Michael Grade: Self - Director of Programmes 1986-1987

Quotes 

• Alasdair Milne : I knew he was very good at constructing these rather complicated sequences with battles and discussions about battles, and so on. And I said to him, the Falklands War just having ended, "What about doing a play about the Falklands?" And he said "Yeah, OK, I'll think about that."

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Curteis had never hidden his political views. His plays tended to celebratory of firm government. This new work was expected to be pro-Thatcher.

  Ian Curteis : It was, essentially, the case for the defence. The BBC had been heavily criticised, possibly with some justice, at the way they had reported one side of the war while it was actually going on, but not attempting to explain *why* it was being fought, at any rate not enough for people to remember why it was being fought. And so my play was intended to cover that side of it.

  Alasdair Milne : One day The Falklands Play landed on my desk and I read it and I thought, and wrote to him, that it was a thumping good yarn.

  Ian Curteis : He was enthusiastic about it. I also delivered it to the then Head of Plays and it was put into immediate production: studios were booked, budget was allocated and signed. So the whole show was on the road for BBC1 at prime time. And then complications suddenly appeared.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Enter two key BBC executives, the Managing Director of Television, Bill Cotton, and the new Director of Programmes, Michael Grade. Strong personalities, they didn't share their Director General's enthusiasm.

  Alasdair Milne : I sent it down to the Television Centre where it ran into more flak. Bill Cotton thought it was one-dimensional and Michael Grade didn't like it at all. So there was a professional disagreement between the three of us.

  Michael Grade : I was very disappointed because I was quite an admirer of Ian's work, Churchill and the Generals, and so on - very much to my taste. That kind of drama adds to the mix of general fiction that one sees on TV. And I read it and I thought it was a very poor piece of work. It was the Goon Show characters in the Argentine which were silly. He obviously had quite good access, I suspect, to the UK side of things, but basically he had to imagine, I think, what went on on the Argentinean side. And that was where the thing really fell apart. And his characterisations were thin, to say the least. The script needed... was many, many drafts away from being producible.

• Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Grade and Goodchild claim the real problem was that Curteis resisted *any* re-working of his script.

  Ian Curteis : I was working on the script with both producer and director, and we got on very well. And there were various things which were proposed which were very good ideas and I'm very happy to have incorporated them. But to come from Goodchild and, it appears, Bill Cotton and Michael Grade, none of whom had written, directed, produced a play in their lives - that was a very different kettle of fish and was on a different level altogether.

  Michael Grade : Ian's view was the script he had delivered was commissioned by the Director General. "Just go ahead - don't tell me to re-write - just go ahead - I'll make a few changes - but just go ahead and make it." He thought he had a mandate from the Director General to make it, and it came as quite a surprise that we didn't share his enthusiasm for his work.

• Ian Curteis : I was deeply unhappy. I could feel that the whole project was going to get the chop. So I did a great deal of writing around and informing the Governors who were very shocked. Really trying to bring pressure to bear on the decision-makers to re-consider their decision. But after a while I realised the waters were closing over the head of the play.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Curteis believed that his play was being suppressed for political reasons and that the BBC was trying to kill it completely.

  Ian Curteis : Anglia Television had asked to take the play and do it on ITV. And Michael Grade rang Lord Buxton at the highest level, saying "The play is not available. We're not going to release the rights." If that's not gagging, I don't know that is.

  Michael Grade : There was a story in the press that Anglia Television where Ian was very well-connected wanted to produce it, and the BBC had refused to release the contracted rights that they'd licensed from Curteis. I had very good friends at Anglia at the highest level and I rang them and asked them if it was true. Because we would have no problem passing the script on - what we call "turnaround" in the business, getting our money back from Anglia and let them produce it, let the world make its judgement. No problem with that at all. But I was absolutely categorically assured at the highest level at Anglia that they had no interest in it.

• [fearing that the BBC was going to suppress production of The Falklands Play, Ian Curteis released a statement to the press] 

  Peter Fiddick : When it went public, it went public in more detail than, in my experience, any similar row ever has.

  [shots of headlines such as "BBC accused of Falklands play censorship" and "utterly Biased, morally Bankrupt, politically Corrupt" with the BBC in large type] 

  Peter Goodchild : The press were just going for the BBC in a way that certainly hasn't happened in... there have been occasional scandals... but they were really *going* for the BBC.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  The papers seized on what was portrayed as a left-wing conspiracy, and a media feeding-frenzy followed. For the Thatcher government, the row seemed to confirm their claims about bias at the BBC.

  Conservative MP : [in the House of Commons, voice]  They're trying to enforce changes in the script. Just because it came out as being pro-Britain, pro-government and pro the Prime Minister. These actions are quite disgraceful.

  Margaret Thatcher : [in the House of Commons, voice]  Mr Speaker, I'm grateful for what my honourable friend says. I'm sure that the people concerned will take very careful note of his comments in this house.

  Ian Curteis : It touched a nerve in the national psyche and it released people's anger against the BBC.

  Chris Dunkley : It was a wonderful example of what quite a lot of middle class conservative - small c - people think about the BBC. It bore out all their worst suspicions. "You write a play about the Falklands. Obviously it supports Margaret Thatcher and thinks that what she did was a good thing and that she behaved well. And what happens? It gets banned. Typical pinko BBC." I think that's why typically somewhat right-wing newspapers took it up with the enthusiasm that they did.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  And those papers had no problem getting Curteis's version of events.

  Chris Dunkley : Curteis himself wrote a very detailed account of his side, which was used a lot by all of us, I think. That was what you carried around with you if you were covering the subject.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  But on the other side of the argument, information was scarce.

  Peter Fiddick : The BBC's position very much was one of simply saying "No, we didn't do that." They certainly couldn't prove what they thought or what their political fears might have been.

  Chris Dunkley : The BBC, although it has an huge press office, lots of people in it, is an extremely difficult organisation to get anything out of - if they don't want you to get it out. There was a *deep* suspicion that the BBC had a good reason why it didn't want to give a straight answer.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  In fact the BBC couldn't *give* a straight answer as it had more than one.

  Chris Dunkley : Not till much later in the day did the BBC start leaking the idea that "really the reason for this is that the play just isn't any good". It seemed to be deeply "unfortunate", to say the least, that just didn't happen at the beginning. If they were telling the truth, you'd expect it to come out straight away.

  Michael Grade : I think that I made it very clear at the time to the board of governors, the press, to anyone who was interested, that the sole ground for not going ahead with the commission was the fact that I didn't think the script was good enough. The problem-with-quality issue didn't come across as clearly as it should have done was because Alasdair chose to use the Election as an excuse, rather than say to Ian "Sorry, it doesn't cut the mustard, old boy. We're not spending a million of the licence-payer's money on this. Very disappointing but there you go. That's life." He kind of fudged it, really. And once you start to fudge, we got ourselves into a hopeless public relations muddle.

• Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Following the furore over The Falklands Play, Curteis's career with the BBC took a severe knock.

  Ian Curteis : It was my swansong, I think, of my career. Broadcasting is a very small area indeed, and I was a difficult customer. I was a whistleblower.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Curteis claims his income fell by 90 per cent and that his name became mud in the media world.

  Ian Curteis : Oh, I think without any question I was blacklisted. I don't mean that there's an actual typed list that goes around saying "This man is frightful. Ian Curteis Number One Enemy of the People" or anything like that. I just think it becomes known that you're trouble.

  Michael Grade : I never believe in blacklists. I think the people who accuse the BBC of blacklisting are people who have fallen out of favour because they haven't delivered. And if they choose to see it as being blacklisted, that's a sort of post-rationalisation. They would perhaps do better to confront their own shortcomings, rather than see a conspiracy theory. The idea that anyone's ever blacklisted at the BBC is absolute nonsense.

• Ian Curteis : Everyone is right from their own point of view. And if it was a private company, Michael Grade and Bill Cotton would be entirely justified. But it *isn't* a private company. They blocked the play. They didn't tell me why. They did not commission another play to put a similar viewpoint - the case for the defence.

  Michael Grade : There was no politics at the BBC. The BBC was not trying to change Ian Curteis's view of the world. It was not trying to change the script. We just wanted something we felt was worth a million quid of the licence-payer's money.

  Sir Bernard Ingham : I do not need persuading now, and I did not need persuading then, that there were elements within the BBC that didn't want to broadcast anything that portrayed Margaret Thatcher in a good light.

  Peter Goodchild : I never heard anybody actually saying "This is just a load of right-wing rubbish" or whatever. That wasn't the way it was discussed. There was no conspiracy.

  Eddie Mair - Narrator : [voiceover]  Yet fifteen years on, the BBC still stands accused. Production of the play may be complete but it seems the row behind it will never be resolved.

  Peter Fiddick : It was, from my point of view, impossible then and is impossible now to know what or who to believe.

  Chris Dunkley : It will be extremely interesting to see whether most of us now think it's a good or a bad piece of work.

  Alasdair Milne : I still believe, from the moment I first saw it, that it was worth making. I look forward to seeing it very much.

  Michael Grade : I don't like to see any work buried. I shall watch it with interest.

  Sir Bernard Ingham : I welcome it. Let's see what he wrote. Judge for ourselves.