In 1941, the BBC was setting up local, low-powered transmitters that were switched off if there was an air raid so they couldn't be used by German planes to navigate. As a 'youth in training,' my job was to switch the transmitter on in the mornings a...
It's very different doing a food show in America and doing one in Britain. I did a 20-part series for the BBC series called 'Eating With the Enemy.' The budget for all 20 episodes was probably the budget for a single episode of 'Top Chef.' It's the d...
I've always been scared of advertising folk. I've met them at parties and I've been to their offices and I've always found them intimidatingly cool. At one company I visited, they held their meetings in a caravan that had somehow been installed in th...
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they wer...
Although being economics editor sounds impressive, it does not mean I actually edit anything. It mainly reflects two decades of title-inflation at the BBC, which has given ever more status to senior reporters, presumably because it is cheaper to do t...
I was obsessed with George Orwell for years. I remember going to the town library and having to put in interlibrary loan requests to get the compilation of his BBC radio pieces. I had to get everything he ever wrote.
Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely differ...
No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alo...
So now it's space and time," he said. "You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?" "All the time," she said dryly, "on the BBC. And don't think I wouldn't sell my soul for a TARDIS.
The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding ...
I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take...
Jamie MacDonald: [calling Tucker] OK. Your phone is off, but there's been a catastrofuck here. Someone's leaked Liza Weld's PWIP PIP paper to the BBC. I reckon it's going to be on the six o'clock news, one o'clock your time. That is going to fucking ...
Malcolm Tucker: [on the phone] Hi. BBC News Desk, please. Malcolm Tucker. Hi, Ben. Listen, I hear that you might be preparing a story that we might not like. Yeah, please. I just wanted to say, please, this garden-wall story, don't run with that. Sim...
Interviewer: [recorded broadcast on the BBC news] The crew of Discovery One consists of five men and one of the latest generation of the HAL-9000 computers. Three of the five men were put aboard asleep, or to be more precise a state of hibernation. T...
Malcolm Tucker: You, hey, put the snifter out there that if the BBC ambushes a minister with another surprise question about the war, I'll drop a bomb on them. Judy: I can't do that, can I? That's political. Malcolm Tucker: Does that not fit within y...
The thought struck me, as I went about my daily ablutions, that Elliot had awfully nice hair for a man who’d take someone else’s ticket. It wasn’t long, but had a small curl to it that made you think about running your fingers through it. “No...
- "Surely you have considered terrorist activity?" There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we ne...
There are so few people left alive from back then, you may as well be talking to them about the Black Death. Nobody recalls the shite in the 30s and that were fucking horrible. For Christ's sake, nobody wants to remember the shite in the 80s. It's al...
My cousin Rebecca teaches comparative English literature at Midlands College. She’s always seeing Austen in the world around her.” “Exactly.” Theresa beamed. “Life is easier to understand when you think of it in terms of Pride and Prejudice...
