At the Gate of the Year

A lovely Christmas present from my friend Anna and her husband Will -
a wooden version of Stuart Manning and Andrew Orton's cover for The Long Game

I’m not generally given to gloomy introspection – well, no more or less so than the average person, I suspect. Of course, every so often I’ll have one of those long, dark evenings of “What’s the point? What am I doing? Why am I doing it?” and all that. But on the whole, I amble along in life as best I can, and perfectly happily.

But when it comes to New Year’s Eve, I do often find it to be a fairly bleak occasion, at least in the last little bit running up to midnight. Due to its very nature, it lends itself all-too-readily to looking back not just over the past year, but taking stock of your existence as a whole, and being drawn to the inevitable question: “Have I wasted my life…?” So, even though the New Year’s Eve gloominess always fades away with the festivities and is gone by morning, it’s worth taking the opportunity to look back, and to celebrate some good and positive achievements from the year.

In basic terms I have not, it’s true, achieved my grand ambition in 2021. I am not a published novelist, nor am I anywhere near to being any closer to achieving that aim. I wrote very little fiction in 2021, and nothing that would ever be submittable for publication in any way, shape or form.

This does not, on the whole, mark the year out from most of the others through which I have lived.

On the other hand, however, writing-wise, this has unquestionably been by far and away the most successful – and to be mercenary about it, certainly the most profitable – year of my life and ‘writing career’ (hah!) to date. I had a book published – a non-fiction book, but still a book, and one of which I am very proud. A lot of people have bought and enjoyed it. Even this week, even today, I’ve still been receiving lovely messages from readers of The Long Game. And yesterday AJ Black put up a very nice piece, and an interview with me for those who’d like to know a bit more about the writing of the book, on his website.

I wrote pieces for the BBC website, and for Doctor Who Magazine again after a few years’ break. I wrote for the Eastern Daily Press when my Nexus documentary was broadcast – a documentary which gained a huge amount of national media coverage, and got me a piece on the Today programme on Radio 4. That documentary is still creating opportunities, too; there should hopefully be some more exciting news to share about that very soon.

I do sometimes, in those occasional gloomy and introspective moments whenever they do happen to arise, wonder if I put too much effort into radio. Work hard on those projects which take up my spare time as well, because it’s easier than trying to knuckle down and do some writing. Whether, if I had a dull job which I didn’t enjoy, I might have made more of an effort with my fiction and actually got somewhere with it by now.

But this is, of course, nonsense. I am in the hugely fortunate and privileged position of having a job that I enjoy. A job that, yes, like any other has its occasional frustrations and irritations. But one which doesn’t give me that soul-crushing despair of, “Oh Christ, I’ve got to go to work today…” whenever I open my eyes in the morning.

I do understand and appreciate how very lucky I am to have that. And I am always very well aware that it will not last forever – at some point, sooner or later, it will come to an end and I will have to re-join the real world. And such thoughts of it being a distraction are probably just excuses – the reason I’m not a published author of fiction is, when it comes down to it, simply because I am not really good enough at it.

Would having a novel published make me a happy and complete human being? Would it leave me content for the rest of my days? Well… almost certainly not. There’d always be the next thing to want to do. I am aware of that, too.

But I’d still like to know how it feels!

Perhaps I can try and take a more positive step in that direction, somehow, during 2022. What that step might be, or in which direction it should be, I have no idea. However, I suppose actually sitting down and writing some more fiction would probably be a good start…

Overall, though, 2021 has been very good to me, and very successful. Fiction, aside, I cannot complain at all. I can only hope anyone reading this has had as positive a year, and if not that 2022 treats you much more kindly.

Happy New Year, everybody!

The Book Tour That Didn't Tour

I've mentioned a few times on here over the past couple of months various podcasts which have been kind enough to invite me on to talk about The Long Game. And since I've been fortunate enough to appear on a couple more since my last blog entry here, here's the full run-down of The Long Game Podcast Book Tour:

This all began in October, before the book even came out - with the "Australian leg" the book tour being my very first podcast interview, a chat with The Doctor Who Show:

 

Then we had the UK leg, still ahead of the book being published, with interviews for the Something Who podcast...

And then for Paul Kerensa's wonderful British Broadcasting Century series...

After publication day in November, the UK leg continued with an interview for the Bigger on the Inside podcast. I was particularly pleased with my answer at the end here about what may be some of the reasons for the enduring popularity of Doctor Who:

Then most recently came the Canadian leg! These interviews were recorded in one order and released in the other - so on December the 19th, Radio Free Skaro released their episode - their 829th, would you believe! - featuring their interview with me:

The Canadian leg then continued a few days later with the release of my final podcast interview to date, with Graeme Burk's Reality Bomb:

I hugely enjoyed recording all of these interviews - not simply having the chance to talk about the book, of course, but also just the opportunity to have a good old in-depth chat about Doctor Who. Which is something I don't, actually, often get the opportunity to do all that much of.

Obviously there's a certain amount of overlap between all of these interviews, so if you're somehow mad enough to listen to all of them there will be a certain amount of repetition. But I did try my best to vary things up a bit, so that if anyone did hear more than one they wouldn't feel entirely cheated!

Thank you to all of these podcasts for very kindly having me on, and for being interested in The Long Game. And needless to say, if you have a Doctor Who podcast and fancy having me on for a chat about the book, do let me know!

More Book Bits!

No sooner had I put up the previous post about some reviews The Long Game has received, then another one popped up! An extremely generous one, too, written by Frank Danes for the Doctor Who Companion website. It's another incredibly kind review with lots of praise for the book, and should you wish to take a read you can find it by clicking here.

A page for The Long Game has also appeared on the Goodreads book review website, with a few reviews on there already and a four-star average rating so far, which is pretty bloody good! Again, the reviews are all very positive and kind. It seems to be going down well, this book! You can find the Goodreads page right here.

(Although it should be said that some of the other books Goodreads reckons are by the same author are very much not! I did not write, for example, Themes in Modern European History!)

My podcast book tour has also continued, with an appearance on an episode of the Bigger on the Inside podcast, which was again good fun. Talking about the book, and more generally about the enduring appeal of Doctor Who. I managed to bring both death and Norwich City's recent form into the conversation, which you can listen to here:

The latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine, issue 571, came out this week, and carried a little story about the book in its Gallifrey Guardian news section. I've been a reader of DWM for nearly 27 years now, never missing an issue in that time, and in recent years I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to write a few bits and pieces for the magazine and for some of its special editions. After all these years of reading the magazine, though, it is a unique thrill to feature as an item in the news!

I've also continued to receive some lovely messages on Twitter and on the Gallifrey Base forum, from people who've read and enjoyed the book. Including enough pictures of various people's copies to form another line on my little "rogues' gallery" of copies out and about in the wild!

There have been some very nice messages sans pictures, too, including one suggesting that The Long Game deserves to be nominated for a Hugo Award!

Whether or not it deserves that I can't say, but... You know... If anyone wants to put in a good word...

Absolutely stunning piece of work investigating a moment in Doctor Who and BBC history that uncovers all kinds of info not heard before. Plenty of, I bet he won’t mention, oh he has. Right. https://t.co/z3eB0UXFVT

— Stuart's (@feelinglistless) November 2, 2021

@the_questmaster Just finished your frankly stunning account of all those years Doctor Who never came back on TV, until it actually did. Reads like a thriller and your access to so many of the movers and shakers along the way is to be applauded. A ‘Long Game’ well worth the wait.

— Sean Alexander (@seanHolyhead) November 7, 2021

Finished my copy tonight, what a brilliant read. It brings back memories of discussing various rumours in the pub and waiting for the new series to arrive. Thanks @the_questmaster for all the work that went into it. https://t.co/tottwA7Cwn

— Jonathan Melville (@jon_melville) November 7, 2021

Just finished reading this. What a great, fascinating and entertaining read. Highly recommended for anyone with even the slightest interest in the struggles and dramas it took to get the Doctor back on our screens 👏🏼👏🏼

— Adrian Busby (@baznduffy) November 9, 2021

I've finished The Long Game 1996-2003: The Inside Story of How the BBC Brought Back Doctor Who by Paul Hayes. It's one of the best written and researched Doctor Who nonfiction books ever. It deserves a Best Related Work Hugo Award nomination. Highly recommended.

— Michael Damian Thomas (@michaeldthomas) November 12, 2021

Under Review

 

As well as the official release date on Monday, there has been another exciting development with The Long Game this week - reviews of the book have begun to appear! Three over the past three days, in fact, and I'm pleased to say that they have all been positive ones.

So let's take a look at them, shall we...? Well, it's my blog, and my book, and I'm showing off, so yes - we shall!

The first review appeared on Tuesday, on the website of the venerable old science-fiction magazine Starburst, which was first published back in 1977. Written by Paul Mount, it's an exceptionally positive review with which I am very pleased, particularly as he picked up on the fact that I really wanted to get across the background and context of what was going on at the BBC at that time, and how it then related to the story of Doctor Who coming to be recommissioned. A five-star review, no less, too!

You can read the piece on Starburst's website by clicking here.

"Astonishingly interesting and page-turning... Brilliantly collated and written with precision... An essential book for anyone interested in the arcane world of British television production."

Then yesterday, Wednesday, came the first review of the book in print. This was in the pages of another long-running and well-respected British science-fiction magazine, in this case SFX. I've often been a buyer of SFX down the years and have of course frequently perused their review pages, so it was an interesting experience to see a book of my own in there!

This review, by Calvin Baxter, was another positive one. In this case, I like that the fact that he realised that much of the point of the book was to try and collect together all those disparate elements which might have been chronicled in various other places before, but never all brought together into one whole story.

You can read Calvin's review in the current edition of SFX, issue 346, which should be available for the next month at Smith's and other good newsagents.

"The interviewee list is impressive... Future TV historians will be grateful."

Then today came the view from the website Sci-Fi Bulletin. This review by Nick Joy is fairly short, but again delivers a positive verdict. Nick picks up on an element which was another of my intentions, the fact that many of these stories will have been experienced by fans around at the time as news items in Doctor Who Magazine and the like back in the day, and The Long Game gets under the skin of them and explains what was actually happening in more detail.

Nick's review of the book is available to read on scifibulletin.com by clicking here.

"Filling a gap in the behind-the-scenes development of Doctor Who's return, you’re bound to discover a few new facts in this well-researched history."

So, all-in-all, a very positive set of reviews! I am of course keeping my eagle eye out for any more, but do let me know if you spot any! Or, of course, if you're involved with a publication or a website which might be interested in reviewing The Long Game.

And if any of this has whetted your appetite for the book but you don't yet have a copy, you can of course order one direct from my publishers Ten Acre by clicking here.

Publication Day!

 

Apologies for the crap graphic there - a very obvious sign of why my talents lay in writing rather than in anything visual! Stuart Manning and Andrew Orton who created the wonderful cover for The Long Game will be rolling their eyes if they see it, no doubt.

But I wanted to show off some of the lovely comments I have so far received from readers of the book. Because, frankly, who wouldn't?

Today is officially publication day for The Long Game. But thanks to the hard work and efficiency of publishers Ten Acre, most people who pre-ordered a copy of the first printing will probably have already received it over the course of the past week. Hence the very nice comments coming in, via Twitter and the Gallifrey Base message board, where this whole thing really started with me posting a timeline of this era for fun a few years ago.

The first printing has now completely sold out, but don't worry - the second will be ready very soon, and can of course be ordered via the Ten Acre website. 

Speaking of which, I ought to remind anyone reading this who doesn't yet have a copy that the book is only available online directly from Ten Acre. I mention this as during this week it cropped up on various top wishlists on Amazon, including in the top 20 for the "Most Wished For in Television". Which is very pleasing, of course, but ultimately rather pointless as you can't buy it on Amazon!

The book has certainly come a very long way this year. The manuscript was pretty much finished by the start of the year, but I could never have imagined that it would actually be out there in the world and being read and enjoyed by people before the end of it!

Here's the finished article alongside the print-out I had done back in the spring to use for checking for typing errors and any other assorted mistakes. Yes, the title did change - but for the better, I think. Although a little part of me will always think of it under the Resurrection name, as that's the working title it had for so long, and my folder with all the research, drafts, interviews and so forth in it still has that name!

On a publicity note, I have been continuing what I am now rather pleasingly but stupidly referring to as my "Podcast Book Tour"! I recorded an interview with another Doctor Who podcast on Friday evening, which should be out very soon. And then yesterday, Paul Kerensa released the latest episode of his excellent British Broadcasting Century podcast, which charts the earliest days of British broadcasting and the BBC. 

Obviously my book concerns a somewhat later era, but Paul often intersperses the historical elements of the podcast with guests discussing other bits of broadcasting history, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to come on and talk about The Long Game. In any case, I highly recommend the series to anybody with an interest in the history of the BBC. You can find the latest episode with my guest appearance here:

If anyone reading this happens to have their own podcast about either Doctor Who in particular or British television history in general and would like to have me on to talk about The Long Game, I'm very happy to consider any and all requests! Do please drop me a line.

Finally, I mentioned in the previous entry how much I was enjoying seeing people tweet photos of the book after they'd received their orders, and very pleasingly such pictures have continued to be posted throughout the week! There are a quite a few of them now, which is very nice. It's great to see something I only ever really wrote because I wanted to read it now being out there in the world and enjoyed by other people!

"Congratulations, it's a book!"

The Long Game exists! It's real, and it's out there in the world! The official release date isn't for another week yet, but Ten Acre have started sending out the pre-orders and some people have received their copies today - including me! Complete with a note from Stuart at Ten Acre telling me "Congratulations, it's a book!"

In fact, the entire first print run has now sold out ahead of the release date - although Ten Acre are already reprinting, so please do still order if you were thinking about doing so! This was probably helped by the Radio Times kindly publishing a piece about the book on their website on Saturday, using some preview quotes which we had arranged to give them. In fact, it was briefly the lead story on the site's main front page:

The Radio Times story also ended up being picked up by a few other sites, Yahoo News, the Metro newspaper and Digital Spy. Not quite in the same league as Morecambe-and-Wise-versus-Monty-Python back in August, but all good publicity for the book nonetheless!

I've also been doing some more personal publicity for the book with another podcast interview. This one was for the Something Who podcast and came out last week - it was great fun chatting not just about the book but about the story of my own personal fandom of the show, too. You can find that here:

Something Who: episode 49: The Voyage Home

But probably the most pleasing thing this week has been today, seeing tweets from people who have received their copies of the book and are either excited about starting to read it or have already started and have said very nice things:

So this arrived today - and straight into new insights into the BBC's reaction to the 1996 #DoctorWho TV Movie from Alan Yentob and its BBC executive producer Jo Wright. @the_questmaster and @tenacrefilms deserve every success with this book. pic.twitter.com/xHZdSGRSiN

— Dr Matthew Kilburn (@Matthew_Kilburn) October 25, 2021

It's here! Thanks @tenacrefilms & @the_questmaster - it's leapfrogging straight to the top of my reading list! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/dR5jKrPUPl

— Ian McArdell: Flux (@IanMcArdell) October 25, 2021

This beauty arrived today, thanks @stuart_manning @ #PaulHayes already riveted by it!#TheLongGame @tenacrefilms pic.twitter.com/0Auvn6rz2A

— jonathon spears (@jonspo) October 25, 2021

Received my copy today. Utterly engrossing. I can't put it down. A must for the seasoned #DoctorWho fan.@the_questmaster has produced a scholarly and engaging tome. pic.twitter.com/t8shbVBYal

— Will Hadcroft (@willhadcroft) October 25, 2021

The Long Game has arrived!✨
Rather pleasant suprise to come home too after my lectures. Can't wait to dig into this area of dr who history, the first print has now sold out on @tenacrefilms so it's looking to be a popular one!

Second round of printing is November I think pic.twitter.com/yM1ywbIRWz

— Ben Lett (@hostproductions) October 25, 2021

It's hugely flattering to know that people are as interested in reading this as I was in writing it. And a relief too, of course! I'm incredibly pleased with how it's been received so far. And that I have a real, live book out there in the world again, after ten years since the Treasure Quest book!

If you would like to buy a copy of The Long Game, you can order one from Ten Acre's website by clicking here.

Party Like It's 1983!

Some more Doctor Who writing news, and thanks again to the good people at Doctor Who Magazine for running another of my pieces. In fact, this one was especially flattering as they actually asked me to write it rather than me pitching it.

The magazine has recently started a new range of special editions, each taking a detailed look at a particular year in Doctor Who's history. The third and latest of these specials, out now, looks at 1983, for which I was asked to write a piece about the legendary 20th anniversary convention held by the BBC at Longleat House.

It was good fun to put together, especially gathering people's memories of the event. I hope you enjoy it if you're picking up a copy of the special, which came out a couple of weeks ago.

On another note, some publicity for the forthcoming release of The Long Game! Thanks to some of my interviewees kindly giving their permission for some audio clips of my chats with them to be used, we have put together a little trail for the book, which you can see here:

In addition, as a further little tease we have also released the contents page!

And I have been doing some podcast interviews about the book, too. One of these was released over the weekend, with an Australian podcast called The Doctor Who Show. Many thanks to them for having me on - the interview with Rob hopefully gives more of an idea for those who are curious about what the book is about, why I wrote it and who I spoke to for it, without giving too much away and spoiling it for anybody. It was good fun chatting to Rob, and you can take a listen here:

The Long Game is released by Ten Acre Films on November 1, and you can pre-order a copy via their website.

Some big, exciting news!

 

I have a book coming out!

Not a novel - but nonetheless, something I have worked very long and very hard on, and of which I am very proud. In the unlikely event that you read these blog entries closely and memorise the content, you may possibly recall that I have mentioned once or twice before a non-fiction Doctor Who project on which I've been working.

Well, this is it! It's called The Long Game, and is due to be released by Ten Acre on November 1st. You can see the wonderful cover above, designed by my publisher Stuart Manning and with the model kit illustration created by Andrew Orton.

It tells the story of Doctor Who between the failure of the first attempt to revive it with the broadcast of the TV Movie in May 1996, to the point at which it was recommissioned as an ongoing series by the BBC in September 2003. Telling the stories of the other proposals and failed attempts along the way; how those responsible for bringing it back came to be in those positions; and perhaps most importantly of all, providing the background and context of the changes that took place in the BBC over those years which eventually provided the environment which allowed for this to happen. The sort of thing that in Doctor Who sources is usually dealt with in a few pages, or which in non-Doctor Who histories doesn't touch on the series at all.

It's a process which has long fascinated me, and did so at the time. I remember not long after the series was commissioned, trying to piece together from the existing interviews and reports and sources the chain of events which had let to it happening. The years went by, more sources became available as it all started to become history, and in 2015 - purely for my own interest - I put together a timeline of the events from 1996 to 2003, using various books, articles, interviews, documentaries and assorted bits and pieces.

I put this online and got some very nice comments from people about it, and it made me wonder if there might be a book in it. It was a book which I very much wanted to read, but which didn't seem to exist - pulling together all the different strands into one narrative. So I decided to have a go at writing it myself.

Over the autumn and winter of 2015-16, I put together a first draft, but although I enjoyed writing it and I felt it was pretty decent, the main problem I had was that I just wasn't able to get hold of most of the interviewees to whom I wanted to speak about that time. It was almost all put together from secondary sources, and it was far too short - only about 55,000 words. I always meant to go back and have another go someday, but for a few years never got around to it.

Then last year, after the first lockdown started, I found myself with more free time than I had done in the recent past - like so many people did, of course. So I decided to give it another go. 

This time, it went far better than I could ever have hoped. Now, I'm not modest to a fault. I know I'm not completely hopeless at this stuff - I can write pretty decently. At this stage I had a track record of not just doing a fair few bits for Doctor Who Magazine, but also making many radio documentaries for the BBC. I'm good at this sort of broadcasting history research, and making it understandable and relatable to a wider audience.

But nonetheless, I was rather bowled over by how so many people who didn't know me at all were willing to speak to me, and to help with arranging interviews. I was able to talk to the likes of Lorraine Heggessey, Alan Yentob, Mal Young, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter... Huge, important names in the history of not just Doctor Who but in the history of British television, and they were all happy to speak in-depth about those years and the process which led to the show's recommissioning.

In all I was able to conduct over thirty interviews, and along with a great deal of research in other sources it's ended up being a book which I think tells that story usually skipped over in a few pages in a new, detailed and cohesive way which I don't believe has ever been done before. We announced the book on Saturday, and it's been wonderful to see such a positive response to it - as I had suspected, there are indeed a great many Doctor Who fans who, like me, are interested in this whole process and how it all happened.

If that's you, then the book can be pre-ordered from the Ten Acre website by clicking here. I very much hope that you enjoy it, and I can't wait for you to read it!

Into the Nexus

There has been a lot going on. And oddly, it all goes back to my university days.

I say "oddly" because I am not someone who has a particular nostalgia for my time at university. Don't get me wrong, it was perfectly fine and nice, but I didn't find it to be the profound or formative experience that others do. Although it was very important to my life in that without it I would never have come to Norwich, and would never have ended up working for the BBC. So it had a significance I could never have guessed at the time.

I attended the University of East Anglia from 2002 until 2005, and while I was there I was a member of the student TV station, Nexus. I was even president of it in my final year, a disastrous turn of events which proved to me that I should never be in charge of anything, ever. Still, at least that was a lesson in itself, I suppose...

Anyway, the station was sadly in its dying days at the time. But it was clear that it had a long and interesting history, which I was fascinated by. We had all sorts of relics in the form of old photos and reels of tape hanging around in the studio / office; reminders of more glorious days past.

I explored this a bit at the time, but only really out of a casual personal interest. However, a couple of years ago, I wondered whether it might be possible to make a radio documentary about Nexus for the station. Telling its story. In fact, I even pondered the idea "aloud", as it were, in a comment on a YouTube upload of a 1970s Nexus programme...

In April this year I decided to finally try and do something about it, and asked one of my bosses if I could give it a go. He said yes, so I set about trying to get permission to use clips from Nexus archive material - there'd be no point in doing it if I couldn't do that. This done, I then spent most of the summer putting the programme together, tracking down interviewees, recording chats with them and sorting through bits of archive. The resulting programme went out on Bank Holiday Monday, the 30th of August, as Nexus: Norfolk's Forgotten TV Station, and seemed to go down very well. I was able to speak to all sorts of interesting people, and I think I managed to do a decent job of making the Nexus story accessible and interesting to people who had no connection at all to the station or the UEA.

But that's really only half the story...

The weekend before it went out, the Eastern Daily Press once again kindly published a piece I wrote about the station to preview the programme. They again made it the cover feature on their Weekend supplement, with a four-page feature inside which you can read online here.

That was a general overview of the station, but I also knew that there was one particular aspect to the story which might make a good 'hook' to help promote the documentary with, which I gave to my colleagues at BBC News Online for a separate piece which they put up on the Friday before the documentary aired.

I remember when I first joined Nexus in the autumn of 2002, one of the people running it at the time telling me very proudly about their "famous Morecambe and Wise interview", but they never actually tried to do anything with it. It just sat there on an ancient, unplayable old Sony reel-to-reel tape, onto which it had been copied from the 1973 original sometime in the mid-seventies.

When I was more involved in running Nexus in 2004, I arranged with Paul Vanezis at BBC Birmingham to send it there to see if he could get anything off it. He told me at the time that he'd tried it on two different machines, but couldn't get anything off it on either of them, so it seemed to sadly be junk.

Later that year, however, I was sorting through the Nexus VHS archive, and I came across a compilation tape which someone had put together in 1983 of some of the best bits from the old reel-to-reel tapes, when they still had the ability to play them. It was a sort of "best of" of the past decade of Nexus... and it opened with a two-minute clip from the 1973 Morecambe and Wise interview.

I remember this snapped on rewind at the time, and I had to open up the case to repair the tape - in fact, I think I remember having to completely unspool the whole thing and spool it back into a new case! Once it was playable again I took a duplicate copy which I kept, purely out of interest in the station's history.

Fast-forward 17 years, and this summer I managed to digitise my copy of the tape, and there were Eric and Ernie still present and correct at the start of it. Sharing their thoughts on Monty Python's Flying Circus...

For the programme, I was able to both get hold of the original interviewer, Colin Webb, and put in a ludicrously optimistic bid to get Sir Michael Palin's reaction to the video... who said yes! I knew of course this made it a great chance to promote the documentary, but I never imagined it would end up going as big as it did.

The online article, which I helped my colleague Zoe Applegate put together, went up on the Friday morning...

It gained over a million views that day, at one point reaching No. 2 in the "most read" charts on the site...

It got Monty Python trending on Twitter in the UK...

And it got picked up by almost all the newspapers the following day. The Times even interviewed me about it for their feature! It was madness!

Perhaps the most pleasing of all for me personally, however, was that I'd also made a national version of the radio piece and sent it to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4... Who liked it, and ran it on the Saturday morning. It's difficult to explain quite how proud this made me. I love working at Radio Norfolk, of course, but Radio 4 is... Well, it's the original BBC. It's the descendant of 2LO, through the Regional Programme and the Home Service. An unbroken line of nearly a century, and on that day, just for five minutes, it was made by me.

I was all over the bloody place! I did an interview for my colleagues at BBC Three Counties Radio after they'd spoken to Eric Morecambe's son Gary, who lives on their patch. My colleagues at CNS, the part of the BBC who provide national and shared material to BBC Local Radio, sent out a version of the piece on the Monday morning which about twenty-odd stations ran... 

It's so strange how what was the documentary I've so far made with perhaps the most niche subject matter ended up getting by far the most publicity of any programme I've ever made. I'm certainly glad I made and held onto that VHS tape all those years ago, anyway!

Life's rather good at the moment, writing-wise. I've also just been commissioned to do a paid article, which I'm working on this week, and there may soon be something even bigger to tell you all about... Sometimes, when I am writing to potential interviewees for an article or the like, I'll introduce myself as "a writer and broadcaster". Which sounds ridiculously grand, but at the moment, just for a while, I feel as if I'm actually living up to that billing.

Oh, and that 1970s open-reel tape which had the entire Morecambe and Wise interview on? It turns out that all the publicity around the surviving clip ended up revealing that the reel actually still exists, so an attempt may yet be made to try and get the full recording off it.

Donald Wilson Said...

 

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out today, and for the first time in a while I've been fortunate enough to be able to write a piece for them. It's actually a piece I wrote an original, far-too-long version of a few years ago, but it's finally been able to find a home in the pages of the magazine, for which I'm very grateful.

It's all about a man named Donald Wilson, who has fascinated me for... I don't know, probably getting on for a quarter of a century now. He was the co-creator of Doctor Who, he may have even actually named the series, and yet he hardly ever seems to get his fair share of the credit. Which is particularly sad as he's also the one who seems to have most strongly believed in it, and who had the greatest foresight about its success, as most notably demonstrated in a memo he wrote to the editor of the Radio Times shortly before the first episode was broadcast:

Unlike Sydney Newman, not being widely credited as a creator of the show never really seems to have bothered Wilson, but it bothered me. I wanted to at least attempt to remind people of the important part he played.

During the course of researching the piece I was able to find a great deal of information about Wilson's life from speaking to his family, former colleagues, and through the BBC Written Archives Centre, the British Film Institute and various newspaper archives. There wasn't the time or space - haha - for much of this in the DWM piece, but perhaps I'll be able to use some of it elsewhere someday. I hope so - Donald certainly deserves his due.

You can read more about the vital part he played in creating Doctor Who in my piece in DWM issue 566, on sale now at WH Smith's, various other newsagents, and via DoctorWhoMagazine.com.

At Last, The 1948 Article

As Euro 2020 is finally set to begin, the new Genome blog by guest blogger Paul Hayes looks back to the first international football tournament covered by the BBC - at the 1948 London Olympics... https://t.co/46n7oRhceb pic.twitter.com/bORksnn6JB

— BBC Genome (@bbcgenome) June 10, 2021

A new professional article published today, for the BBC, and for a change not the part of the BBC for which I usually work! You can read it here.

A few weeks ago, the British Broadcasting Century happened to mention a certain Barrie Edgar, when talking about the BBC career of his father Percy. This rang a bell with me, as I wondered where I'd heard the name before. I was pretty sure it was as part of my Jimmy Jewell research back in 2019, and sure enough there it was - in the 1948 Olympic files. He was the co-commentator alongside Jewell on the football matches shown on TV during the games.

This then got me thinking that there were certain parallels between the 1948 Olympic football tournament and this summer's European Championships, which as I write this begin tomorrow. The 1948 event was also the first time an international football tournament was ever shown on television, and all-in-all I thought there might be an interesting article in it.

So I put something together and submitted it to BBC Archives for the blog associated with their Genome project, and very kindly they agreed to publish it. 

I've also had some good news this week about some other non-fiction irons in the fire, so all-in-all not a bad week on the writing front!