Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Television executive and controller of BBC One, the only man to have run both BBC television channels.
On the island
Eight records
Non la sospiri la nostra casetta
Maria Callas and Carlo Bergonzi
It was one of the first pieces of opera on television I ever saw.
This was the first colour film I ever saw.
It's an extraordinary song because it's about the lynching that went on in the South in America.
Penelope Walmsley Clark, London Sinfonietta
The ambition to take the orchestral sounds and to find the human voice and to marry the two together is I think terribly interesting.
This is what we play in the car a lot, and Jacob sings along with him.
Beim Schlafengehen (from Four Last Songs)Favourite
Just a very sublime and beautiful song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:00Do you see yourself as an outsider?
Well maybe it's a sort of delusion of mine. If you've been uh ensconced in the BBC for that many years, perhaps you can't call yourself an outsider. But yes, I suppose coming from an immigrant family, a term that my mother still doesn't like me to use, but uh I find that that kind of otherness you have is something that uh is is valuable.
Presenter asks
2:28Can you cultivate the common touch if it doesn't come naturally to you?
Well, I don't think I haven't got the common touch. I don't think I'm a distant uh uh sort of … No, I don't think I'm that at all. I think uh my experience is very wide-ranging. I have lots of enthusiasms, I'm got very eclectic tastes. I don't think there's anything contrived about that. But making, you know, running a channel which has to have popular drama on and getting it right, uh uh being able to draw an audience into programmes is a big task for anyone, you know.
Presenter asks
6:07Are popularity and distinctiveness compatible? Isn't that the great struggle?
Yes, the popular and distinctive, well, private life of plants, David Attenborough, that has to be. The new season that we're doing, this 26-part series, The People's Century, to tell the story of the 20th century for a mass audience in 26 hours. Now, those are parts of what you do. At the same time, there is a place, if you like, for the kinds, even when you do game shows and things, I suppose you try to do them as well as you possibly can.
The keepsakes
The book
Michel de Montaigne
I've often dipped into Montaigne's essays but never quite sort of had the time... I thought to myself well this will give me succour and food that may make me a much better person.
The luxury
my luxury is going to be a video recorder... I'm going to send my little video... for nostalgia's sake.
Presenter asks
24:23Has having children had a profound effect on you?
Yes, I'm afraid the boring answer is it it has a profound effect on me. I've always loved children actually. And being a late father You do I think you do appreciate them perhaps that much more. However b however busy you are when later in in life, somehow or other you know how to find the time for the things that matter and and um you've got to a point in your life where the things that you can delegate, you can delegate. So yes, I absolutely adore being a father, I have to say.
Presenter asks
26:49Isn't it inevitable that the licence fee will become less justifiable as more channels appear?
That's both sort of, I suppose, fair in some ways, in other ways sort of slightly apocalyptic, but We will expect and do expect the share of audience among the terrestrial channels to decline. But the BBC will be showing its programmes, I think, on network television for a long time to come. And I think that the picture we'll get of the industry will be on the one hand, you will have networks, which will be important again if that shared experience is to be important to people. If not everybody wants to program their own entertainment, but people will become more and more familiar with computers, telephones, these will lead to people having options. There'll still be a place though for the networks, in my belief.
Presenter asks
29:21Aren't you one of the last controllers of BBC One with that kind of power?
Well, I doubt it actually. You still need people who can motivate uh talent, give them opportunities, go with a hunch even. Uh I mean all those things are part of what makes it an exciting and vibrant place to be. And I I think that uh who whatever television is like and uh it will need impresarios to do that.
“I find that that kind of otherness you have is something that is valuable.”
“The big idea of the BBC is that all kinds of things should be accessible to a large audience.”
“I've always loved children actually. And being a late father... you do appreciate them perhaps that much more.”
“I think the great glory of the BBC is that it is in touch with the mass of the British public.”
“You still need people who can motivate talent, give them opportunities, go with a hunch even.”