Wembley Words

In my previous blog entry, about the series I produced for BBC Sounds called The Man Who Made Wembley, I mentioned the pleasing news that on its first weekend of availability, the series had been given a nice little notice in The Observer. Just a brief mention at the end of a round-up of other sporting-related programmes, but nice to have - even if, as I mentioned before, they did get the title slightly wrong!

However, it turns out that The Observer wasn't the only national publication of which The Man Who Made Wembley caught the attention. Because the following weekend, it got another little write-up in the Sunday press. This time in one of the supplements in the Sunday Times, their Culture magazine, in a piece written by their regular radio and podcast reviewed Clair Woodward - who also, back in 2022, gave my Nexus documentary a nice review, too.

With due acknowledgement, and of course thanks, to those two newspapers, however, best of all came the other week when the podcast page of the Radio Times highlighted the series. Not only that, but reviewer David Hepworth actually made it his 'Pick of the Week'. I think "breezy series" is a compliment - it must be, given the context, and I'll take it as one anyway!

Oh yes, and the BBC Sport Online piece I wrote to tie-in with the series also made it into the round-up of their "most engaging football content" for the season just gone. Which is pretty good going, given that neither the piece nor the series really features football all that much at all! I'm not sure whether they judged that in terms of readability or raw figures, but I'm pleased with how the piece did on both counts - it got over 300,000 views and the stats seemed to show that people who clicked on it were reading through most or all of it.

The Man Who Made Wembley

This has been a week for getting the chance to do things I thought I might never again be given the opportunity to do.
 
One of them was rather sudden – in the week I was asked if I would cover as a presenter, for yesterday afternoon’s Saturday sport show, due to an injury to the scheduled presenter and nobody else being available to cover this particular weekend. My regular presenting work came to an end with the reorganisation of BBC Local Radio in the autumn of 2023, and I hadn’t presented a show at all since the general election last year.
 
I had never expected to do so ever again, given the limited opportunities now available, so it was nice to be able to go back to it as a one-off. I ended up rather enjoying myself, I think I did a reasonably decent job, and I wouldn’t say no if the opportunity ever again arose.
 
In truth, though, I know I am not a natural presenter, and never have been. I have always been more of a ‘producer who could get away with presenting’, and producing was always the role I felt as if I had some ability at which made me an asset to the organisation. However, it seemed unlikely I’d be producing again, either, after the 2023 changes; but last weekend we released online on BBC Sounds a new series which I have written and produced.
 
Not, as you might have gathered from that, a live programme, but something you’ll know if you’ve read much of this blog in the past that I have long enjoyed doing and think I do have some talent for making – a documentary. I had also wondered, with a little more melancholy than over any presenting opportunities, whether I’d ever get the chance to do one of these again, so I was very pleased indeed to be able to do this one.
 
Rather than being a one-off programme as my previous documentaries have mostly been, this is a podcast-style series in five shorter parts. Called The Man Who Made Wembley, it tells the story of Arthur Elvin, who after leaving school in Norwich at the age of 14 for a job as a clerk in a jam factory went on to save Wembley Stadium from possible demolition in the late 1920s and ran it for the next 30 years, turning it into England’s national stadium.

I can’t recall exactly when I first heard of Elvin, but I am reasonably sure it was while I was making my documentary about football referee-turned-television commentator Jimmy Jewell in 2019. Two men with quite similar stories, in some respects; both born in the late 1890s, both flew during the First World War, both had an association with Wembley Stadium – Elvin as owner, Jewell as cup final referee – and both died relatively early, in their 50s in the 1950s, with neither having had any children and both being obscure figures today.

 
I think the latter is one of the reasons I have enjoyed doing these more biographical-type programmes about Jewell and now Elvin. They’re interesting figures, but haven’t really been looked at fully before. There have been no biographies written, and no other documentaries made about their lives. They exist at the tantalising edges of history and popular culture; involved with events of a great interest to a large number of people, but pretty much forgotten now in and of themselves. It’s nice to be able to shine a little light on such lives.
 
So I thought Elvin would be a good subject for a possible documentary, but didn’t get around to it until, with no other producing projects on the horizon, it seemed like a good one to try and pitch last year. I wasn’t producing any live shows any more, so I desperately still wanted to try and produce something. And I thought this had a good hook – an interesting life story in and of itself, but also one that had a wider interest through the Wembley story.
 
Fortunately, the editor locally agreed, as did my colleagues Emma Craig and Paul Joslin and those further up the chain at BBC Sounds, and in January we got the go-ahead to make it. Most of the research and recording was done in February, I spent a chunk of March editing it together, we finalised it in April and it went up last Saturday morning.

Researching in some of the Wembley files at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, back in February

There have been all sorts of nice things about making the programme. Just the sheer enjoyment of being able to do something like this again, for a start! Of diving into the research, pulling all the various threads together and forming them into a narrative. Getting to speak to some very interesting people who kindly agreed to be interviewed. Having another reason for a trip to the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, one of my favourite places to visit for either my internal or external projects, to look through the BBC’s Wembley files of Elvin’s era.

 
But particularly nice was being able to work on the programme with my friend Thordis, with whom I have ‘grown up’ together in the BBC. We were messaging each other one evening last year when I had not long come up with the idea of pitching the series, and when I mentioned it to her she replied with the unexpected comment: “You do know I’m related to him…?”
 
I did not, or at least if it had ever come up I had not remembered it, so I knew at once that she should present the series. It turned out that Thordis’s family weren’t, actually, entirely clear on the exact nature of their link to Arthur, but even that added something to it – we were able to give the programme a little touch of a Who Do You Think You Are? element.

Recording the narration for the series with Thordis at the - now former! - studios of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, in April. They moved out in early May to move to new premises, making The Man Who Made Wembley one of the last programmes, if not THE last programme, to come out featuring material recorded there

I’m very proud of the finished result, and if you’re interested I hope you might enjoy listening to it on BBC Sounds. There have been some very nice comments about it through the week, including a little review in today’s edition of The Observer. I mean, they get the title wrong, but it’s close enough that anyone interested should still be able to find it!

 
As you might expect, I and others involved have been trying to bang the drum for it as much as possible. I’ve made radio pieces and even done a few live turns, locally and on Radio London; thanks to Emma there’s been a trail going out across BBC Local Radio stations nationally; I wrote an online feature for BBC Sport which seems to have done very well and even got promoted on the front pages of BBC News and the whole BBC website; and BBC London even kindly gave it a little plug at the end of their 1830 programme on Wednesday night.

Whether all this means I’ll ever get the chance to do another one or not, I don’t know. Only time will tell on that. I’d like to, although I also don’t have a clear and obvious idea for another one yet. Elvin was a subject which always seemed likely to attract at least some interest. Whether I can find something else like that which hasn’t been well covered before… well, as I say, only time will tell.

The Story at Platform Three...

For reasons which aren’t worth going into, ever since the great change around in BBC Local Radio in the autumn of 2023, when I had to move into a different role, I am now officially employed by the BBC as a ‘Journalist’.

 
This is not a title with which I feel particularly comfortable – I am not in any sense a journalist by ambition, inclination or training. It’s not a label I would ever use for myself. If someone were to ask me what I do for a living, I would never say “I’m a journalist”. And certainly not a reporter.
 
Which I realise might seem odd when you consider that for the past 17 years, my full-time paid employment has been working in a BBC newsroom. But for much of that time, my primary occupation has not been mainly, or at the very least not solely, concerned with news. Mostly, I have been a producer – although admittedly for many years producing programmes which had a news section in them. A facilitator of other people’s journalism, perhaps.
 
That’s a different skill, though. I did enjoy working on those 5pm drive time news hours, getting the stories of the day to air, particularly if something was breaking, things were changing, and it was up to me to ensure we had material about it on the air, accurately and professionally. But that’s not the same as actual newsgathering – it’s a production skill, a craft skill if you’ll allow me to go that far. And I was good at it, too. I’m not a reporter, but I am good at helping reporters get their material onto the radio.
 
But I have never had the desire to be out there pounding the pavements myself, with a card reading ‘Press’ tucked into the hatband of a trilby, asking the questions that need to be asked and speaking truth to power and all that. I lack the gumption and the drive for that sort of thing; I am a much more timid character. I’m far happier speaking to people who actually want to be talking to me.
 
Admittedly, over time I did get much more used to the idea of doing news interviews, especially during the years when I would regularly stand in as drive-time presenter. I could handle it, when I had to. Even then, though, I was usually doing the interviews from the comfort of the studio. I am very much an ‘inside broadcaster’; I never really enjoyed working on outside broadcasts, even on fun occasions for lighter shows. Producing in the studio, I felt much more in control of everything. I knew what I had to do and more importantly how I could solve any problems. Not so easy to be confident about when you’re outside on location.
 
However, in the decade or more I spent regularly producing weekday drivetime shows, in one form or another, I did occasionally end up actually going out into the world on a reporting job. Usually these would be the ones within walking distance of the studios – I don’t drive – and more often than not they would be for softer, more feature-y items which are much more my natural environment.

Covering a teaching union protest in February 2023

Even more occasionally though, these assignments could be relatively ‘hard’ news stories – taxi drivers blocking city centre roads in protest, for example, or teachers demonstrating en masse outside City Hall. Although those sorts of protests, where there isn’t really any threat of violence or confrontation, are actually relatively easy to cover as there are lots of people all gathered in one place, many of whom will be very keen to talk about their cause or grievance.
 
I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say I ‘enjoyed’ covering those sorts of stories, but there was always the sense of satisfaction afterwards in getting it done, getting it done relatively well, not letting the news editor down, and doing a professional job of it. The more enjoyable part for me was getting all the raw material put together once I was back inside; the ‘craft’ element which is generally what I’m better at than being out on the street doing an impression of a reporter. My main aim on those sorts of occasions – and with any out-and-about recording really, even for the documentaries and features I’ve made – is always to do the least bad job possible of that bit, so I have something I can put together well in the edit.

 
All of this comes to mind because on this Saturday just gone, I actually went out and about doing a bit of reporting again for the first time in a little while. I suppose I did cover a book launch back in January, but this was a bit above that. It actually entailed going to another city, for a start.
 
Inevitably, of course, it involved Doctor Who. I mean, come on – this wasn’t going to be actual news, as I hope I’ve already made clear! But I’d seen that Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery were having the official opening of their new Doctor Who exhibition on Saturday, with Peter Purves doing the honours. I thought it would make for a nice package for our shared Norfolk-Suffolk-Cambridgeshire daytime show for the day after, which handily is presented by my friend Thordis, who was very happy to take a piece. I knew I could do a good job of it; the museum were happy for me to come along; I established that nobody from Radio Cambridgeshire itself was going; so on Saturday morning off I went on the train to Peterborough.

The reason I mention any of this at all is because for the first, and probably last, time in my career I sort of accidentally found myself being a ‘multi-platform’ reporter; that is, covering the same story for radio, online, and indeed – uniquely for me – for television. Something which most reporters do all the time these days, but as I’m not a reporter was a new experience for me.

 
I had thought that there might be a decent online article in it, so had suggested that I could perhaps put one together for them, but in the end was asked to do two – one on the exhibition itself, and another focused on the interview with Peter Purves which I was hoping to get. This I was also fairly confident about – I am not a regular News Online writer but I have often contributed features for them before, usually tied-in with one of my documentaries or radio packages. I’d never really done an ‘on the day’ story for them, but I was pretty confident I could do a decent job. I know the style, and although I am not a natural writer of such pieces, I can do a good enough impression of one to make life relatively easy for those actually putting it online.

But I also found myself being asked to help out the weekend TV team by filing some pictures for the Saturday Look East bulletin, so they could cover the exhibition opening with what they call an ‘OOV’ – an item the presenter reads ‘out of vision’ over a few shots of whatever the story happens to be about. Now, if I am not really journalist, I am certainly not a video journalist, which is a very specific skill. I was doubtful of being able to file anything broadcastable, especially as my phone can’t shoot video in anything close to broadcast quality. It’s also an Android, so only shoots in 30 frames per second anyway, which isn’t really any use to anybody.

 
However, for a few seconds’ worth they could just about get away with it. I did my best to try and take some shots which moved, so were better than still photos, but didn’t pan around wildly or wobble all over the place. Just to show what a 21^st century kind of guy I am I filed the shots back to Norwich while I was still in Peterborough, so they had plenty of time to have a look and see if they could salvage anything useable. And, rather to my surprise I must admit, they were actually able to use a few shots, marking my debut – and doubtless, swansong – as a television newsgatherer:

  

  

In fact, I ended up being so pleased with my efforts that the next day I put my own little video together from the various bits I’d shot, and stuck it up on YouTube:

       

 
Anyway, then it was back to Norwich on the train to be congratulated for my new-found television skills, and a few hours writing the two online features, putting together the radio package, and sorting some news bulletin clips for my colleagues at Cambridgeshire (where the event took place) and Suffolk (where Peter Purves lives). I also eventually ended up cutting the Peter Purves interview as a straight ‘head-to-head’, as we call it, for another show, and a version of the radio package for BBC Sounds.

 
Any actual BBC journalists reading this will be rather bewildered that I am bothering recording all this at all, given that they do this sort of thing day-in, day-out, each and every day. TV, radio, online – it’s just what you do as a BBC reporter these days. You cover it all. I am not expecting to be applauded just because I happened to be in a position to have a dabble at it myself.
 
But it was a useful reminder of the work that goes into these things. And this was a self-chosen story, on a very soft subject about which I know a very great deal and feel very comfortable discussing, taking place at a fun event on a nice day with plenty of friendly and receptive people willing to talk to me and no really restrictive time limit for filing. I can only imagine how difficult it must be when you’re sent to cover a story in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain, with very little knowledge about what’s taken place other than some people’s lives have just been ruined, nobody wants to speak to you and you’re up against a very tight deadline, with a producer or an editor anxious to know where the material is.
 
It’s certainly not something I would want to do for a living. But I do still enjoy doing it on the odd occasion when I have the time and the opportunity to pick and choose something I would like to cover. Not something which happens very often – even on Saturday, although I was working, I was working on my own time, if that makes sense, as I wasn’t actually on-rota or being paid for doing it.

 
But it was fun to do, I’m glad I did it and managed to cover it for everybody, and it was nice to dip a toe into that ‘multi-platform’ reporting world.

Cloud Nine

 

Doctor Who has returned for its latest series this weekend. So it seems an appropriate moment to look back 20 years to when it really came back in the biggest way of all, with its first new series for 16 years and the start of what perhaps still stands as one of the greatest comebacks in the history of British television. If not the greatest.

That spring of 2005 was one of the most exciting times of my life. I know some might find it odd to find such vicarious fulfilment through the return and success of a television programme with which I had no direct connection, other than my passion for it. Most people who are in any way interested in reading this blog probably do understand it, but if not, you have to think about it a bit like being a fan of a football team. You have no involvement in the team or the game, no say over what happens, but when they win a major trophy it's bliss. It feels like everything. Everything you ever wanted.

That was what the return of Doctor Who felt like for me in the spring of 2005, and for many others, too.

I have very fond memories of that whole 18-month period from the announcement of the show's recommissioning in September 2003 to the point at which it finally arrived on screen in March 2005. It did feel like an eternity at the time, when I was so excited to see it, but there was so much to enjoy - the excitement of the announcement itself, the beginning of shooting, and before that point of course the casting news.

It's the casting of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor which I have written about in the new Doctor Who Magazine special released earlier this month, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Eccleston's Doctor. I was asked if I would like to contribute to the special, I pitched a few ideas and I was very happy that this one was taken up, as I felt I was in a unique position to be able to contribute something on the subject.

Although Eccleston's name had been put forward by one or two fans in all the general discussion since the recommission announcement, there had been no widespread speculation about him becoming the next Doctor until the middle of March 2004. Then, just a few days before it happened, suddenly a leak suggested that he was the favourite and was about to be cast. I was astonished - he just wasn't someone I thought would be interested in the part, although I did suggest him as a possible candidate to play the Master in one online discussion thread.

But I was also incredibly excited, as having been a huge admirer of Our Friends in the North, in which he played Nicky - the character that, even at the age of 12 back in 1996, I found the most interesting of the four leads - I had followed his career with interest ever since. He'd of course starred in Russell T Davies's The Second Coming, which I had also liked a great deal, and while I remained unsure of how convincing the leak was, I was very excited about the idea that an actor I liked so much could be cast as the Doctor.

I remember very well sitting at the computer for most of the night on Friday the 19th into Saturday the 20th of March as first it seemed an announcement was imminent, and then it came - Eccleston was the Doctor. I don't think I went to bed until about 4am, following and joining in with all of the excited chatter on the Outpost Gallifrey forum.

And this was why I felt I was in a unique position to capture some of the excitement of that night. Outpost Gallifrey was unquestionably the main place for Doctor Who discussion online at the time, and when it closed down five years later I saved a few of the major discussion threads from 2003-04 period for posterity. One of which was the thread from that very night, as the news broke that Eccleston had been cast.

As far as I am aware, I am the only person to still have a full copy of that thread, so the only person in a position to write some of it up the the record. This was the idea which Doctor Who Magazine liked for the special, and it's the piece which has ended up being published. A little time capsule of how it felt to be a Doctor Who fan at that moment in the show's history.

In fact, the whole special issue is like that. It's a great reminder of so much of the fun and the thrill of the programme's return, not just the excitement of the very fact that it was back after so long, but that it returned so successfully, too. I am very pleased to have been asked to contribute to it, and I hope the piece brings back happy memories for those who were there in the build-up, and is an interesting historical document for younger fans who weren't.