged so that Jacobs’s extinction would be sensitively announced after his show, during the 2 pm news bulletin, and that it had only been announced during the 1 pm bulletin due to an unfortunate clerical error that could happen to anyone.

So David went away for a while. But a year or two later he started creeping back into the schedule, not with his prime-time daily show but with something called “Easy Does It”, which was broadcast at 11.43 pm every third Wednesday if the BBC Light Orchestra concert didn’t overrun. Life has few aural pleasures more delightful than hearing David’s honeyed tones introduce the vocal stylings of Mister Johnny Mathis, but, after what befell him, I can’t see why on earth he’d want to get mixed up with these guys again.

Yet the same thing happened to me: I’d barely been lowered into my grave before they began trying to chisel my coffin lid off. At first it was just small things - would I come in and review a Sondheim revival at the Donmar Warehouse? - but perhaps if I stuck it out it might lead to something.

“He’s not interested,” said my assistant. “After what happened, he’ll have no further truck with the BBC. Take him out of your Rolodex.”

But they never do. They won’t take no for an answer, not now not never. One producer left three increasingly hysterical messages, culminating with “Come on! You know you want to do this!” After a while, we decided there was no point wasting money returning their calls. A week later, a World Service producer left a message at my home in London: “Look, I can tell from the short beeps someone’s picking up messages at this number. I don’t know who you think you are, not calling us back.” Er, someone who’s not interested?

In 1997, a young producer from Mentorn, an independent production company, called to say they were “considering” me for a new Radio Four series.

“You’re wasting your time,” said my assistant. “He doesn’t do anything for the BBC.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Tell me, does he have any TV or radio experience?”

“No, no, you’ve misunderstood,” she said. “He won’t do anything for the BBC.”

“Yes, well, I can’t promise anything,” said the Mentorn man, “but we’ll bear him in mind.”

A year ago, I was briefly back in Broadcasting House to plug my book. A couple of days after my return to New Hampshire, a letter from James Boyle, the new Radio Four Controller, uncoiled over my fax machine. “I enjoyed hearing you on ‘Loose Ends’ on Saturday,” he wrote. “You sounded as if you enjoyed it too!” He was faxing to offer me the new Radio Four film programme on Saturday evenings and wanted to, as he put it, “give you lunch” at my earliest convenience and introduce me to “the new Radio Four team”.

How time flies! A mere three years after being sacked from my Saturday evening show and the network’s film programme, I was being offered a film programme on Saturday evenings. I did think of writing back to suggest that perhaps the new-look Radio Four deserved more dramatic innovations. But somehow I never got round to it.

So on it goes: the other day it was a call from some Current Affairs dude demanding that I audition my views on Bill Clinton so he could decide whether I was worth proposing for a spot on some impeachment debate. No one is indispensable - especially when Radio Four apparently has a factory in Glasgow cranking out endless supplies of Scottish women with dreary voices. But why do people do it? If you look closely at the daily schedule, you’ll see that what the network actually is is a succession of freelances who’ve acquired an expertise at some other organisation’s expense and are then prevailed upon to give, it away to the BBC for bargain-basement rates.

In the distant days when the Home, Light and Third Programmes enjoyed a broadcasting monopoly, there might conceivably have been some justification for this disadvantageous arrangement. But it’s incredible that it survives today. One reason is that, as my old chum and indestructible survivor David Frost always says, Britain doesn’t have an independent production sector, only a dependent production sector. “Feedback” is made by Test Bed Productions, whom you’d have thought might have mounted a spirited defence of their man and his excellent track record. But it seems their fear of jeopardising future Radio Four commissions outweighs any loyalty to Dunkley.

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve worked on and off for commercial broadcasters in North America, where you live and die according to ratings and revenue - which are at least objective measurements. But so-called public service broadcasting proceeds on nothing more rational than executive whim. At first, my one-man boycott was intended to run only so long as Michael Green remained Controller of Radio Four. But, following the traditional BBC career trajectory, he was soon consigned to the oblivion of early retirement, and I found that my boycott had mellowed into a general contentment at a BBC-free life. If every freelance did as I did, the network would collapse - or, at any rate, degenerate completely into an affirmative-action system for approved regional accents. So I say to Dunkley: take it from me, man; don’t be a David Jacobs, eschew “Easy Does It”, learn your lesson. It’s time the talent started f---ing ’em back.

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