"Hmmm... How do I write about 3780 people losing their jobs and inject some humour in the tale?"
That is the question that rumbled around in my head last Monday night. On that day, the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, announced 2050 job cuts (he'd announced 1730 others a couple of weeks before). I felt I should write something about it, primarily to let people who know me find out whether my job was affected. It isn't, by the way -- not directly. Most of the people on my team are "at risk". Several good friends have been told their positions have vanished. And another team that we work very closely with, and which provides most of our funding, has been dismantled.
But I feel uncomfortable talking about serious subjects in public and this is all pretty serious stuff. Nineteen percent of the BBC are being punted out the door. Whatever the long-term strategy, in the short-term this is going to cause major disruption and heartbreak for many people and many of the BBC's services.
Fortunately, yesterday a vengeful god came to my aid and a very entertaining email about the Director-General arrived in my inbox. It had been forwarded around the BBC for a couple of days before it made it to me, and has already been widely reported in the British Press, so I doubt my reporting it here will cause any great controversy.
Basically, Jeremy Paxman is a respected British news presenter who was about to interview Mark Thompson. He had heard a rumour that Mr. Thompson had once bit a colleague and wrote to ask if it was true. Unfortunately, he didn't get the reply in time for his interview but the following exchange is apparently the original email conversation he had with the victim. I should stress that there is no way for me to know if the exchange was genuine, but the official response from the BBC acknowledges the incident did happen.
Jeremy asked a journalist named Anthony Massey, "I've got to interview Mark Thompson tomorrow. Is it true that he once bit you?"
He wrote back, "Sorry I didn't reply in time, I've been away from the office for the last week, and I missed the News Festival or I could have offered this from the audience!
It is absolutely true. It was late summer or early autumn of 1988, when he was the newly appointed editor of the Nine O'Clock News, and I was a Home News Organiser. It was 9.15 in the morning, in the middle of the old sixth floor newsroom. I went up to his desk to talk about some story after the 9.00 meeting we used to have then. I was standing next to him on his right, and he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star (I always remember that detail). Before I could say a word he suddenly turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my left upper arm (leaving marks through the shirt, but not drawing blood). It hurt. I pulled my arm out of his jaws, like a stick out of the jaws of a labrador. The key thing is, we didn't have a row first, or even speak, and I had never had any dispute with him before. He was recently arrived in the newsroom, and I hardly knew him. He just bit me in the arm for no reason without any warning or preamble. I don't think it was personal. Something turned in his brain, and anyone who had been standing there at that moment would have been bitten, Linda from the teabar, the BBC Chairman, Keith Graves, anyone. It just happened to be me.
Thompson didn't apologise or explain, so I went to complain to my then boss, Chris Cramer. All Cramer said was "This whole place is full of fucking headbangers", which was a fair point and indeed is still true, but didn't help somehow. I wanted to bring the whole BBC disciplinary process down on Thompson's head, and get the NUJ involved, but Cramer was desperate for that not to happen. So I got sent abroad on some story for a month or so, and when I came back it had lost momentum, and I never pursued it. Also I was on attachment and applying for a permanent job, so I didn't want to rock the boat. And in those days dinosaurs ruled the earth, and it seemed quite acceptable for senior people to bite junior colleagues. But several times since Mark Damazer, who was one of many witnesses, has said to me "You could have ended Mark Thompson's career with a single word, and you never did." He sounded as though he wished I had, though I thought he was meant to be a friend of Thompson's.
Thompson stayed in the newsroom for several months until he became Editor of Panorama, and we have met a number of times since then. But in a very British way, neither of us has ever mentioned it. But when he became DG several people who were in the newsroom at the time reminded me of this incident (as if I might have forgotten it) and it went all round the building. To my knowledge the only time it's appeared in print was shortly afterwards, when a brief item appeared in the Londoner's Diary in the Evening Standard. This was nothing whatever to do with me, though I was not sorry to see it. My name wasn't mentioned, which was good. But the story did go round the world, and when I was in Kuwait just after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, an NBC producer said "Are you the person Mark Thompson bit?" Fame of a sort.
Now Thompson is DG, the story is probably more valuable. The joke in the newsroom is that if ever they make me redundant, I'll be off to the Daily Mail or the Sun with my arm in a sling. There are several other good Thompson stories. I know two more. He has a bit of a reputation for mindless violence against innocent bystanders (ask the old hands in RCR about the strangling incident). But he's only attacked me once.
I last saw Thompson just after he was made DG, at the BBC News 50th anniversary party in TC1 in May. He saw me across the room and went white. I don't know why. He shouldn't be afraid of me, I don't bite."
Jeremy replied, "Gosh! I wish I'd got this earlier, although it would have been hard to know precisely how to play it, I think. The bloke is quite clearly insane."
"He certainly is," wrote Anthony. "Here's the subbed down version of the strangling story, which I hasten to add I got at second hand and did not witness personally:
The Nine, with Thompson editing, were leading with the death of some famous British actor like Gielgud or Ralph Richardson. At two minutes to nine a picture editor dubbed the obit to get a perfect sound balance. As it was four minutes long and this was the pre-digital age, this wasn't very bright, and the story missed its slot as the lead. After the Nine was over Thompson stormed down to VTs in search of the culprit and tried to throttle him. He had both hands round the man's throat and had to be dragged off. All this might have been forgotten but for the fact that the picture editor, according to the story, had a nervous breakdown, left the BBC and never worked again. They still talk about it in RCR.
So I got off lightly really."
Jeremy: "Bloody hell. If any of this came out, he'd be toast."
I haven't read the direct responses from the BBC, but the following is lifted from an article in This is London.
"The BBC said: 'Mark did bite him but it wasn't intended to hurt him. He thought he was doing something funny.
'When he was later told that Anthony thought he had "gone for him", Mark went up and said sorry and tried to make amends.
Mark does remember the incident because he remembers Anthony took it the wrong way. It was horseplay.'
Officials said no action would be taken against Paxman or Massey over the leaking of the e-mails - and denied Thompson read Daily Star horoscopes.
Privately BBC officials denied Thompson had attempted to strangle a colleague."
My favourite part is "...and denied Thompson read Daily Star horoscopes." I'm glad they straightened that out.
