The BBC. 15 amazing years. Done.

So there we are. It’s done.

My TV review slot on Radio Five Live is no more.

After almost fifteen years the end was long overdue and came at a good moment, not just for the BBC apparently, but for me too. I have a little company now, where I actually create stuff rather than sitting in front of a microphone talking about other people who create stuff. That’s way more positive. Plus, sometimes you simply have to move on. And that’s where I’m at.

Making magic: how to do a TV review when you don’t own a TV

What’s fascinating is that the slot wasn’t even supposed to be a slot at all. It began as little more than a serendipitous coming together of a lost journalist and a struggling network with time to fill and nothing to fill it with. That was in 1997.

I’d been in Hollywood a matter of weeks and things weren’t going well. Thoroughly depressed, I was facing the serious possibility of having to return home soon if my life didn’t shape up. Then, one day, everything changed. A close friend of mine, who happened to be working on a relatively new BBC radio nocturnal magazine show called Up All Night, catering mainly to truck drivers and milkmen, rang me in some panic and said, “Our U.S. TV critic has vanished, or possibly died. Anyway, he’s not answering his phone. Would you be a poppet and review some television for us for a couple of weeks while we find a replacement? We’ll pay.”

Pay? Great heavens!

Unfortunately, I didn’t own a TV at the time, which would make reviewing shows difficult, though not impossible. So…

“Yes,” I gushed. “I’d love to do it.”

In Hollywood, you always say yes, whatever the question. It’s one of the rules.

For the next month, as producers in London trawled the States for someone, anyone, who knew slightly more about American television than I did – there were roughly 380 million candidates at the time – I filled the gap. And for another month after that as well. And another. After which I guess they gave up trawling, because a year later I was still doing it, even though I still didn’t own a TV. Someone else in the house had one, so I did get to watch a bunch of shows if I had to; I wasn’t flying completely blind. But I could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as a professional TV critic. Additionally, before each broadcast I’d pop down to Ralph’s, our local supermarket, and hover around the checkout reading TV magazines and tabloids, researching something to talk about.

It was all very laissez-faire. Nobody appeared to care that I knew nothing, as long as it was entertaining. The slot was a three-minute filler, that’s all, which is an eye-blink in radio terms, so patches of ignorance could easily be masked by a guy talking very fast and giggling more than is right. Plus, it was done on the phone, lessening its integrity still further.

Problem was, I didn’t have a phone either! I shared a party line. This in itself presented countless problems.

Quite often, I would be sitting in my scruffy, mouse-infested apartment to the rear of the otherwise very beautiful Samuel Goldwyn Mansion right in the middle of Hollywood, jabbering live on-air to the BBC, giving my honest opinion about some show I’d not seen, when someone elsewhere in the house would come on the line and start talking over me. Or they’d suddenly dial a number and my voice would be drowned out by peeping noises. Or they’d go, “Hello? Hello? Who’s this?” The slot never went off without a hitch. It was always acutely awkward and nerve-wracking. But at the same time it was real! Real and spontaneous and entertaining and unpredictable – qualities that were valued back then; not stiff, over-prepared, and read word-for-word from a script, the way all other TV reviews were (and are). That’s what made it so refreshing and so un-BBC-like. Structure’s not my strong point, as you know – for instance, look at the way I’m rambling here – so I must applaud the producers of Up All Night for sticking with me, and it, for as long as they did.

Once, I remember, we’d just gone live; I was chatting happily to the presenter in London, when a well-hung naked black man climbed in through my window and ran across the room and out the door. He was being chased by another man, this one clothed and armed with a pitchfork, who also climbed in through the window and ran out the door. It was very dramatic, and, I should add, entirely representative of the madness that went on daily in that mansion. I’m surprised none of us got killed. Anyway, in that moment of crisis, as I expostulated, “Oh my god, there’s a big black man running across my room!”, history was made. I switched from talking about TV – which, let’s face it, I knew nothing about anyway – to discussing who the black guy was and why he was naked, which I knew A LOT about.

And that’s how it got started. The chatting, the cheekiness, the crazy Hollywood reporting about my life. For the first time, it gave people in Britain a chance to experience the real L.A., and what it’s like to live in this weird, mad place, from the inside – something they couldn’t find anywhere else on the radio. In time, it became known as ‘My Lovely Slot.’

Listeners, of course, adore stuff like this. And very soon what began as a brief fling turned into an ongoing affair. Within a couple of years I’d been upgraded from a three-minute filler on the phone to a five-minute filler on the phone, then ten minutes, then fifteen, until eventually I was given an entire half-hour every week to do my thing, despite complaints and protests. There’s always a small portion of your audience that really hates itself and, feeling helpless and unheard, takes their self-loathing out on other people, and usually – because they’re an easy target – media people, by endlessly writing in to whine about something you’ve said. When you’re in broadcasting, you accept that.

However, some of the protests originated within the show itself. That was the shocker. They came from the creator and presenter of Up All Night, Rhod Sharp, who, according to one of the producers, took a rebellious stand in the beginning against their new  ’TV critic’  getting any more air-time – “But why?” he groaned. “He’s not a real journalist!” – and even campaigned for the slot to be cut back. His reasoning, though, was flawed. Of course I’m not a real journalist. That’s the whole point of the slot. Even so, a more persuasive argument would have been: “But why? He doesn’t own a television.” Now, that might have worked.

But Rhod’s a sweetie-pie. Eventually he mellowed, as we know, and nowadays we’re practically in love.

The spirits speak

With the passing of the years, the half hour became a little more professional, I must say.

I quit giggling as much, for example. Then, in year two, I actually went crazy and bought a TV, so that I could start getting my information first-hand, which was a vast improvement. I invested in a phone, that’s another thing. And later I even managed to wangle a real, and quite fabulous, studio in downtown L.A. to broadcast from. Nobody who worked there seemed to have a clue what I was doing or why. By the same token, none of them seemed to have the authority to stop me. So I simply continued doing the show in that space, showing up every Tuesday evening no matter what for seven years, until some bright spark in management finally figured out that I had no legitimate reason for being there in the first place and changed the locks.

During the early bleak days, though, this little slot of mine, as silly and insignificant as it seemed, was my life-saver. Without it I could not have made it in L.A. The pay was risibly small, but it was enough. Enough to get me from week to week, if I didn’t eat much and walked everywhere instead of taking the bus.

The whole traveling-to-America thing had been a monstrous gamble anyway. I arrived here on spec with almost no money to my name and unable to earn any because I didn’t have a green card, so I was forced to rely totally on the kindness of strangers. And since strangers in L.A. are not exactly renowned for their kindness, that meant I was in survival mode every single day. Now, though, it’s been fourteen years and I’m no longer in survival mode, am I? I’m living quite the life. Things turned around in the end. I wrote books, had my own TV travel show, and got a regular gig on NPR over here.  So for the last half-decade or so, the slot has been done for pleasure only. Mine, if nobody else’s.

Rhod called me at home in October, the day after the axe fell. “Don’t be downcast,” he said, sounding just like he does on the radio. “There’ll be other opportunities.”

And yes, there probably will. But I don’t think he quite gets where I’m coming from on this. The ending of the BBC slot is not a bad thing. It’s a ‘thing’, that’s all. I tend not to fight change, I embrace it readily, and even a little starry-eyed at times, on the assumption that when one situation falls away, it’s only to make room for something bigger and better. It’s always been that way for me. And in this case that’s definitely going to be what happens.

How do I know? A psychic told me.

(Don’t you dare roll your eyes!!)

Back in September, I had one of my regular readings with a quite brilliant channeler guy in Oregon, and for the first time I heard myself ask, “When will my BBC slot end?” Don’t know why I was prompted to raise the issue, but I did. And he laughed, saying, cryptically, “Well, it won’t be less than a month, but it will be over by the end of the year. Just accept it.”

Oh my lordy! That soon?

He seemed very sure.  ”You want me to go without a fight? Seriously?”

“Yup.”

So when the day came and I heard the actual words: “It’s over”, it should have been no surprise. Yet I admit I was caught off-guard. I didn’t yelp or squeal or do anything girly, but I think I may have emitted a gasp.

“It  probably should have happened after ten years, not fourteen years,” I told the lovely Liam Hanley, Up All Night‘s editor. Which is true. I remember joking on-air with Rhod only a month before. I said they’d have to take me away in a body bag before I’d ever give up my slot. But I’d already talked with the psychic by then. I knew I was done for.

Winding things up, the BBC way

The young BBC man who called was extraordinarily polite and cordial, and probably nervous, wondering if I’d go bananas when I heard I’d been dropped. After all, he was most likely still studying for his GCSEs when I started this thing. To avert a crisis, he apologized sincerely for putting me out to pasture in this way, congratulating and thanking me as he did so for my long, devoted service, inadvertently making me feel gloriously cherished, brutally discarded, and very, very old, all at the same time.

I could have announced, I suppose, that it was my decision to leave, for the sake of my pride. But why?

Because if we’re heading down that road, why not go the whole way and issue one of those robotic statements that are euphemisms for ‘He’s been fired”, and which bruised artists routinely use to shield their pride?

“Cash is leaving to spend more time with his family.” (Which, since I don’t have a family, would make it an even bigger lie), or: “Cash is leaving to work on other projects.” (Okay. But strictly speaking is retirement another project?) Or even: “We’re taking the show in a new direction. We’re hoping to use someone who won’t cause as many listeners to complain.” (Er….oh…well, that might be nearer the mark, I suppose. Yes, use that.)

Anyway, that’s it – the bulk of it. We’re all squared away. Everyone’s happy. There’s no going back now.

Okay, I’ll take any questions.

Yes, you over there in bold, carrying the big Q.

Q. Will you miss doing your slot?       For a while, sure. It was engraved into my calendar all those years, week in week out – how could I not?

Q. Is your ego fragile right now?      It’s been a couple of months since I found out, so no, I’m over it.

Q. Does this make you feel old and over the hill?    Not as much as it used to when Rhod would go on vacation for a couple of weeks and be replaced by what sounded like bubbly children’s TV presenters.

These, I assumed, were considered the BBC’s best hope for the future. One or two were great – Giles Dilnot being one; now THAT guy has a career ahead of him – but the majority were mediocre, I thought. Humorless, awkward, and often floundering in the face of unscripted spontaneity, in ways that would have been inconceivable a few years ago, when you needed to have talent and years of broadcast experience to get on national radio, not merely a degree in media studies and lashings of youthful enthusiasm.

It struck me many times as I was doing the slot that, if this was how far down the bar had been lowered in terms of presenter acceptability, then inevitably the BBC would soon be wielding the axe on its more seasoned professionals. It’d have to, if only as a way to make the newcomers seem less like struggling amateurs.

Q. Will the audience miss you?      Hm, not sure about that. Some, maybe. But I know how I am with people who disappear from my life. I move on very quickly.

Q. Would you stay if the BBC insisted?      They’re not going to insist.

Q. This whole cancellation lark sounds very fishy. Why would the BBC axe something that is incredibly popular with listeners? Is there something you’re not telling us?   Ah, well…

How hate, not love, sometimes prevails

If anyone asks, the only reason I continued doing my slot for as long as I did was because, each time I so much as hinted that I might stop, I’d be deluged the next day with emails, tweets, and Facebook messages begging me to keep going. “You’re the highlight of my week,” some milkman in Cheshire would say, or a matron stuck on overnights in Essex, or a cab driver trekking around rain-soaked Liverpool in the dead of winter. “Your slot brightens my life. Please don’t go.”

Ah, but I must, you see. The other day, I said there more reasons why I’m leaving. The first was by far the most significant: it’s time to go. It just is. And here’s another.

Reason 2: the corporation’s new “Delivering Quality First” initiative.

In much the same way that the Bush Administration’s topsy-turvy “No Child Left Behind” policy led to almost every child getting left behind, and now nobody in America under 25 can spell, add up, speak in full sentences, or find their home town on a map, the BBC is delivering quality first at its news and talk flagship Radio Five Live by seemingly eviscerating it; cutting £5 million per annum from a network whose budgets are already pinched like an Irish pie-crust, forcing editors over the next couple of years to sweep aside anything that isn’t cheap or nailed down.

I regret to say that this includes me. I’m not nailed down; I have to leave. It’s progress.

A compromise idea was tabled: how about I give up my slot but continue to contribute to Up All Night the way I do to any other radio or TV network – casually, informally, and as needed? To me that feels like a horrible demotion. Agreeing to it would mean I was just so desperate to stay on the radio that I’d do anything.

But then fate stepped in anyway. A couple of days later, I received my very first piece of direct hate mail, at which point everything changed.

Haters are very vocal. 10,000 listeners may love what you do, but of course they won’t write to the BBC and say so. I myself adored the sitcom Better Off Ted, and was mortified when ABC axed it last year. Did I write in and tell them that? Nope. I’m too lazy.

Haters and whiners, on the other hand, are not lazy. Also, they seem to have a lot more time on their hands than the rest of us. They’re always writing in. Years ago, before emails and texts, they had to send letters, which were easily misplaced or ignored. Now, though, they have the immediacy of the Internet, and they use it to the fullest extent – especially, it seems, when it comes to my little slot. And so the final reason for my leaving is this:

Reason 3: there have been complaints. 

Face it, whatever you say on the radio is going to offend someone. If I suggest that the latest series of Doctor Who is shallow drivel, which it is, dozens of easily-pleased people with no taste will write in, saying I’m wrong and it was the best ever.

For every stand you take, there’s someone out there poised to take the opposite side. And that’s fine. It’s democracy in action. The more the merrier. As long as – and this is the important part – as long as producers, editors, and network controllers don’t yield to pressure and let a tiny minority dictate program policy, or, worse still, let them silence voices they don’t happen to agree with. Because then the tail’s wagging the dog and you’ve strayed into very dangerous territory indeed.

Years ago, when broadcasters received hatemail, it was seen as a good, even important, thing. A strong listener response  meant you’d pushed buttons and stirred up passions to the point where they’d been compelled to get off their indolent arses and physicalize their anger. And what’s art, really, if not an attempt to arouse passions in people?

But you can see the dangers, right? For creativity to flourish, artists need to be protected. They need editors and managers with a backbone, who believe that every kind of voice should be heard, not just the ones that try to please all the listeners all the time. Managers who place self-expression first and their own promotion prospects second. Managers who understand the value of originality and defend it, if only as a way to resist the relentless, slow, downward drag into mediocrity that haters represent. Managers with real balls, in other words. I’ve worked for a couple in my time, but I need hardly tell you – in a world of shaved budgets and increasingly homogenized blandness, they are rare.

Times are tough. Backbone is scarce. You can’t buy it in packs of six, not like in the old days. To stand your ground and support something of value when you’re under fire and anxious to keep your job – that’s a lot to expect. If the choice is to either fall on their sword in the name of integrity, or to take the easy way out by buckling to the irate demands of a few loony listeners (and maybe a couple of complainers within the BBC too, naming no names), my guess is that most producers and editors will buckle. I probably would too.

One piece of hatemail helped clinch the deal

But none of that is important. For me, there was one specific piece of hatemail that made all the difference. The exact-same day, unbelievably, that the BBC man called, I received my first-ever angry tweet about the slot. Came from a new follower in Essex. It was uncanny how it happened. A bizarre coincidence.

“I’m following you,” he announced, “so I can tell you that you make me cringe every time I hear you on the radio. You’re a buffoon.” This was quickly followed by a second tweet. He’d thought of something else: “Oh, by the way, just how affected can an accent be? Answers on a postcard…”

Nothing to be concerned about, you might think. Just a guy I don’t know venting his feelings about an affected buffoon he doesn’t know, and with every right to say what he said. But that’s not the point. I don’t believe in coincidences. Nothing happens by accident.

This listener wasn’t aware of it, but he’d sent his tweet at a watershed moment. On any other day his intentionally cruel words might not have mattered. But somehow, that one insignificant little nugget of malice felt to me like a sign. A sign of changing tides. Same way the BBC is changing. We’re told it’s about to start delivering quality first. Well, good. About time. And I’m sure savage budget cuts, a reduced talent pool, and overall limited resources will help bring that goal nicely to fruition. However, the very nature of the terminology tells you that there’s no room for me in that scenario.

After fifteen years of the best fun I could possibly have had in broadcasting, I’m feeling cornered. There’s no air in here any more. Broadcasters find themselves hemmed in by watchdogs, whiners, and waves of insidious, way-over-the-top political correctness, the fascist kind imposed by the fanatical minority, that crushes the human spirit and ruins everything for everyone else. It’s like waking up in the night to find your longterm lover trying to suffocate you with a pillow.

So we’re drawing things to a close.

No doubt all those people, like the hater guy in Essex, who loathed the slot – and there are many others, including a couple of the lesser-talented stand-in hosts –  will be rejoicing, popping corks, and organizing singalongs and pageants of their own at this news. And so they should. They won. Their efforts paid off. Let’s not shy away from the truth, nor take even an ounce of their victory away from them. Whatever jubilation they feel today was earned through rugged persistence over many months and years, even if their triumph is, when viewed in a fuller perspective, tiny, since it was only a matter of time before I left anyway. A month, three months, six months down the line – at some point relatively soon the slot would have drawn to a close. It had to. Which brings us full circle, back to the main reason, which is:

Quite simply: I’m done. The affair is over.

To conclude, then, because I really am rambling now…

My friend, the one who started it all off by calling me in a panic in 1997, was quick to reply when I told him what had happened. “Given that it was initially a temporary thing,” he said, “fifteen years is not bad.”

He’s right, it’s not bad. Actually, it’s better than not bad, it’s brilliant! And it extends to a time way before 1997, because I’m not just ending my BBC slot, I’m ending all my media involvement – TV, radio, the works.

I climbed aboard the broadcasting carousel at the age of 15, doing pieces for BBC Radio Manchester. At 16, a short animated film I made was shown on BBC1. Also at 16, I began contributing material to BBC  comedy programs, first for radio, then later – at 17 – for TV, with The Two Ronnies and Talking Telephone Numbers.  And it’s been going on ever since, alternating between radio and TV, both in the UK and more recently in America. That’s some carousel, my friends. It’s been terrific in every conceivable way, I couldn’t have wished for more. But now it’s time to climb off.

The wind-down began last year when I left Marketplace, the U.S. public radio show I’d been contributing to for more than a decade, and quit being a reporter. Already I’m no longer up to date on world happenings, because I don’t watch the news any more. To me, it’s a bunch of contentious white noise – complete strangers telling me in the gravest tones what I should be worried or frightened about. Well, I can do without that, thank you.

Better still, in January, with no slot to research, I plan to get rid of my TV altogether. This prospect makes me very happy indeed. No more surfing endless channels of nothingness looking for topics to discuss. No more setting TiVo for programs I would never record otherwise. No more having to magic an opinion out of thin air about some vacuous fly-by-night celebrity or a mindlessly indulgent and derivative sitcom that’s going to be cancelled in a month’s time anyway.

Above all, I can quit judging things. Things, shows, ideas, ratings.  That’s the best development of all. I was not put on this earth to be a critic of other people’s work, or to poke fun at their efforts, even though it’s what I’ve done for twenty years. My remit has a broader reach than that. There are the handwriting analysis skils I have, for instance, which are mind-blowing. Also, my new mystery novel has just been published: Force of Habit – Sister Madeleine Investigates. That’s waaaaaay more representative of the kind of artist I am, I think. I was born to create, not to tear down.

Which is why, hanging up the phone on Liam, our editor, on the day of the axing in October 2011, I found I had a peculiar fizzing sensation in my crotch, as if someone had poured champagne into my pants. This only happens on two occasions: a) when someone really has poured champagne into my pants; and  b) when massive life changes are afoot.

And that’s where I’m at as I write this. I’m embarking on a massive life change, switching from being a media guy, which I’ve been since I was a kid, to being a very happy and non-involved civilian. My career has been living proof that you can have anything you want, anything at all, if you’ll just dream big and be persistent. In my teens, I had a bunch of what seemed like impossible dreams, and every last one of them came true. I’ve been living in a bubble ever since, letting my childhood dreams play out. Now, though, I’m done. Today I have a whole raft of new dreams. Grown-up dreams that don’t involve broadcasting, and which will take the rest of my days to fulfill.

For some reason – don’t ask me why – I have a peculiar feeling that my life is just beginning.

So that’s it really. It’s been great. Thanks to Rhod, all the BBC studio managers, producers, and editors I had dealings with, most of whom were fantastic and exemplary pros, and of course the fans – all 15 of you – not only in the UK (13)  but worldwide (2), who tuned in each week, and who sent me such wonderfully supportive messages. To quote Gabriel García Márquez: “No llores porque ya se terminó… sonríe, porque sucedió.”

In English: don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

Two final things:

1) Late breaking news: here are a couple of blog posts some lovely listeners wrote about the ending of the slot. One from Hugh McCallion and another from Stephen Duncan. Am I touched? Oh, for sure.

2) After so many fans of the slot wrote to him, the controller of Five Live, Adrian Van Klaveren, started sending out a robo-tweet: “Sometimes you have to make changes to keep progs fresh and try out new ideas/voices but we hope Cash will still appear on UAN…”. (It’s Twitter, so he probably ran out of characters, and meant to continue: “…doing something dull and safe that will upset fewer people.”)

Okay, time’s up. Gotta go before this gets maudlin. Or worse, bitter.

Missing you already.