Major arts series for the BBC, producing with Melvin Bragg, Gavin Miller and Alan Yentob.  1973

Working as one of six producers on this hugely ambitious Arts series in which all the major arts issues of the day were placed under the microscope. Melvyn Bragg presented the show and it was the beginning for him of his illustrious as an Arts celebrity first at the BBC and later with the South bank Show at London Weekend Television. Working with Georges Brassens was for me the highlight of the time spent there, the famous and very private French singer agreeing to be filmed and interviewed. But more important for me it allowed me to experiment with some still frame photography which suited the interpretation of Brassens work especially le Gorille and Le Rois des Cons. Curiously Arts programmes do not allow contracted film directors to develop their skills as film makers and the usual censorship and interference took place. As if the celebrated hack directors of the day that Melvyn interviewed were not the most compromised of people. I did one show ON FILM which successfully ignored all the avant garde outsider whilst posing Ken Russell as revolutionary. The show was totally London centred and I remember brilliantly a conversation one had about two outstanding newcomers to the Arts scene – the writer Tom Sharpe and the painter Brigid Brophy – being proposed as programme material.  “Has the Guardian written about them?” came the voice. As if the BBC needed the approval of the press. These years saw the beginning of the decline in the BBC as a public broadcaster with integrity. The monkeys had begun to take over the zoo which climaxed with the arrival of John Birt and sadly continues with his successors. Hack Journalists many of them women now control broadcasting, sound bites having replaced intelligence for the sake of argument and BBC megalomania. The once joyously independent  BBC which used to admire the intelligence of their audience now compete for dwindling figures on the basis that the audience is glum and stupid. And in so doing break their Charter and in my opinion the law.