The cover of the Eastern Daily Press "Weekend" supplement for May 3rd 2014, promoting the tie-in feature I wrote for them.
It was back in April last year, before I’d even done much
work on what was to become Far From the Fogs, that my boss David suggested that for my next documentary project, we
should tackle the story of the racing driver Ayrton Senna’s connections to Norfolk,
where he spent much of his early career.
With the 20th anniversary of Senna’s death on the 1st of May 1994 approaching, it seemed an obvious and fitting
one for us to do. Indeed, credit for the original idea must go to my colleague
Edd Smith, who had first pitched the notion of such a programme for the
anniversary some time before this. For whatever reason, I ended up being the
one asked by David to make it, which has ended up being a fairly extraordinary
experience.
The first bit of work was done last summer, when David went to interview Martin Brundle about his new book, and took me along with him
so that I could also record an interview for the documentary, about his famous
battle with Senna for the 1983 British F3 championship. But most of the work
has been done since January, recording interviews with those who worked with
Senna when he drove for Norfolk-based teams, and tracking down what archive
might be available for use.
Slightly-unsuccessfully posing for a photo with ex-F1 driver Martin Brundle after I'd interviewed him for the documentary... I didn't go through the whole thing with my eyes closed, I promise!
It was an occasionally frustrating experience, when not
being able to speak to interviewees who could really have added something, and
being unable to use any F1 commentary archive due to rights issues, but the
positives far outweighed the negatives. I think I managed to come up with a
programme which told a good story in an effective way, and certainly all the
feedback I have had on it has been pretty much universally positive.
But it has also been a very important programme for me
personally, because it’s the first thing I’ve made as a producer that I have managed
to get onto a national BBC radio station. Once I had a first edit of the
programme done, I submitted it to BBC Radio 5 Live, who to my absolute delight
and amazement said they’d consider running a shorter, 25-minute version of the
programme.
Given the Radio Norfolk edit of The Boy From Brazil, as I’d titled it, was 55 minutes long, this
seemed like quite a daunting prospect, but it actually only took me three runs
through to get it to work. My first attempt at a cut down was about 37 minutes,
another pass through got me to about 29, and then finally I’d taken enough out
to make the cut. Their requests for a more defined ending and “upping” the
production with some incidental music beds in places also gave me ideas I was
able to take back to the Norfolk version to make the whole thing stronger.
5 Live liked it, and it was quickly scheduled for a spare half-hour slot on a Sunday evening the weekend before the anniversary of
Senna’s death. Indeed, it seemed to go down so well with them that they ran it
again on the anniversary itself. And they had to scrape me off the ceiling with
excitement when I found that the 5 Live broadcast was selected as a “Today’s Choice” in the Radio Times.
It may sound a bit sad and a little old-fashioned, but I have been a Radio Times reader for as long as I can remember, so having my work highlighted in the pages of the magazine was an enormous thrill.
I am proud of the work I do at BBC Radio Norfolk, but to
have something deemed good enough for broadcast on national radio is extremely
pleasing, and really makes you feel a part of something bigger, the great BBC
stretching all the way back to 1922. Something else that contributed to that
was actually getting the chance to go to Broadcasting House in London for the
first time, the spiritual home of the BBC, to record the voiceover narration
with Rob Bonnet.
David and I had been trying to think of a suitable voice
for it – David wanted someone who resonated with the material, whereas I wanted
a voice that had the right sort of familiarity and, more importantly,
authority. One morning it suddenly struck me that the best candidate for the
job might be Rob Bonnet, who worked for the BBC in Norwich in the 1980s, had reported
on Senna’s career at the time but was now known nationally as a BBC sports
reporter of long standing, currently on Today on Radio 4.
David wrote to Rob, who agreed, and last month I had the
very great thrill of travelling down to Broadcasting House to record the
narration script with him after he’d finished a shift on Today one Friday morning. I’m not ashamed to admit that I got quite
emotional as I walked from the tube station towards that famous building,
sitting like a mighty battleship anchored at the top of Regent Street. Rob was
very nice, and had only tiny tweaks to suggest to the script I’d written, which
from someone of his great experience in network radio and television was also
very satisfying.
Another great thrill was getting to go and do some work at Broadcasting House, the headquarters of BBC radio since the early 1930s, and very much the spiritual home of the entire Corporation.
After the programme was complete, it all began to
snowball. The Brazilian desk of the BBC World Service saw the “Today’s Choice”
feature in the Radio Times, and
phoned to ask me about the programme. This ended up with me providing them with
the script and raw audio elements to make a Portuguese-language version of the 5 Live edit for broadcast on the Brazilian radio network CBN – which I suspect
will be the first and last time any work of mine will grace their airwaves!
As with Far From
the Fogs, there was also a tie-in article for the Weekend supplement of the Eastern Daily Press, which they again kindly made the cover feature. David is often
nagging at me to try and pitch more feature article ideas to people (rather
than, as I suspect he sees it, wasting my time trying to write novels), but
really, there’s only a very select range of subjects that I feel particularly
qualified to write about, and could with any enthusiasm. I’m not a journalist,
and I couldn’t write non-fiction copy week after week after week on a regular
basis about things that didn’t really interest me.
My EDP feature. Very gratifyingly, as with the Sherlock Holmes piece I wrote them last year, they didn't have to change a word.
It is always nice, however, to get my name in
professional print. My colleagues at BBC News Online were also kind enough to
give me a co-author byline on a tie-in piece they put up related to the programme, although in this case the credit wasn’t really deserved. I
did write a possible article for them (and felt quite proud of myself for
having managed to write completely different pieces for them and the EDP), but they didn’t use it, instead taking
another angle on the story and just using some of the quotes I had provided. The
resulting piece by my colleague Zoe Applegate managed to reach No. 1 in the
“most read” charts on BBC News Online on Bank Holiday Monday – all good
publicity for the programme, the full-length BBC Radio Norfolk version of which
was broadcast that day.
Top of the charts for BBC News Online, on the morning of Monday 5th May 2014.
I’d also sent the possible article I’d written for News
Online to the Brazilian desk, who ended up publishing a version in Portuguese
that, in terms of content, ended up being closer to what I’d written than the
English version, oddly enough. Certainly the first time that any of my prose
has been translated into another language!
So it has all been a very exciting few weeks, good for my
ego and possibly good for my radio career as well. However, I am well aware of
the fact that none of this would be happening were it not for the fact that a
man died in a horrific accident twenty years ago. At times during this whole
process I have worried about the fact that I am getting career benefits based purely
on another man’s death – while it’s possible
we would have done a programme about Senna’s early years in Norfolk had he
lived, the fact he died gave an anniversary to hang it on, and possibly gave
him an almost mythic status that added to his legend.
But I take comfort from the fact that those I have
interviewed and others with whom I have communicated during the process of
making this programme, who all knew Senna, seem comfortable and happy with
celebrating his legacy, and perhaps drawing attention to a part of his career
not often lingered over in other broadcast programmes about him.
Overall, then, a very satisfying spring, both creatively
and professionally. Where it all leads is another question… I’ve been lucky
enough in recent years to make programmes for the BBC about several of my great
interests – Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, The Beatles, and now Formula One motor racing. I do wonder whether my luck will run
out at some point, but I’ve had a great run.
Now, though, I think it’s time to turn my attention back,
at least for a short while, to the business of novel-writing, and finally
getting Another Life submitted to
some agents and publishers.
