Agnes Willkie - Transcript
[Interviewer is Janet McBain, Date of Recording 14 07 2018]
[Start of Recording]
[00:00]
I: Well, this is an interview with Agnes Willkie for the Scottish Broadcasting Heritage Group's Oral History Project. The interviewer is Janet McBain, the date is 14th July 2018 and the place is the STV studios in Glasgow and the copyright of this recording is vested in the Scottish Broadcasting Heritage Group. Agnes, thank you very much for coming in. I'm going to start at the beginning, right at the beginning. Where and when were you born?
R: I was born in 1956 on 6th April which I think is bad for tax planning and I was born in Blantyre. My brother still lives in the house I was born in. I'm a farmer's daughter and was brought up most of my life there.
I: Oh right, so you were brought up in Blantyre. And was there anything when you were a youngster, what kind of hobbies and interests did you have that kind of encouraged you to move in to the profession that you ultimately did?
R: Well, I guess it was about books and reading. I was always passionate about books and reading and as a farmer's daughter, my brother and sister were less interested in all that stuff so I don't know where it came from. I guess my Mum liked books. She was a nurse so nobody had any kind of media or literary background or whatever but I think words always mattered and I used to write a lot I guess. So, growing up in an agricultural world in central Lanarkshire with nobody in the immediate family that would point me in any direction, somehow or other I got it in my head that I should be a journalist.
I: OK. So, farming was never the option?
R: No. I loved horses, I hated cows and sheep! And that was just, well, I don't see the point in them!
I: OK, so how did you get into journalism?
R: Like most people, a mix of luck and determination and being in the right place at the right time. I did French and Psychology at Strathclyde University which was quite an odd thing to do and I didn't get into the Newspaper and I wish that I had. People like Dougie Donnelly and people who were around Strathclyde at that time and I wasn't part of that crowd somehow or other. So, I left university and I thought I wanted to be a journalist so I wrote to every place and every publishing house, every media outlet that I knew of, that I could get an address for. It was in the olden days before the internet so you had to do proper research. And I got an interview at D.C. Thomson at the Sunday Post, just up the road from STV in Cowcaddens and I was offered a job in the Central Fiction Department at D.C. Thomson in Dundee so at the age of twenty (I went to university quite early and graduated quite early) I found myself in Dundee. I guess in the late eighties it wasn't a lovely place at all! It was, it felt just like dark, satanic mill stuff and D.C. Thomson were part of that, I guess, old-fashioned, unreconstructed, male-dominated, funny, wee world but they had this weird little hub of creative activity. So, I was thrilled to get in because it was very competitive and it was a huge coup. I hated Dundee and I hated D.C. Thomson and I worked in the Central Fiction Department and wrote letters for the letters page in Jackie and horoscopes for the Dundee Courier and just churned out absolute trash, I think, and, I think, was very quickly disillusioned! I thought, maybe I don't want to be a journalist if this is what it is! I'm not really enjoying it. I just hated it and I was very homesick and so, after six months, I handed in my notice and went home without a job to go to and had a serious think about my career and what I'm going to do. I applied to go back to university to do Law and was one week away from going back to do Law when I got a call from one of the places that I'd written to in my trawl a year ago and that was the Scottish Farmer and they said they had a vacancy and they had been interested in my letter. Did I want to come in and talk about it and I did and I went in and I got the job and became a trainee journalist at Scottish Farmer.
I: Brilliant!
R: I loved it! I'd found my niche. That thing when you talk to young people about, I don't know how you know what you want to do but when you find it, you'll just know! You'll love it! I was just like completely at home! Absolutely adored it! Had the best fun. Learned huge amounts. My first job was to go to a poultry conference and write a meaningful piece about moulting poultry but then I did things like go to the Highland Show and follow the Queen Mother round about and write cover/colour pieces on that so I became the Features Editor very quickly at the Scottish Farmer. I stayed there for two years and felt, was well aware that it was quite a restricted place to be so I cast my net around and got a job as Features Editor at the Horse and Hound in London and decamped to London. Completely fell into the Gods of Heaven in London! I had a beautiful flat in Marble Arch and commuted in my sports car to IPC [International Publishing Corporation] in Kings Reach Tower and was Features Editor of Horse and Hound.
[06:21]
Then again, it was even more of a niche than Scottish Farmer, yes it is, so somewhere in the middle of that I got married to the man I'd gone to school with and who's still my husband. He was working in Brussels then so I went to Brussels and started doing some freelance work in Brussels for agricultural outlets with my equestrian and agricultural experience, including Radio Scotland. And when we decided to come back from Brussels, when we came back to Glasgow, Brian had a job (he's an accountant in industry) and I didn't so, once again, I wrote to everybody as I had done three or four years before and this time I got a call from STV and it was because they had a sickness problem on a new outlet called STV Oracle which was an experimental, regional form of the Teletext. The ITV Teletext service. So, I came in on a three-week contract to cover for sickness in this little team in Oracle in a room with no windows in the middle of Cowcaddens somewhere and I was still there twenty-five years later! Not in Oracle but in STV! So, that was a long way of getting to STV and twenty-five years at STV.
I: Yeah, OK, so that was when you went into Oracle. That was like the STV version of Ceefax, it was like an on-screen text kind of thing?
R: Yes, it was a regional news and sports service. Everything had to be written in ninety words or less and we were there not 24/7 because I don't think there was a demand for that at that point but we were there from six o' clock in the morning until midnight every day so we'd shifts and things like that so it was a fantastic way to get into more mainstream journalism and on the periphery of broadcasting and that's the first time I'd ever thought about broadcasting was at that point. It was like, whoa, this is great fun! Watching guys in the Newsroom across the corridor, like, that was just, that felt so exciting! It was so fantastic! And then it opened my eyes up to the whole team thing about broadcasting and seeing all the different talents that are involved and, at that point when it was heavily unionised, the vast numbers of people it took to make a three-minute piece and the cast and the expertise that you put into it because of all the different people. It all seemed just what a perfect way to live your life!
I: So, from that short contract with Oracle then you were able to move into the reporting, journalist reporting news kind of thing?
R: Yeah, the Oracle experiment ceased, I think, after about two or three years. It kind of ran out of money. They couldn't find a way to make money although we'd all tried really, really hard and STV, very benignly, gave us a chance to move into the Newsroom and initially I was moved about the building. I should say that, at that point, we were all on year-long contracts. That lasted for about fifteen years so you had to renegotiate your contract at the end of every year. So, that interim period I worked in a thing called Scotland Today Report that Eric Willkie (no relation of mine), a really nice man, ran which was the half-hour documentary, weekly documentary series so I was a researcher on that. Sometimes I worked on Ways and Means, a political programme with Colin MacKay and Gordon Brown and Russ [Russell] Galbraith and sometimes I worked on various documentaries as the lowliest, as the gofer, as the runner basically but I called myself a researcher and I was a journalist but I was never in NUJ, a paid-up member. So that was a kind of floating period.
[10:53]
And then they moved me into, I think, the Gus Macdonald regime burst into life and Content Creators became the most important thing in the world and there was lots of opportunities to do different things so I went into the Forward Planning Department with Stuart McCulloch who was a bit of a legend, if he's still about. Stuart knew everybody and everything and I had a happy year or so there before David Scott, who was running News and Current Affairs, thought I should move on and become - they call them 'subs' in the Newsroom, they still had old-fashioned subs where you edited the copy that other people read the News bulletins. So, I was the sub for a year or so and then I guess around that time the Blair Jenkins and Scott Ferguson era kicked off and I was becoming aware that while I found news incredibly exciting and you think you are at the centre of the universe and it's like, and I should say that in those days we were still shooting stuff on film so News stopped happening, I think, at 12:30 in the day because it had to go and be processed and come back. But it didn't stop it being, feeling so exciting and up to the wire in trying to do things in the last minute and changing things and doing it in a sane manner. But about that time I started to get a bit, I remember thinking 'if I have to do another Highers...', what's happening, the Highers were coming out today, '...I think I would kill myself' because I've now done it for two or three years where you're constantly coming up with new ways of doing those calendar-type stories, diary stories and I got the opportunity to do more feature-type things and that word 'feature' kept coming back in my life and I knew that's where my heart was. So, this opportunity came up where they were going to launch this thing called Lunchtime Scotland Today and there'd been, I guess ever since the One o'Clock Gang there'd been attempts to do a lunchtime newsy kind of show and most of them ended, I think, unhappily, maybe not! But anyway, we were going to launch this Lunchtime Scotland Today so it was very competitive who was going to work on what and I got the Assistant Producer's job on Lunchtime Scotland Today with the responsibility for doing the feature side of it. So, this is going to be a half-hour programme every day at 12:30 and it had to have a bit of news, but only so much news and the bulk of it was actually chat and features so we had a regular rostrum of feature items. We did, we ticked off the magazine boxes - we'll do Travel, we'll do Fashion, we'll do Film and TV and we did a different Feature item every day and we had, all I can say is at the time, a galaxy of stars. Our main Presenter was the unknown then Kirsty Young and Angus Simpson, who'd come over from Scotland Today, so Kirsty and Angus were a bit of a, became a bit of a legend. And we had Carol Smillie doing Fashion and we had Kay Adams Vox Pops every day and we had Katie Woods doing Travel and we had John Miller from the Daily Record doing Showbiz and Brian Burnett doing various bits and pieces. And these people were so amazing to work with along with all the Editors and camera people that I then got to know properly because we were doing more in-depth, longer form items and it very, very quickly became clear to me how much of a team thing this is and what a joy a team it is and when everybody is trying to make the best possible thing that they can with, typically, as little resources as possible, there's something hugely, hugely joyful about that!
[15:41]
So, that was, I would say, Lunchtime Scotland Today was my liberation. Whether people would look back at it and think it was a bit naff or whatever, it was, I quite often look at television and say, "Hmm, it's not a great show but it must have been brilliant fun making it!" Certainly Lunchtime Scotland Today was brilliant fun making it! Every day a new sheet of paper to fill with the best you could possibly do. It was probably also the hardest I've ever worked because that, doing Features so working late at night to get stuff ready for the next and being in at six o' clock in the morning usually to get started on the structure of the show and all the rest of it. So, it was probably the hardest I've ever worked except when I used to work in hayfields.
I: That's interesting that you, that's something we've come across in a lot of the other interviews we've done with your former colleagues, how there was a real strong sense of teamwork within STV and people believing that they were doing, trying to do the best job they could. Did you also find in terms of, it sounds as if that although there was a culture within the Company that would encourage people to learn and move on and develop, did you find that people were generous in passing on knowledge to enable you to learn and develop?
R: Yes, I think everywhere I've worked creative people are fantastic to work with! They do want to share and I have very seldom hit anyone being protective or precious about knowledge or talent or whatever. That it is the most egalitarian, no matter where you are in the pecking order people get time to listen to you and encourage you and I think it is very, it doesn't matter what form of creative art that you occupy, you will find that, I think, that's looking back. But at that time for me, having experienced that first early experience in D.C. Thomson of people being pretty precious about things and I think that is a newsy, old-fashioned news thing. But the environment that I encountered at both the Scottish Farmer and the Horse and Hound and then at STV was the exact opposite. It was sharing, be helpful, take pleasure in the greater good, if you like.
I: It's interesting because from an outsider's point of view, the impression that you get of STV in the era before you were really there, in the seventies, was there was a really strong sense of not demarcation but the old days of sending eight or nine people out on a news story and everybody had their job and woe betide you if you did something that was somebody else's job and it was all protected and ring-fenced. But that's completely the opposite, different kind of...
R: So, my observation is that over time, when I came in at the beginning there was definitely the Good Old Days syndrome and it was so much better and whatever. Now, I think that is always true. People will always, because when you're younger things are maybe always more fun by in large so I think everybody will always harp back to the Good Old Days in a sense but at that time what I didn't, what I found frustrating at STV was that when I was working in the early days in the Newsroom and I was a researcher and I was looking for stories, of diary stories, and I think this is quite a good example of how it worked against creativity and against initiative - so, I came across this story that I thought was really interesting and it was really interesting. It was the first time that anybody had identified the prescribed drugs problem in Glasgow so young kids getting hold of Temazepan from old men getting them for sore backs and using their shoplifting proceeds to acquire these Temazepan and then they would go off and they diluted them and then they injected them and nobody really knew about it and I kind of came across this story because I was hanging out in Easterhouse and I met this group of young guys and that's what they were doing. So, their day was, that was their cycle of the day. So as you can imagine it was quite, some of them were underage, it was all very fraught with legal problems and issues and whatever but on the day that we were going to go out to this flat in Easterhouse to film with them, because the piece was going to last longer than, I think it was an average 2 1/2 minutes, then we needed a Features crew to go there so we had to take fourteen people to this tiny, wee flat in Easterhouse so that was like three vans and all the paraphernalia when all you actually needed was the camera person and maybe a reporter - that's all you needed in there and indeed that's all that went into the flat but you had to take this paraphernalia so that wasn't very encouraging for making contemporary television! That made it quite hard to do things like that so that, to me, was the downside of that protected world, that unionised world. And I think, as with everything, it then goes too far the other way and it became ridiculous and I have remained a lifelong member of the NUJ and I'm very delighted to be that and I think they are a very good thing but it can get out of hand and I think it went a bit mad in that sense. So, for me, those Good Old Days were quite difficult old days and I could now say that my time in the nineties were the Good Old Days.
[22:11]
I: OK. So, when was this that you were working on the Lunchtime programme as Assistant Producer, would be this...
R: So, I think it would be about the early nineties.
I: Early nineties. So this would be after the franchise?
R: Yep, it was with Gus Macdonald. A thousand hours a year was the cost of the franchise so it was boom time so because I come from a News background I guess I knew how to make things quickly and relatively cheaply and to achieve that volume of, it couldn't all be about High Road and Taggart, it had to be about volume as well. So, given my experience on Lunchtime Scotland Today, it was decided that actually we could make a lot of those programmes that were traditionally network programmes. The lifestyle programmes that were just in their infancy. There weren't any houses shows in primetime or anything like that at that point. So, I think quite interestingly, Blair Jenkins and Scott Ferguson decided we should set up a Features Department and that I could head it and so, suddenly, I'd gone from being an Assistant Producer on Lunchtime Scotland Today to being head of Features at STV which was my dream job and remains my best ever job title and the one I absolutely adored doing. My job was to expand those short items that we were doing on a daily basis on Lunchtime Scotland Today and make them in to half-hour shows that could be transmitted in peak time and not look ridiculous or lose the audience or whatever. They had to do a job for STV but it had to be done much more cheaply than anything that had been done before and that's when you're so glad that you're surrounded by fantastic talent because when you get the opportunity to make programmes like that carte blanche as best as you can, even though you've not got very much money and therefore not very much time, then everybody is busting their gut to do it and that, I think it does, I think it does increase the satisfaction you get out of doing it. So, out of that era was born Scottish Passport, the Home Show, get it on, a whole load of, again ticking those Special Interest programmes. And the fantastic thing was - and I will never forget it and I am probably the only person on the planet who does remember it - but the first Scottish Passport that went out at seven o' clock on a Tuesday, I think. Maybe Monday and it took 79% audience share and you were like, 'they love it!' and it kind of continued like that for a good few years. The Home Show would regularly do 70% audience share where it is unthinkable now. Completely unthinkable. But still at that time, most, you would expect most regional shows to be doing, if you were lucky, 30 [%] but mostly in the 20s so it was quite sensational at the time. And then, low and behold, they went on to win BAFTAs and things like that which was fantastic! So, it was, I mean I find it hard to think that anybody lived through a more golden era of opportunity and having, yeah, the privilege to make those kind of programmes to the quality that we did under quite difficult circumstances.
I: Where did the ideas come from? Was it really on your desk to come up with the ideas for the programmes?
R: The ideas, I think, come from lots of different ways but mostly smart, clever, inventive, creative people getting together and just throwing ideas about - "What do you think and what do you think?" I still, all through my career I think I'm pretty good at those brainstorming meetings and getting the right mix of people round a desk. I had a bit of a reputation for 'champagne Fridays' because that sometimes helps at the end of the week - "What are we going to do next week? Let's go over..." There was a place round the corner from STV that did half-price champagne on a Friday afternoon and that was when we would finish early and go there and do some brainstorming. It wasn't always about the champagne! It was usually about smart people coming up with great ideas and then when you get one that everybody starts to get excited about, you know you've got something and then it runs and it's just like it's got a life of its own and it's fantastic and it's pretty easy as a manager after that.
[27:00]
I: So, to be Head of Features you had to kind of take a step back from the actual sharp edge of producing so you weren't actually the Producer of the programme but you were almost like the Commissioning Editor or something?
R: It was a bit like that. It was kind of half way house between Commissioning Editor and Executive Producer so I was pretty hands on. At the end of the day, I would also sit in in the final edit and I don't think any programme went out that I hadn't seen a lot of on the way. Particularly if there were any problems with it. It was a very unusual position. I mean, when I look at the opportunities, there are not many like that where you get to commission your own stuff and have to be pretty grown up about it. I mean, it's not like your pet project. It has to be what's going to work on an ITV regional channel.
I: What obviously gave you a kick was when the viewing figures came in, if something was popular then it almost vindicated your belief.
R: To me that was the only thing that mattered. If people don't want to watch it then there's something wrong because even if they're not interested in cars, even if they're not interested in fashion you should be able to do it in an entertaining way that makes them want to watch it. And I think that's where the [? unintelligible] was really important because I think it does add a unique dimension to the content. Without it being, you know we all hated that idea of making tartan television or anything that felt very 'Scottish' but the fact that it's happening in Scotland and its places that you can go to and people that you recognise and stuff like that and I think that's really important and I think that's one of the problems nowadays that things have become so amorphous and so kind of, London or American-centric.
I: That's interesting. You say that you didn't really want to make, well, I can understand why you wouldn't want to make tartan things but you must have been aware that there was an appetite within Scotland for Scottish-style programmes? Whether that appetite had changed from the days of Thingummyjig and all the rest of it - was that not still something on your radar about how do we reach our audience?
R: I think it's that thing about we're all interested in the same sorts of subjects. I don't think there's anything intrinsically Scottish about the subject matter that you might have. I think we have the same broad, you know, range of lifestyley interests whether it's houses or fashion or whatever. I wasn't involved very much in the heritage side of that sort of thing so while I was aware of the affection there was for things like Thingummyjig and all the rest of it, there was absolutely no appetite within STV at that point to try and keep that sort of thing going. So, it didn't really, it only ever came up at Hogmanay. Hogmanay would always be, so the Hogmanay show was one of my annual challenges and it would always come up at Hogmanay - do we not get Duncan Macrae with Wee Cock Sparra! because everybody always used to harp on about that so we would try all sorts of different things and I think it's an impossible one to square that nostalgia for a period that was lovely at the time but kind of became irrelevant.
I: No, I think that's, you know the Hogmanay programme crystallises it. You know, you want to be Scottish but you don't want to be Scottish!! That must have been a difficult one!
R: Yes, you don't necessarily want to kill it. Our solution to that was...
I: Sorry, we have to...
I2: Sorry, we have to change…
[Pause for change of camera cassette]
I: ...do something clever! OK. [31:26] So, you're responsible for quite a slew of regional programming. The thousand hours. But of a quality that you thought could go on the network?
R: Our ambition was always to make shows that would be comparable with the network and not feel that you were, that you had a lesser budget. I have spent a lot of time since then working with young people on their first film project, their first documentary or whatever and money, it's interesting because money always comes up right at the beginning ("But I don't have enough money!") and I think money should come at the end! "What's the story you're trying to tell? OK, what is your budget? How can you tell that story with that money? Don't worry about the money, how are you going to tell it? Do you need more people?" You know, we used to stay and talk about low budget films - forget about car crashes and bonfires and all the rest of it, concentrate on character. Maybe two characters because then you can afford to spend a lot on those two characters and if you can keep them in one room, even better but, boy, is that script going to have to be absolutely amazing to be able to sustain that! And then you get into the argument - is that television or is that radio or whatever but that idea of being completely realistic about the money you've got but being completely unrealistic about the ambition of what to do with it! Being really inventive about how you approach it. "What's the way that I can do this that I can be proud of? That I really want to do? That I'm excited about and that talented people will get excited about and therefore will want to work for lower rates or whatever?" I think you become very, because I can see how what I'm saying can sound like exploitation and it didn't feel like exploitation! It felt like opportunity! It felt like, you'll get to make the best programme that you're capable of making with some fantastic people!. You might not get paid what you get paid normally. You could try that with people like Carol Smillie and stuff like that. If she really wants to do it she wasn't charging her £50,000 a day lottery money or anything like that, she would do it. And lots of people behind the cameras were exactly the same. If they love a project, they want to work on it.
I: And there must have been a lot of people now who have become household names, network and national, who maybe got their first break with some of the programmes that you were making? You mention Carol Smillie, Kirsty Young, that kind of thing. Was there a sense of it that it was bringing new talent through or...?
R: It certainly felt like that. Probably especially behind the scenes, the production side, so Producers and Directors and Editors. It felt a really fantastic opportunity for giving them a chance to move on, do something different, do it their way! I loved, sometimes you were allowed to liberate editors from their edit suite and send them out with a crew because they could bring a really interesting angle on shooting something because they sat and edited it so there's lots of opportunity to do that kind of thing which I thought was fantastic. So, looking about me now I think there are many, many senior Producers and executive Producers and series Producers who definitely came through that machine and I'm sure the incredible challenges that they faced made what they do now probably not seem so hard as young people but just relished the opportunity to try and prove themselves. And in front of camera all the K's - Kirsty Young, Kay Adams, Carol Smillie, Stephen Jardine, lots of people, Katie Wood, yeah, loads.
[35:54]
I: Is there a particular series of programme or strand of programme that you take particular pleasure or pride in that you brought on to the screen and that you thought was exceptionally good?
R: My baby was the whole Lifestyle thing so I think I particularly adored the Home Show for a long time but as they matured and some took a rest, went off screen, and we did other things. But a constant through all that was Scottish Women which I was really proud of because I think we slightly reinvented Scottish women and we did some incredibly difficult subjects, I think, in a way that maybe changed lives for the better. I know we did one coming out to family and friends, thirty years ago, twenty-five years ago, and I could feel in that, you know, there's a hundred women in the studio talking about their experience and that audience was all mothers of children who had come out to them and gone through that whole experience in a time where it was so hard and you could feel people changing their opinion because it was very clear that these were human beings and that mother loved that child so, no matter what she went through, the early shock or whatever, she loves her child and she's looking after her child! So, Scottish Women is a particular one. But I think the one that I now look back on and am proudest of was the New Found Land scheme which we did in partnership with the Scottish Screen at that time, Creative Scotland. So, I think very enterprising and against all the grain, Scottish TV put up half the cost for producing one year, two Feature films and then in the other year, six half-hour Feature films and, at the same time, I think it was twelve half-hour Documentaries and these were for people who'd never made a film before and they worked with experts. It was my job to try and put those teams together and partner them up with people to make sure they got the most from their modest budgets. But not, by today's standards I would say pretty immodest budgets in a sense! They were given a lot of support to make them and I think that was a brilliant scheme and I can't see why it can't continue because what an amazing opportunity to produce commercially focused, original Documentary and Feature films! That's really hard to find those opportunities now.
I: And it's bringing broadcasting because the New Found Land's were, they had a cinema release, didn't they, the shorts? On the big screen and they went down the Film Festival as well?
R: They did. They were premiered at Edinburgh Film Festival and then they would be, they were all seen, they were all broadcast. One of the ones that, it makes me cry with happiness just thinking about it, was AfterLife so it was Lindsay Duncan and Kevin McKidd, two mega stars! And it was a film about down-syndrome and it was shot and it won a BAFTA and it was, I mean I swear you would not know that that had been made by a...[unintelligible]
I: It's almost like a training, isn't it?
R: Well, there's a huge part, I mean it was from STV's Training Budget that the money came when they had a Training Budget and I think it was, that's like a brilliant use of Training Budget. Brilliant use!
I: I think it's very interesting as well because, I mean STV produces programmes for its audience and it puts it out through television but of course in the wider world there was, at the time in the '90s and the 2000s, there was a lot of debate going on about Scottish cultural identity, devolution and the independent filmmakers were trying to get infrastructure going. Trying to, sort of, talk up the concept of the Scottish film industry, you know, you need a film studio, you need to see modern, Feature films on screen and all that sort of thing. How aware were you of the wider world outwith STV? I mean, obviously you were because you were involved with New Found Land but did you get involved in any of these initiatives that were not necessarily for broadcast output but more to do with the Film industry?
R: Well, probably as a mentor type of thing and yes, I'd been completely cocooned in the STV broadcasting world so the New Found Land scheme opened up that, "Oh! There's a parallel Universe out there!" And again, I think I immediately saw the parallels in the Feature film world and television. There is something about original content that is not dissimilar. You are trying to create something new out of nothing based on your idea and make it to the best of your ability and using similar sorts of ingredients. I think it was a very swift learning curve for me to try and understand what sustains a Fiction half-hour and then ninety minutes - that's a huge thing! Thousands and thousands of films are made every year and most of them are not very good. Nobody sets out to make a bad film. Everyone sets out to make a great film but it's really hard and the exposure on a big screen with a focussed audience is much more demanding and at first I think I didn't quite grasp that but I very quickly got an understanding. It's like, you need more magic in this lot, I need more people, I need more money!
[42:05]
I: Were you ever a member of the Scottish Film Production Board or any of these kind of panels where you were...?
R: I was not.
I: No? I was just wondering.
R: No, I was also on the Selection with Scottish Screen for the New Found Land scheme and I've been a BAFTA judge and things like that but no, I think, I mean it's not for me to speculate or whatever but there were two separate worlds and while I could not be prouder of my television background or whatever, it's not everybody, I guess, would value or see the importance. I think now, with hindsight, they should bond and they should work together because they have much to share with each other.
I: Yes, that's interesting. And when you went home at night, do you, well, did you sit and watch television for pleasure or were you bringing a, sort of, programme-maker's view to what you saw?
R: I've always said I've not been able to watch television for pleasure. It's always felt like, "Oh, why did they do that?!" I still find it really hard. I prefer going to the movies if I want to but I find it really hard to watch stuff on television, even with a big screen now at home and good sound quality and all the rest of it. But I used to have a rule in my house, because I am, I am very house-proud and I've always been fascinated by houses hence the Home Show and it being one of my favourites because I'm just fascinated by what people put in houses! In my house we had, I had a ban on no television bigger than a 16'' which was a little square thing so that probably made it even more difficult to watch television for entertainment! And now that's gone we've got a 54'' television in our new house so I've got over that! But yeah, I still find it hard just to sit back and enjoy something. I prefer, I'm still addicted to houses shows! I will still trawl the networks looking for the next Grand Designs or Location, Location. I'm still completely, I can watch them easily on a small screen.
I: You could make more of them at the drop of a hat, could you?!
R: I could! I could!
I: Interesting. I mean, it sounds like, what comes across is a very, it's a real passion for what you were doing and a belief and a pride in what you were doing. I think that's brilliant. It must have given you some considerable job satisfaction?
R: I just think I had the dream job and worked with the dream people and every day I think that now I don't work anymore and I don't ? in the country, I really miss the people because they are really interesting people and I worked in other places not in, not in mainstream broadcasting, always on the periphery since but those, the coming together of those types of people is just like there is nothing like it! They are just the most interesting types of people, that's all I can say! Like, I mean, who would not love being in that? It was not like coming to work every day, it was, I mean I'm sure I must have had bad days. I'm sure I had. I used to say to the Security guys, "If I'm wearing a red jacket, it's because I know I'm in for a bad day and I need to try and be positive!" But actually, when I look back at it, I just remember it being complete and utter joy from start to finish!
[46:00]
I: One of your former colleagues, camera crew, said that one of the things they valued was that you had a very light touch. You weren't, as Head of Features, you would take a, not a step back but you would let people get on and do things and all the rest of it. Were you conscious of that?
R: Absolutely because everybody has, everybody who works in television, whether you're at the front desk or whatever, you've got a view and it's a valid view and you've got an opinion and because the ideas come from everywhere and whatever then you just need as many brilliant, I think the importance is the right kind of people. But once you've got them and they gravitate towards something like TV Production, you have to try and milk them for all you're worth because their ideas are almost always going to be better than yours! I don't remember coming up with ideas. Other people came up with ideas. I can maybe help get the ideas out of them. I can maybe help develop the ideas or whatever but most of the ideas come from every which way and everybody, like Kay Adams would say, "We've been making Scottish Women for years, why don't we make Scottish Men?" And I'm going, "Because it's too obvious, Kay!" Then she had this idea and then she brought (because she'd always be bringing ideas in) and she brought this great idea towards the end of my time with STV and I thought it was a brilliant idea and it was about dinner parties. And it was, "Why don't we film a dinner party where one person's playing the host and then the next week we go to the next person's house and they host the dinner?" I was like, "This is a brilliant idea, Kay! We'll call it 'Dinner Parties' and it'll be fantastic!" "No, no! I want to call it '7.30 for 8' because it will go out at 7.30 and it'll be eight people!" We made a pilot and it kind of worked so then we made a series and just as it was coming to an end something came out on Channel Four called Come, Dine with Me! It's like, oh! Kay Adams, I don't think, will ever [??? inaudible] Anyway.
I: That's interesting. You said that we'll call it 7.30 for 8 because it will go out at 7.30. Did you have allocated slots for your programmes and you knew when they were going to be scheduled or going out, did you?
R: In that, in the Gus Macdonald thousand hours that we did, we had slots that we knew. We had 10.30, 7 o' clock at that time then it moved to 7.30 so yeah, we had very regular slots so we knew who the audience were. We worked very closely with the advertising people about who is it we're trying to hit here so sometimes they didn't want, they didn't need big numbers but they needed rich, young men for want of a better expression! So, the car show Wheel Nuts was invented because they were, the advertising department needed to boost their male affluent, A1 viewers and so, "Right, let's make a car show!" And it was a brilliant car show! It was better than Top Gear. I've always said it was better than Top Gear!
I: OK. So there was an element of commercial return influencing what you made?
R: Oh, all the time! It wasn't about, it was always about the audience and the advertising being the tangible evidence of the audience, if you like, round about us. Yeah, I think I said earlier on, I was always very commercially focussed and it really mattered to me that people would watch it and want to watch it and enjoy watching it. I've never wanted to make something that nobody wants to watch.
I: So, if a show was pulled or cancelled, was it because the viewing figures had plummeted or because the advertising revenue wasn't there?
R: Probably a mix of both. It seemed to me it would mostly be about money but that's maybe a wee bit cynical. I don't like being cynical.
I: But that's what STV is. It is a business, isn't it? It's not a cultural broadcaster like the BBC.
R: Oh they had public service broadcasts or they did have, more so in my day, they did have a remit to do that. But, yeah, I don't think to the best of my knowledge, they didn't pull anything that was doing fantastically well in the ratings when it was at the height of its success. Interestingly, I was there at the death knell of High Road and the problem with High Road, I mean, I'd nothing to do with the production of High Road but I ended up being slightly responsible for the budget for it and it couldn't survive in the modern age when, STV did not have the money to put into a soap three nights a week and everything else was three nights a week minimum, perhaps more than that, and they couldn't afford to do a soap like that so it was kind of untenable. And that was what New Found Land was born out of. How do we compensate for that huge hole in the Scottish theatrical, cultural, professional world? Maybe this is a way of addressing those issues in a way that we could maybe do better. We could maybe help more than putting out what was a very dwindling audience for a very under-budgeted drama series.
I: Which, you know, it showed that you were thinking about your place within the wider Scottish, cultural landscape and not literally just about the internal business of STV.
R: I hope so. I don't think I'm being pragmatic about that. I think it was how could we use that money that we had? That thing about, how much money have I got? Right, what is the best thing I can do with it? I would love to have said, "Yeah, let's keep the High Road going because it's an institution and everybody's very affectionate towards it and it could be so much better if it had more money!" But there just wasn't enough money and there couldn't be enough money! I just didn't think it was commercially viable.
[52:38]
I: Sorry, are you...Tim's looking at me!
I2: No, no, it's fine!
I: No, no, keep going?! I was just getting the body language here!
R: One of the last things I was involved in and I was very, very, very proud of, and I've just remembered was High Times. This was a Drama series which was born out of one of the early New Found Land half-hour films, which was about life in a high-rise flat which was reminiscent of something that STV had done many, many, many years before but we managed to get together enough money to make six half-hours and it's won lots of awards. It was amazing! Because I'm not from a Drama background, I had very limited input to it but I definitely made it happen from working with the writer John...(he'll hate me for forgetting his name!) because I still e-mail him! Does anyone remember John's name? The writer of High Times. John Rooney! John Rooney. It gave him the opportunity to develop the talent that he had shown in his half-hour film, his one-off half-hour film, and take it to a higher level and keep it going for six episodes. And that had a fantastic cast! So, that was a bit of a nod to STV's Drama heritage. And again, if you could, I don't see why nowadays you can't still try and do things like that with limited money because the market for Drama is fantastic. I mean you can see what's happened with Scandinavian drama. When I was in television and working with Co-Producers, international Co-Producers, you couldn't, there's no way, I'd great relationships with my colleagues in Denmark and Sweden and Norway but there's no way you could have got anything commissioned as a co-production. And now I am thinking, wow! It's like, we can do it! So I think there's an opportunity now for anything that has got that regional authenticity. I was hugely involved not that long ago in the north-east of England, working with ITV to see how they could develop a ? called Brenda Blethyn that would be shot and made in the north-east of England so, it was a very long drawn-out process and in the end, we only put in about £20,000 or something but it helped get the pilot made in the north-east and that's Vera and I think it's on its eleventh or twelfth series now so the north-east of England has finally, after Bykergrove forty years ago, got a regular, high profile, both visible and audio exposure on national television at the highest level.
I: So that's the north-east whereas we had the Taggart kind of thing really, isn't it?
R: It is. And I'm not sure why Scotland hasn't got something like that.
I: I mean there's been attempts like Rebus and that kind of thing but nothing seems to have...
R: Not recently. That's all, Monarch of the Glen, that's all quite a long time ago.
I: Yes.
R: Something that's long-running, sustainable and, yeah, you can just see how, it can do what Taggart in the seventies, it can do in the naughties. There's no reason why, I can't see why they couldn't do that having been involved in that Vera project more recently.
[57:05]
I: So, how long were you with STV for?
R: Twenty-five years.
I: Twenty-five years. And when you joined, well, you mentioned that you were on a one-year contract for the first fifteen years and yet...
R: I was on a three-week contract that then became a month's contract for a while and then a year's contracts and it was only after about fifteen years that I was put on Staff.
I: Because in those days you joined BBC or STV and it was kind of like a job for life, really, once you got in, wasn't it? It doesn't sound like it was necessarily that for you?
R: It never felt like that for me. I was never very sure. And at one time I had about four jobs going because I was never quite sure. I worked, I did the TV Listings for the Daily Record and the Evening Times simultaneously which kind of messed my head and I was still writing the occasional columns for the Scottish Farmer and doing a little slot in the Radio Scotland Farming programme because I was never absolutely, I never felt absolutely secure at STV and then I got a Staff and I felt a lot more secure!
I: A lot more secure, yes.
R: And I got a pension.
I: OK. Good. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about or reminisce about?
R: I would just say, I suppose I would like it to go on record that having lived through various regimes and I think being quite generous about there were always Good Old Days or whatever, the transition from what I would call the Gus Macdonald years to the Andrew Flanagan years, that was the hardest thing that I had to put up with politically and I remember - and I don't know whether other people have mentioned this - it was not a secret and it was proudly proclaimed that when Gus came content was very much king and you felt like you were, as a content-maker, you felt like you could do anything. And then when Gus went on to be Chair and Andrew Flanagan came on as Chief Executive, he made it very clear he felt very differently and he saw STV's prime operation was to ? advertising opportunities. The Programming was the cost of that and that's a very, very difficult change to absorb and accept because you go from being there to being alright so it was all about reducing costs and so you had to dig really deep to go...but we're still the luckiest people in the world because we're still getting to make programmes. We might not have as much money. We might have less access to prime time slots or whatever but we're still getting to make them and we're still being allowed to make them so when people moaned about it and wanted to bitch and all this, I would always say, "Look, you are still doing what you really want to do, aren't you? I mean, let me absorb any pain that is going there and just get on and do, carry on making fantastic programmes in the best way that you possibly can!"
I: So, did you need to fight to get stuff onto the Production schedule under Andrew Flanagan's rule compared to previously? I mean, were you having to go and pitch and, you know, really argue for why we need to make these programmes?
R: You had to fight a lot harder for money. I mean people would, people who were in ? always made really cheap programmes and I think I did relatively but we had to make them even cheaper and that was harder so trying to make Scottish Passport on a budget reduced by forty percent and that was like really hard! So, but we did it! We continued making Scottish Passport and we just, like, "How can we do that?! Oh, every time we go on a filming trip we'll make two films! We'll find two sides, two stories to tell so that we've got two films out of one so then we've doubled our budget!" It was a bit of cheapskate way of doing it, a bit of a simplistic way of doing it but it worked for another two or three years and kept Scottish Passport going.
[61:30]
I: So, there was an interesting range of Arts programmes. Was NB on your watch as well? Because that was really good!
R: Yeah. I took over NB, I inherited NB and had immediately to cut the budget by fifty percent which means I was the most hated person on the planet! So, it had to be reinvented so they had this fantastic thing where they got a Film Unit where they shot, they got to shoot an item on film which was amazing and was fabulous and I wish that I could have continued doing it but that had to go so it was, yeah, I expect a lot of people really hated me at that time but I think we ended up making it a good show and I still think Scottish TV should make a weekly listing show because why wouldn't you? It's like, there is nowhere else to go to get that kind of visual input on what's happening. And you can trawl the internet but to get that curated choice that you know will be the best of the best, is like a fantastic opportunity. And again, a fabulous opportunity for people to let their, to let their ambitions soar and do something different! Something experimental. Do it completely different. It was like, you know, you get to do it because there were a lot of short pieces in half-hours.
Yeah, and the other one round about that time that I was pretty proud of was Box Set which was, if you said you couldn't do music on ITV because it was divisive and if you had this issue that they had a big Studio A, which was empty most of the time because it was that period when big, shiny floor shows were disappearing and we got this notion that actually there were fewer outlets for bands and performers to make their music. There weren't the shows that there used to be going about. There weren't the Chat Shows and there weren't the Saturday night shows or whatever and they were quite keen to, for whatever reason, so we gave them the Studio for four hours and they got filmed so it was called Box Set. So, people like Beverley Knight and Nick Cave and my favourite, Divine Comedy, amazing people came to take up that opportunity! So that ran for quite a few years and it was pretty cost-effective because all we did was man the Studio and they provided the content and gave us the rights to broadcast it, I think, three times and then they were all there so they got their beautifully produced video out of it. And, again, it was a fantastic opportunity for Directors to get to direct the Stereophonics or whatever so it was like, "Whoa! That's amazing!" And I suppose, at the same time, what had informed that was that we were very early in on T in the Park that had started in Strathclyde Park. STV covered it with single cameras and it was a nightmare then we managed to get enough money to do a proper Outside Broadcast Unit and it got better and when it went to Kinross we did the first two or three there and again that was brilliant fun doing that sort of thing! So, that's probably as deep into the artsy world that I got.
[65:00]
But I suppose what I would say, one of the hardest things that I did at STV and one of which I am the most proud (but I'm not sure stands up to any kind of critical scrutiny) was what do we do over the summer in Scotland when This Morning goes off air and we've got this big gap in the morning schedule and our advertisers are looking for places to go?
I: You are talking about what do you do after...
R: What do we do with the missing This Morning, the two-hour slot that's quite important to advertisers and it's just not there and how do we fill it in a relevant way for a Scottish audience? So, I think it was Scott Ferguson came up with the idea, why don't we do our own version - only we'll take it out on the road. Now, I think, in the olden days people used to take Scotland Today out for Summer Specials and things like that. I think they did. So, it kind of had that slight queasy feeling of, oh no, it's going to be Dermot McQuarrie in a Victorian swimsuit! Which is what I remember from that! Sorry, Dermot! So, let's do a live two-hour show that's pretty much the magazine format, This Morning format but we'll populate it with Scottish people and we'll come from a different location every week just to make it really hard! But that way we won't have to hire a Studio, we won't have to pay for a Studio and all the expensive Studio costs, we'll just turn up somewhere and do it. Now, trying to do two hours of live television in a Studio is hard enough but trying to do two hours live television in an alien environment and a different one every week with a cast of experts and broadcasters and interviewees that don't know how to get to the train station - that's a challenge! And it was probably the best summer of my life! So, for two months, we started in Aberdeen in the Maritime Museum which, if anyone has ever been there, it's on several stores, floors, so we were on multi levels and it's glass so lighting is an issue and a problem and we had to get people like Christopher Brookmyre to come to Aberdeen for eleven o' clock in the morning! I met Christopher Brookmyre recently and he remembers being summoned to go to Aberdeen at some ungodly hour and he sat around for hours and hours and hours until we were ready to go on air! And so we went all over Scotland. We went to Aberdeen. We went to Blair Athol. We went to New Lanark. We went to Edinburgh Festival and each one was its own nightmare but, and like I'm sure people probably died on that production but again, it's, you know, they have to climb the mountain to see the view and sometimes the highest views are the best! And that was one of those!
I: Great!
R: And out!
I: And that was called...
R: Summer Discovery!
I: Summer Discovery.
R: I can feel people collapsing in the heat!
I: Oh dear! I take it, it just lasted one summer, did it?!
R: It did! Not to be repeated! No, I don't think we would have got a crew to go back on it. We could only do it once.
I: OK. Right. Well...that's...
R: That felt like an ouch. To me, that felt like an ouch!
I: That felt like an ouch!
R: Imagine coming out on film...
I: Well, I was going to say, do you maybe want to come out on a more positive note, I don't know?!
R: Well, I, because I think it epitomises what the joy of television.
I: Yeah and the fact that you were able to give it a go basically, says a lot about the programme.
R: The amount of ingenuity and creativity and yeah, what's the word, ad-libbing! Brilliant, brilliant Presenters!
I: Looking at STV today, are you conscious of sitting there thinking, oh! I could be doing this! I could be doing that! What do you feel generally about the output now?
R: So, I am Pollyanna. I am Mrs Positive. I love everything and everybody and whatever and I am a bit depressed about not just STV but BBC Scotland as well and how old-fashioned it looks! It's like, "Where's the new stuff? Where's the new talent?" It's people that I know who are still front camera and behind camera and I am sure there are lots of people who I don't know that are there as well but that's my observation looking at it as a viewer is like, oh, I can remember doing that twenty years ago! Surely there is a better way of doing that now or something? That's my impression.
I: It's not moving forward. Well, we shall see. We'll see what the future brings, I suppose. OK. Great. Well, Agnes, thank you very much! It's been great.
R: Obviously we all like, you'll not like wading through it! And it's really disconcerting having you two because you were both there and you know the truth! And it's like, am I, but it was, it was fantastic! Was it not fantastic?
[70:48]
[End of Recording]
