Karl began his career shooting inserts for this BBC consumer programme.  (10  part series)

This was a consumer programme introduced by Michael Molineux the eminent lawyer.

My job was to research and put the show together for the director – producer to come in and do the live run. A bit like the mentor Rob Andrew getting the credit for Jonny Wilkinson dropping the goal that won the Rugby World Cup for England. It taught me a lot about how my ego could often get in the way of good sense, something I frequently forget even thirty years later.

FACTFINDER was made for the BBC Educational department and was a fore runner for the intense consumer focused civil liberty shows that arrived in the 80’s. It was a brave little show always in trouble with the lawyers who served to protect the interests of the big company and the little man and woman who fought them. Using dramatic reconstructions at a time when this technique had not been used even on big BBC shows like PANORAMA, it represented what is best at the BBC – the possibility that from the smallest of department’s big ideas can be produced for very little money. And because the mighty barely bothered to check, the shows often went out un censored. I did myself no favours dancing cheek to cheek with wife of the Controller one mighty drunken party night and that was the end and the beginning of another chapter in my life as a film……