One of the ‘Objectives’ at my last Annual Appraisal was to stay in the BBC longer than John Birt. (Oddly, my Line Manager would not accept it as an ‘Agreed Objective’.) John Birt left the BBC in 2000. I attended Greg Dyke’s inaugural address to staff. His common sense, plain English and approachable manner were a welcome change. But it would take him a long time to unravel the mess he had inherited. In the meantime, his predecessor’s primary policy continued – kicking out low-paid craftsmen, who did useful work at the sharp-end of programme-making, and replacing them with overpaid office-dwellers with incomprehensible job titles – characters who would become known as ‘Empty Suits’ (and are now being parodied with painful accuracy in “W1A”).
The grotesque pantomime of ‘Producer Choice’ had already forced different parts of the Corporation to compete destructively against one another. It had destroyed the team-working ethos, so essential to programme making, by pitting natural allies against one another. It has also taken away most of the joy and excitement. We Cameramen were no longer respected as an integral part of creative process. We weren’t even human beings. We were just ‘Resources’: commodities to be bought and sold, so that bureaucrats could amuse themselves ‘Playing Shops’. The separation of BBC Resources into a ‘Wholly Owned Subsidiary’ further reminded us that we were under-valued, unloved and unwanted. (They called it “BBC Resources Limited”. We called it, more accurately, “BBC Limited Resources”!) All those aspects of my job that motivated and inspired me for so long had now be surgically removed, in order to make life easy for accountants. I might as well go freelance, and work purely for the money.
So, having achieved my ‘Objective’, I decided it was time to escape.
My memory is no longer sure of the exact numbers, but the Camera Section were asking for something like 8 redundancies, but received 28 volunteers. This must have been almost half he department. Such was the state of morale. The morning that applications opened, a long queue of Cameramen assembled at our Personnel Manager’s door. All wanted to be the first to volunteer. But she was late (an option not available to Cameramen). We had to get back to the studio before she arrived, so we resorted to leaving hand-written notes. My Post-It was the first to be stuck to her computer screen. Having spent many years cultivating the image of a Union trouble-maker, I had every hope that my offer would be accepted.
It was. Many others were disappointed.
Financially, the offer was a good one. Not only was there the lump sum redundancy payment but, at my age, I qualified for ‘Redundancy on the Grounds of Early Retirement’, which meant I would also get a full pension. I was even entitled to a percentage of my 40 year bonus. And there was the possibility of freelance work in future. O.K. all of this amounted to peanuts, when compared with the astronomical pay-off that Senior Executives would later award themselves (when found to be completely useless at their overpaid and unnecessary jobs) but, by the standards of a humble Cameraman, it was wealth indeed.
It was now 2001: a year that shares its name with an iconic EMI colour camera, and with a classic science fiction movie. I created a new desktop for my work computer. It depicted an HAL 9000 series computer, and flashed the message, ‘Career Functions Terminated’.
I was sent on a BBC Retirement Course. Sadly I was unable to pay much attention to what they were saying. I was directing a poetry video at the time, and some complications had arisen during the edit. Having no mobile phone in those days, this meant running to the nearest phone box, whenever there was a break, to check on progress. Later, owing to a cancellation by a colleague, I was able to attend a second Retirement Course. Those who say that there is ‘no such thing as a free lunch’ have evidently not been on a BBC Retirement Course. I had two free lunches, and very pleasant they were. We were given good financial advice. I understood it perfectly, as I listened, but not at all when I tried to recall it later. It was all too complicated for me. For simplicity, I used my spare cash to buy the maximum extra pension from the BBC Pension Fund. We were also lectured about avoiding boredom in retirement. Boredom?! I had a huge backlog of projects waiting for me, things I had been unable to achieve while working the long, anti-social hours of a TV Cameraman. There were novels to finish, learned treatises to research and animated movies to make. I was intending a very creative retirement.
Destiny made one last attempt to prevent me collecting my redundancy. On the night of Saturday, 3rd March 2001, I was working on ‘Match of the Day’. The programme was due to be transmitted live. I was scheduled to finish work, and to be stepping out of Television Centre, via the main entrance into Wood Lane, at half-past-midnight – exactly the right time and place to be blown to pieces by the car bomb!
One of the more stupid decisions made by BBC management when they built that new Reception area, was that they put the Newsroom directly above it. No doubt this gave journalists nice views over Wood Lane (if there are any nice views over Wood Lane), but it also provided an invitingly insecure target for any terrorist who disagreed with BBC News coverage.
A recent ‘Panorama’ programme had named suspects thought to be responsible for the Omagh massacre. A dissident Irish republican group, the ‘Real’ I.R.A., had taken offence. They bought a maroon London taxi, in Edmonton, North London; loaded it with up to 20 lbs of high explosive, and parked it in Wood Lane, immediately outside TV Centre. It was destined to detonate at the exact moment that I was due to leave the building. (Had they read my diary?) One of the reasons that I wasn’t injured was that there had been a last minute change of plan. Most unusually, ‘Match of the Day’ was not broadcast live, but was pre-recorded. I was able to leave work early, and was well on my way home by the time of the explosion. I must have walked straight past that red taxi, without noticing it.
Another reason was that a coded warning had been given. The taxi had been found and the Bomb Squad were attempting to disarm it, with the aid of a robot, when it detonated. The fireball filled Wood Land and badly damaged the front of Television Centre. The unfortunate robot was thrown about 50 yards, narrowly missing its operator. The blast also hit White City tube station, on the far side of the road, where a London Underground worker was injured by flying glass.
The police had cleared Wood Lane, and the front of TV Centre, but no one had warned people in other areas. Some of my Scenic colleagues, who were working the night shift in the Ring Road, knew nothing about it, until there was a deafening bang and the ground shook. Bits of red taxi flew right over the top of TV Centre and clattered around them.
My main complaint against the Real I.R.A. is, not that they tried to kill me, but that they didn’t use enough explosive. TV Centre’s Main Reception area is a hideous architectural eyesore, totally out of keeping with the rest of the building. It was a product of John Birt’s tasteless rebuilding extravaganza, and well deserved to be blown up. I had written to Ariel, to complain when it first opened, and received emails of support from the unfortunate souls condemned to work there.
Television Centre is a beautiful building: efficient of function and aesthetic in design. It dates from a time when architecture was space-age and futuristic, before modernism degenerated into ugly, brutalist slabs of concrete. It is an exciting, inspirational place, an ideal setting for imaginative people doing creative work. It’s original reception area, later renamed ‘Stage Door’, is a delightful space, full of light and colour: dominated by John Piper’s vibrant mural. It is spacious, but on a human scale. In contrast, the new Reception is a vast, soulless cavern: depressing, unimaginative and void. The gratuitous Henry Moore sculpture did nothing to lift the gloom. Grandiose yet meaningless, it is the architectural equivalent of an empty Armani suit – and, therefore perhaps, an appropriate metaphor for the whole John Birt era. Sadly, that taxi bomb only damaged the frontage, and didn’t entirely demolish the place!
We enjoyed a very pleasant leaving party, in the sixth floor hospitality suit at Television Centre. Since a number of Camera, Sound and Vision staff were leaving at the same time, we decided to pool our allowances and have a collective party. There were no formalities: no managers making tedious speeches, no embarrassing readings from personal files – in fact, no managers. We had traced large numbers of old colleagues, many of whom had left years before and lost touch. The only problem was that there were so many familiar faces that I wanted to talk to, and not enough time to talk to each for as long as I would have liked. One memorable moment was when an ex-Manager greeted an ex-Cameraman with the words, “Hello, I haven’t seen you since I sacked you!” Such was the success of our party that rumours of it spread throughout the building, even reaching the basement, where some engineers were having a much duller retirement gathering in B209. Abandoning their own party, and following the sounds of jollity, they gate-crashed ours. They were most welcome, even if their alcohol consumption exceeded anything we operators could manage!
It was the time of the ‘Revolving Door Syndrome’. Large numbers of BBC Staff were taking redundancy; leaving TV Centre; making a half-circuit of the revolving door, and coming straight back into the building, to continue working as freelancers. Exactly why the management thought this was a sensible use of Licence Payers’ money is unclear.
My friend Dudley Darby and I claim to have made the quickest ever turnaround between leaving the BBC as staff, and coming back again as freelancers. Our last day as BBC staff was 31st March 2001. Our contract was due to terminate at midnight, exactly. Once again we were working on ‘Match of the Day’. This time it was transmitted live. It was scheduled to finish just before midnight – but it overran. As the hands of the studio clock clicked vertical, Dudley and I exchanged a quick smirk. Just as the stroke of midnight had changed Cinderella’s coach back into a pumpkin, so it had changed Dudley and me into freelancers, without any perceptible pause in our camerawork. We hadn’t even bothered to go around the revolving door.
The problem with being made redundant and then going back to work for the same employer, even as a freelance, is that the Inland Revenue insist on taxing your redundancy lump sum. (Fair enough, since the redundancy was clearly spurious.) The way to avoid this was to become an employee of some other organisation, e.g. an agency, who could then hire you back to your original employer. The BBC were currently kicking out most of the Studio Electricians. Two of their number, Alex Hambi and John Nixon, were setting up an agency, to hire redundant electricians back to the BBC. Rather than establish an agency of our own, we asked if we could join them. And, after negotiations, it was agreed. So far as the BBC were concerned, I was now a freelance employee of the ‘Keylight’ agency.
I had done my sums before applying for redundancy. Allowing for my pension, and the fact that I would no longer be paying fares or meals away from home, it appeared that I only needed to work one day a week to earn as much as I had been earning as staff. This was my intention. Now I would have the free time to tackle that backlog of creative projects that I had been saving up for my retirement – But no – No yet. The BBC were calling me in so often that I was almost working full time. And, without any effort on my part, I was also picking up plenty of freelance work outside the BBC. I even found myself lecturing about camerawork at Ravensbourne College.
Working for the BBC as a freelancer was much more relaxing than being a member of staff. I could take leave whenever I wanted it, without argument. If I didn’t want to do a particular show I could simply decline the offer. I no longer had to worry about bureaucratic nonsense like ‘Objectives’ or ‘Annual Appraisals’. Producer Choice and the follies of senior management no longer affected me. And, with my pension, I was earning far more money than ever before. O.K. working as a Cameraman on live programmes is still a high-stress situation, but it is a positive, creative stress that is ultimately rewarding. The entirely negative, artificial stress, created by the high-handed diktats of BBC management, was a burden lifted from my shoulders. When irate staff members accosted me in the crew room, demanding to know how the Union was going to resist the latest management outrage, I could shrug calmly and point out that it was no longer my problem. If they wanted to sort out the BBC, they’d have to become Union reps themselves, and fight the battles I used to fight on their behalf. I no longer worked for the BBC. I worked for ‘Keylight’, and they were a very good employer.
It was true. Somehow those two Electricians and their secretary were able to organise the inherently chaotic, irregular schedules of Cameramen, with a friendly efficiency that the whole administrative hierarchy of the BBC had been unable to achieve. They always acted as though it was their job to provide a service to me, whereas the BBC management had always expected me to serve them. We had only intended to stay with ‘Keylight’ for the 30 days (or whatever) necessary to avoid tax. But we were so comfortable there, and everything worked so well, that we stayed. Their modest percentage was well worth it. After a couple of years, however, local BBC Managers began a vindictive campaign against ‘Keylight’ (for very questionable reasons). BBC Allocators announced that they were no longer prepared to hire us through the agency, and insisted on booking us directly. We resisted, out of loyalty to John and Alex, but were overruled. The work continued to roll in, much as before, but it was never quite the same. I still have a smart and comfortable fleece, emblazoned with ‘Keylight’ logo. I wear it with pride.
One of my last duties as a BBC Staffer had been to train up a new generation of college leavers. I assumed that, within a few years of my departure, my former trainees would have become fully competent cameramen, and my services would no longer be required. I was wrong. Ten years passed and I was still being called in to work on BBC programmes, although the workload was gradually declining.
Then, in 2011, I discovered a shadow on my vision. I had macular degeneration: not a good thing for a Cameraman. The condition was treated and has stabilised, but my eyesight is not a clear as it was. The surgeon says that I am the worst type of patient. Because my vision was so sharp before, I am aware of minor imperfections that wouldn’t bother others. Most people, he tells me, would be very pleased with eyesight as good as mine. I can still read some of the bottom line of the opticians’ chart, provided I wait for the blotches to clear. Unfortunately, when working as a TV Cameraman, you don’t have time for the blotches to clear. You have to be able to focus instantly. Also, I had now reached my 65th birthday. My original contract with the BBC had only required me to work until I was 60. Having given them an extra 5 years, and having reached the conventional retirement age, I decided it was time to stop working. Next time the phone rang, and the BBC asked for me, I told them that I (Roger Bunce, Staff Number 119760P, Pension Number M33790A, after 46 years with the BBC, staff and freelance) had finally retired.
So, I no longer had to go to work, and the children had left home. Now, surely, I could begin to tackle that backlog of creative projects? – No – Not yet – The children had left home, but now the Grandchildren had arrived! In an age when both parents have to work, it is we grandparents who have become unpaid, full-time childminders. Romping on the carpet with a toddler was a pleasure when I was a young parent. Now that I am older, and my joints are stiffer, it is not so easy. But I still do it – and enjoy it.
Even that phase of my life is now ending. Our youngest Grandson has started school, giving us some free time during the day. So, I am beginning to tackle that creative backlog. My gothic horror novel is completed, but yet to find a publisher. I have written up a couple of my learned treatises (crackpot theories I have developed over the years) and am researching others. My theory about the nature of Gravity, and other fundamental forces, predicted that the Expansion of the Universe was accelerating, long before astronomers confirmed this. My studies of Ancient Egypt have concluded that Moses was a New Kingdom Pharaoh! Still at the research stage, are projects as varied as a theory about Bronze Age contact between Britain and Mycenaean Greece, and a history of the English V-Sign. I have no idea what I’ll do with them all when I’ve finished, but at least all those abstract ideas, that have been buzzing around in my head for so long, are achieving a more tangible form, in writing. I am also teaching myself the art of animation. I am aiming for a style of computer animation that doesn’t look like computer animation. Two of my early experiments may be see on YouTube. “The Battle of Beckenham” is an epic with a cast of thousands, and no plot ( http://youtu.be/pRIYv6nvS9Q ), while “Cameraman: The Movie” is a surprisingly accurate impression of life at BBC Television Centre, in the 1970s ( http://youtu.be/Hgu-S9kSik0 ).
Despite having left the staff in 2001, I still see myself as a loyal BBC person. I still refer to the BBC as ‘Us’ not ‘Them’. I often find myself arguing in support of the Licence Fee. I regularly attend reunions of former colleagues, where we reminisce about our contribution to the Golden Age of TV. And I still get bloody furious at the idiotic antics of those corrupt, self-serving parasites who overpopulate the senior levels of corporate management! The BBC must be one of the greatest assemblages of talented, creative, imaginative people in the world. And despite the hard work and low pay, it was always a very happy and humorous assemblage. It has been a pleasure and an honour to have shared their company, and to have played my small part in their success. It was only the management who let everyone else down. They didn’t seem to belong to the same organisation. The phrase “Lions led by Donkeys” springs to mind. The Public Accounts Committee has now exposed some of the greed and incompetence which has long been evident to staff. I wish Tony Hall every success in sorting them out, but fear that the problem my be too large, and too deeply entrenched. I was particularly angered by the decision to sell and demolish much of Television Centre. It is a appalling act of cultural and architectural vandalism, and a colossal waste of public money. Only £200 million was made from the sale, while over £2 billion has been squandered on moving into inferior substitute premises. Only BBC management could ‘sell the family silver’ and make a loss on the deal. I have been playing an active part in the campaign to save TV Centre: writing to the press, M.P.s, etc. (Seewww.savetvcentrestudios.co.uk/arguing-the-case/ ) No doubt we will fail. Too many dodgy business interests stand to benefit from the deal. But cultural historians must eventually recognise that it was a disgraceful blunder, and I want to be on record as having opposed it at the time.
And now I’m paying another visit to YouTube, and listening again to Mitch Benn’s wonderful song, “I’m Proud of the BBC” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3q2iZuU5WM ) My sentiments, exactly.
