War!

Paramount Pictures

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I experienced many professional encounters with celebrities. As an entertainment journalist and, later, a press officer, I became immunised to the fragility of egos and the invariably capricious nature of volatile personalities.

When I wrote for a living, it was not uncommon to walk away from an interview thinking, “Well, they were nothing like their on-screen version.” That’s not to say that they were two-faced, but it was invariably priced in to dealings with some celebs that what propelled them to present, act or perform was often inverse to their real-life selves. 

Not to single anyone out, but Lenny Henry was a prime example: I got to meet him as a teenager, when my father was at the BBC working on the comedy show Three Of A Kind with Tracey Ullman, and David Copperfield. Henry was pretty much the larger than life loon who’d made Saturday mornings a laugh on Tiswas. Years later, now as a writer, I interviewed him at The Groucho Club and it was like pulling teeth. Perhaps he was simply having a bad day. We all do.

I assumed that some interviewees went into encounters with the press with their guards up. But so often there were reminders that whatever they did for a living was an extroversion, and underneath it all, many were fundamentally quite shy. The worst mistake to make was thinking you were about to become a mate (an idiom of showbusiness reporters, perfected by John Blake when he was the editor of The Sun’s Bizarre column, and continued by the likes of Piers Morgan in that role). Because you weren’t. Your relationship was purely transactional, designed to flog their record/film/show/book. 

I should point out that not everyone was a monster. Lorraine Kelly, I recall, was every bit the genuinely likeable person she appears on daytime TV. Jools Holland was another (I interviewed him on the day of his return from suspension from The Tube in 1987 and he couldn’t have been any more accommodating). But there were also marked contrasts: months before that trip to Newcastle, I visited the BBC’s then-new daytime TV show Open Air in Manchester. Its chief presenter, the late Pattie Coldwell loudly blanked me, apparently taking umbrage over a feature on swimsuits in the magazine I was working for (deeming the piece sexist). Her junior co-presenter, a young Eamonn Holmes, took pity and gave me a splendid interview.

When I moved to the other side of the notebook, and became a TV press officer, I encountered ego fragility from a more bruising perspective. There were tantrums (by presenters, not me) directed at the first lackey to stray into the wrong spot at the wrong time (mentioning no names, but he was also on Tiswas…), and no shortage of awkward moments, requiring the sort of diplomatic acquiescence of the kind so brilliantly satirised by obsequious promoter Artie Fufkin (played by Paul Shaffer) in This Is Spinal Tap.

Drop The Dead Donkey (Hat Trick Productions)

Treading on egomaniacal eggshells was an occupational hazard, and nothing more trepidatious as dealing with those threatened by rivals. When Channel 4 launched its sitcom Drop The Dead Donkey in 1990, poking fun at life in a fictional satellite TV newsroom, eyebrows were raised in Isleworth where Sky News had gone on air in February 1989. Suspicions were already raised as to where writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin were getting their ideas from, and fears weren’t helped by the fact that the show’s art department had sourced the exact same time of desk phones and vending machines that Sky had in use. One episode, when a TV awards dinner got out of hand as rivalry between Globelink News and a rival broadcaster spilled into a punch-up, appeared to be dangerously familiar, having attended a black tie awards event myself in which some ‘banter’ was exchanged between competing tables. 

Later in my time at Sky, I arrived at work one morning to be informed - by a current presenter on the channel - that a pair of anchors (I think that was the phrase used…) had, the evening before, been involved in an actual punch-up in the newsroom, resulting in the two rolling down a corridor in a tumble likened by one witness to “a clothed version of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed’s naked wrestling bout in Ken Russell’s Women In Love”. 

As soon as I was informed of the event I knew exactly who it would have involved: the incident had been brewing for some time: as I recall, it had begun when one took umbrage to the other’s claim, in their PR biography handout, that they’d been on air the moment Nelson Mandela had walked free from his Robben Island prison cell. The other claimed that, no, they were on air at the time. The truth was that one had indeed been broadcasting live at the exact moment of Mandela’s release, while the other was merely on air that evening. Over time, this built into a passive-aggressive conflict similar to that between Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito’s rival ’aluminium siding’ salesmen in Barry Levinson’s hilarious Tin Men (a feud that begins with a minor car accident before turning into a full-scale war of attrition). In the case of the Sky presenters it manifested itself in things like one childishly occupying the other’s (undesignated) chair in the newsroom, purely to wind them up when they arrived for their shift..

Their dispute was perhaps the most notorious that I encountered, but it wasn’t alone in the organisation. And because I was dealing with working journalists, all of whom knew journalists in Fleet Street, it didn’t stay internal for long. By the following Sunday, one of the presenters called me at home in a panic, unable to leave his front door because a pack of photographers was outside. Quite bizarre, now I think of it: Sky News at the time was hardly front page news, given that its audience was relatively small (as it is now). But the media likes to eat itself, and none more so when a rival organisation is  involved (Sky, being Murdoch-owned at the time, rarely earned any favours from other media groups). Journalists like gossipy stories about their own. And somehow, newspaper editors seem to think the public does too.

Hence, yesterday’s front pages, dominated by Phillip Schofield’s “stepping back” (when did that phrase replaced “sacked”?) from ITV’s This Morning, following weeks of a supposedly growing feud between him and co-presenter Holly Willoughby. 

In case you’ve been holidaying on Mars with dodgy 5G coverage, morning TV’s ‘golden couple’ (as they are always branded), have seen their once “brilliant chemistry” eroded by…well, no one is fully sure what. The common narrative is that public flak the couple faced after seemingly queue jumping at the Queen’s lying-in-state last September (i.e. ‘Queuegate’, of which it has since been positioned that they were there for editorial reasons) started to drive a wedge between them. There has been the additional element that the paedophilia conviction for Schofield’s brother Timothy put further strain on their working partnership. That, so we’ve been fed, is the cause of a feud that grew over several weeks to a tabloid crescendo (and not just the ‘red tops’ - even the notably highbrow broadsheets have weighed in on it).

Schofield - who I interviewed when he was still presenting children’s TV on the BBC with sidekick Gordon The Gopher, and was every bit as affable as his on-screen persona - had enjoyed a 14-year screen relationship with Willoughby that seemed genuine. But something has gone irretrievably wrong. When Schofield issued a statement on Saturday afternoon, admitting that “the last few weeks haven't been easy for us” as the tabloids had been giving daily updates of behind-the-scenes frostiness, Willoughby was said to have been blindsided. 

After last Thursday morning’s show - the pair’s final scheduled appearance of the week - Schofield was apparently informed by This Morning editor Martin Frizell that his contract would not be renewed in the summer. Schofield’s statement confirmed that he was leaving the show, giving the politician’s resignation message that he was becoming too much of a distraction, that the dispute with Willoughby had “become the story” and that he wished to “protect the show I love”. 

That’s telly for you. And none of this is exactly important. As plenty of people have noted, following the blanket coverage of the affair yesterday, that surely with Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and plenty of other topics worthy of attention, a pair of TV presenters falling out is hardly essential. It’s not. But I think that, perhaps snootily, ignores the fact that television plays a greater part in people’s lives than those who denigrate it are prepared to admit.

I can’t say that I’ve ever watched an episode of This Morning, and can only attest to Schofield and Willoughby’s chemistry from frequent clips of the couple giggling uncontrollably at something one of them said or has happened in the studio. Not my kind of informative TV, but plenty have loved it. And will continue to, whoever sits on the sofa. 

Eammon Holmes who, since my encounter in 1987 went on to present GMTV, Sky News’ breakfast show, This Morning itself and, latterly the reactionary GB News (where his apparently conservative politics have found a home), made a somewhat caustic remark about the Schofield-Willoughby falling out (for the record, Holmes and wife Ruth Langsford were dropped by ITV as This Morning’s Friday presenting team). After the BAFTA TV awards, at which neither Schofield or Willoughby appeared, Holmes was quoted as saying: “I think there should have been a special award for Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby for best actors.” Ouch. He did, though, go on to make the salient point that This Morning is something of a daytime TV institution. “It will carry on no matter who presents it and anyone can check the viewing figures, there’s no difference between whether they present it or anyone else.”

That, though, doesn’t appear to be ITV’s view of it. In the wake of Schofield’s announcement, “friends” of the presenter have claimed that he’s been “hung out to dry”, that This Morning’s producers had to make a choice: if the supposedly perfect chemistry between their hosts was broken, do they discard both or retain one, and if so, who do they keep? It would appear that would be Willoughby. And core to all this is the actual business of commercial television: ratings. At one point This Morning was getting an audience of 1.4 million - relatively large for daytime TV - but in recent weeks that number has dropped considerably, with just 726,720 tuning in this time last week, as the war between the presenters played out relentlessly in the press. Once viewers start tuning out, so do advertisers. And when that happens, there’s always a casualty. That, then, will be Schofield. Oh, and the dignity of anyone who takes this stuff too seriously.

TV sofas - the politics of the left and the right

In our shallow, insecure times, people place great store in where they sit. It's something which has become increasingly felt at companies operating 'hot desking' policies, where workers no longer sit at the same place automatically, thus preventing desks from filling up with personal photographs, 'amusing' signs about not being mad to work there, and accumulated lunch detritus.

When it first began in - where else? - Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, hot desking wasn't perceived as a sign of disappearing job security. It was embraced as part of the zany, anything-goes, free-yourself-from-convention culture that went with all those skateboarding, surf shorts-wearing offices in California.

"That's my spot"

But when the practice spread to corporate offices in Europe, where notions of employment security have a very different texture, the idea of workers not expecting to have "their spot" each day came as a shock. Not knowing quite what the etiquette was, passive-agressive disputes broke out over computer mice or the adjustment of seat heights. But old habits die slowly, and even in offices with no allocated seating, people generally still plonk where they've always plonked...until some interloper appears to upset the peace.

In television, where you sit is important. In the Sky newsroom some years ago, there was a large and fairly uncompromising Kiwi by the name of Scott Chisholm, who co-presented evening news bulletins. Chisholm had his spot, and few seemed willing or brave enough to challenge it. There was something clearly of the animal kingdom about all this.

And thus it proved when another newsroom alpha, Chris Mann, appeared in that part of the Osterley safari park and had the temerity to use Chisholm's desk, possibly out of provocation. At some point afterwards - I can't now remember the exact chronology - Chisholm and Mann ended up in a clothed version of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed's wrestling match in Women In Love, resulting in Mann taking a trip to the Royal Free Hospital in north London. Trebles and sackings all round.

BBC

Hopefully, then, things won't end up quite so testosterone-fuelled on the set of BBC Breakfast, where the clean-cut vicar's son Dan Walker (he of Football Focus and not working on Sundays on religious grounds fame) has just replaced the retiring Bill Turnbull after 15 years on the famous red couch.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Walker was installed in Turnbull's old spot, on the right-hand side of the sofa - the 'camera left' position as the viewer sees it. This apparently caused viewer Adele Clarke great umbrage, and she wrote to Radio Times to complain that Breakfast producers were being horrendously sexist and that by rights, the longer-standing co-anchor Louise Minchin should now be automatically 'promoted' to the left of frame as the senior presenter.

In few other professions where you sit counts. A judge, obviously. A school headmaster, possibly. On an aircraft, the captain - and therefore commander - always sits in the left-hand seat. That IS a convention of authority. In all these cases, none are a matter of gender, either.

In the case of its flagship breakfast show, however, the BBC maintains that who-sits-where has nothing to do with seniority, but one of aesthetics. Breakfast producers apparently screen-tested Minchin in the camera left position and Walker camera right, but it just didn't work visually. That should be obvious: Walker is 6ft 6in and, as any photographer will tell you, putting that in the middle would just look weird - and if anything, would have made Walker even more prominent.

Chris Evans - a tall bloke himself, and who always sat camera-left to Gabby Roslin on The Big Breakfast - refutes the BBC's visual argument as "absolute tosh", but then I've never seen him sat anywhere else when there's a co-presenter to his side. Photographic composition has to count, even on a news programme, but that clearly hasn't been what this brouhaha has been about.

BBC

What Minchin herself thinks about it all is not fully clear. Tittle-tattle travels fast from wine bar to wine bar in medialand, though, and given the leaky-sieve nature of most newsrooms, it's no surprise that there are murmurings that she was pushing for the perceived prize spot on the Breakfast sofa, but then this is so far unsubstantiated. Frankly, though, until the subject came up in the Radio Times, I don't think anyone had thought less of her sitting to Walker's left, or any more of Walker sitting to her right.

That hasn't stopped a full-on media storm, of the kind only the media likes to create for its own amusement. In today's Guardian, Miriam O'Reilly - who sued the BBC for ageism after she was dropped as presenter of Countryfile - blamed "deep-rooted misogyny" in TV newsrooms for the left-right arrangement and the apparently unspoken rule that the senior presenter always sits on the left-hand side of the screen.

I agree that ageism is endemic in television, but then there are so many 'isms' in the entertainment business as a whole. Whether it's good roles for older women in Hollywood or that Bruce Forsyth was (until his departure) too old to host Strictly Come Dancing, there's always strong argument that such biases exist. The counter argument is always that television, like cinema, is a visual art, and therefore if it looks good, it probably is good. After all, did we ever get wound up by Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes sitting in that order on Blue Peter?

TV news journalists, however, do get annoyed by such things. They consider themselves serious journalists rather than light entertainers (though the editorial agenda of Breakfast sometimes says otherwise...). Authority counts perhaps as much as it does for the airline pilot. Positioning Minchin as the lead presenter of Breakfast is no bad thing. Few have raised the fact that Walker is younger than her, which means that she now has what looks like a lanky teenager in his first suit sat next to her. That should indicate seniority to begin with, but in television - as so many aspects of life - perception is nine-tenths of reality. Personally, until Ms. Clarke's letter came up, I - and I suspect most people - probably never gave it any thought. It's just two people on television, with a director, in the case of Breakfast, ensuring that his or her choice of shots is as visually appealing as they are editorially beneficial.

However, what this argument seems to forget is that television is also an aural medium, and none more so than breakfast news when viewers are only paying partial attention to what's on the screen. Who speaks, rather than where they sit is just as important. That's why awkward moments are so commonplace when two TV presenters can't decide who is going to read what on the Autocue. Perhaps, then, the real issue is deciding who gets to say "Good morning, you're watching BBC Breakfast with X and me, Y" than who has a hierarchical superiority based on where they sit.

In America, however, things are less subtle. As Anchorman's Ron Burgundy highlighted so brilliantly there are unbreakable formulas in television news. Visit any US city and watch the local evening bulletins: there will usually be the slightly older, seasoned male hack sat next to the younger, perfectly-coiffed hackette. I've probably never even noticed it, but the convention of man-left, woman-right is no doubt upheld pretty much everywhere. What you then get is the over-excitable "sports" guy to their right and a weather presenter clamped to their left. That is, surely, convention, but also perhaps one of familiarity (much like American supermarkets, whose layouts are always - to me at least - exactly the same).

TV producers are not stupid. In Los Angeles I often used to watch the frankly ridiculous 'zoo' madness of Fox's Good Day LA, a morning news show which seemed focused solely around its venerable anchor Steve Edwards. Either side of him, weather presenter Jillian Barberie and entertainment reporter Dorothy Lucey basically talked over each other. Producers presumably thought this gonzo coffee-and-cacophany format 'wacky'. All the viewer got was a silver-haired news veteran and two screeching blondes engaged in often incomprehensible banter. That's not a sexist comment - it was so obvious what was going on.

Back in the UK, Sky News, like its American cousins in the Murdoch empire, has never been short of criticism that its on-air talent is there more for aesthetic appeal (Adam Boulton not withstanding...) than news credibility. There's no doubt that Sky's presenter roster is blessed with what could be politely termed "visual appeal", but to its credit, there are also some very good journalists who front bulletins. Ever since it launched in 1989, Sky News has mainly operated a two-anchor approach and, yes, often with the male anchor to the left, but not always.

Sky

Sarah-Jane Mee - a very good anchor indeed - currently holds the 'primary' role on Sky News' Sunrise while Eamonn Holmes recovers from hip surgery (notably Gillian Joseph also takes taking the hot seat at weekends). Nobody seems to have an issue with any of these arrangements, and no one makes a big deal out of them - it's simply what works for Sky.

And, at no point has it been suggested that there is any inferiority to the whoever takes the co-presenter seat. That said, Holmes himself only underwent the surgery after putting it off for years fearing that he didn't want to be seen as "old" through television's notoriously youth-obsessed eyes (he's 55). That, back to O'Reilly's comments, is the bigger issue.