All to Play For (2 page)

This is my story, in case that wasn’t obvious. The tale of a late baby-boomer from Cardiff, who set off to see the world and arrived in Valhalla, amongst her heroes; who rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of her generation before they moved or shook anything. Who found herself caught in the middle of a phenomenal clash of cultures as class war collided with art and commerce in the 1980s and 90s and almost destroyed the BBC – I’m doing it again.

Life’s an adventure, that’s for sure. You don’t really know where you’re going until you get there. Whatever you think is true about yourself turns out to be only the half of it. So, who did I start out as? Rhiannon Jones, second child of two Welsh teachers, (Geography and English) with an older brother and two younger sisters. Dark hair, not skinny. (Not fat though; well maybe a bit since having the children.) Five foot two. I wasn’t going to mention that, but it’s significant, I have to face the truth. Being short makes you more determined. I wouldn’t say I have a chip on my shoulder, mind. Having older and younger siblings makes you stand your ground, and know your place, your rights and your responsibilities. Especially when your parents are teachers, they also give you the confidence to try anything. Encouragement is so important – but I digress again, gentle reader.

By the time I was in the sixth form I realised that good old Cardiff was in fact the dullest, dampest, most tedious old-fashioned city in Britain. Everything colourful and interesting was happening elsewhere, be it Liverpool, London or Leeds, I couldn’t wait to get away from my cosy home town that seemed to secrete a relative behind every corner and curtain. Perhaps you felt the same at seventeen? I was torn between acting and teaching. I would have loved a career on the stage, but I had a suspicion that I wasn’t the kind of extravert who makes it to the top. I had diabolical stage fright. Plus I was rather short. Okay, it’s no big deal. I’m not hung up about that. No, really. Not now, anyway.

So, I went for a compromise, being such a bloody sensible girl. I went to an East London drama school and took a B.Ed. in Drama; that way I got to do lots of acting and professional training, but I would also get a teaching qualification (picture the joy on my parents’ faces). I planned to give theatre a try after I graduated, and if it didn’t work out I’d go into teaching. I’d be in London – well alright, just outside London – and I would have access to all the exciting stuff going on. I couldn’t wait. Life was bursting with opportunity; it was all to play for, and I was up for it.

That spirit was to lead me, against all expectation, into the BBC, the august institution that illuminated my childhood like a second sun. I had never even considered the possibility of working there, it was so remote. When I was young the BBC seemed even more secure than the royal family: it was the veins and arteries of our national culture, even in Wales. Okay, it was rather stolid, overbearingly English of course – but it brought us together, and it was a safe place to come home to. We loved it despite its faults. We could squabble over our places at the table but still feel secure in its patriarchal bosom. When did that disappear? What changed? The BBC still exists, its charter remains the same, but everything about it is different. It’s a great loss, to my generation, but of course it had to change. Its antiquated structure desperately needed reform, but not like that… the baby was halfway down the plughole. It’s still stuck there, as a matter of fact.

Looking back I see the two huge powers we call Art and Commerce fighting over the flag of the BBC. As they tear into each other a third sneaks up behind, and snatches the colours: they thought he was their loyal servant, but they weren’t paying proper attention and now they’ve lost control and he’s running off with it… I’m getting ahead of myself again, sorry.

I need to go back to the start, to the days when the BBC was stuffed full of talented people rather than overpaid managers and public school interns. Back to the 80s, when art and commerce were the left and right of clashing ideologies, when Britain was still an industrial nation, politics was clear-cut, and we all knew where we stood.

Back then, my new friends and colleagues-to-be were all just as fresh, young and wet behind the ears as I was myself. Our hearts were open and our integrity was still intact. Long before most of us had found our way into the Big Boys Club, some of us unwittingly gathered together in the creative maelstrom that launched a thousand careers: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe…

Chapter One

August 1985, Edinburgh

I remember it was a sweltering hot summer that year. I know it’s a literary cliché, but it’s true, no use pretending otherwise. I was in my second year as a trainee drama teacher, and was volunteering as assistant director with the Newham Youth Theatre. We’d devised a show with the kids and brought it up to the Fringe Festival with the aim of expanding their horizons, giving them a voice, and having a good time. (You’re right, it wasn’t just altruism that inspired me to do all that extra work. I was also having a fling with the director, Steve, but I’m not proud of it – he was married. At the time it seemed to me that his commitments were his own responsibility and none of my business; that’s another example of how your perspective can change as you get older.) As it turned out, five or six other people whose lives were to become intertwined with my own were there too. One or two would become leaders of the BBC. One or two would win the recognition they craved – and one of these unappealing folk would become the love of my life. So, I’ll back off now, and let you get on with the story.

Sitting in the back of the stifling hot police van the two women, the two men, and the boy cursed their luck and their handcuffs, though not aloud, in case they were overheard by the four constables in the front. They shifted uncomfortably, glancing out of the window at the traffic jam they were stuck in on Princes Street, and quickly withdrew for fear of being seen by someone they knew.

They cast embarrassed looks at one another, united by their desperate circumstances. All were strangers from England, visiting Edinburgh for the festival season. None of them had ever been arrested before, and all of them were regretting it like mad.

Jill began to cry quietly. She was furious with herself but couldn’t help it. At eight months pregnant, two stone overweight in the hot August weather, and overflowing with hormones, she could just about keep control of her bladder but her tear ducts were incontinent. Hampered by her handcuffs she sought a tissue in her skirt pocket but failed to find one and had to rely on sniffing.

The young woman sitting next to her offered a less-than-fresh hanky, murmuring that she was sorry it wasn’t clean, and Jill’s tears burst forth again in gratitude.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’m sure they’ll let you go straight away. I’m Maggie, by the way.” She patted Jill’s leg clumsily, her handcuffs jingling. “Are you okay?”

Jill nodded, crimson-faced. “Thanks. I’m Jill. If only it wasn’t so hot.”

Maggie agreed, and Jill blew her nose as the van began crawling forward again.

“Excuse me!” Maggie called to the policemen, “Can this woman have some water?”

A perspiring neck turned to reveal an impassive Scottish hard man’s face, which answered a terse ‘no’ and turned away again.

“You do realise she’s about to have a baby!” Maggie pursued, angrily.

The cop answered calmly, without moving, “We havena got any.”

“I’m all right, really” said Jill to Maggie, anxious to avoid any further trouble.

She closed her eyes and practised deep breathing exercises.

Maggie sighed as her anger subsided. This was crazy. She wondered how long they would be detained at the police station, and whether she would be late for the show: she was in Edinburgh with a feminist theatre company, and had directed a play which would be on an hour’s time. Fortunately she wasn’t in it, so it could go ahead without her if necessary, but she needed to be at the venue for the twenty minute turn-around during which the company preceding theirs removed their set and props whilst her company put up their set and refocused the lights – a mad scramble which took place about twelve times a day in each of the hundreds of theatre spaces on the Edinburgh Fringe. Oh well. If they ran late it wouldn’t be the first time. The sun was hot on the back of her neck, her short spiky hair and tatty t-shirt offering no protection. She stretched out her ring-less hands, admiring the look of the light steel handcuffs chaining them together against the faded denim of her mucky jeans. It would make a good image for a poster.

Opposite her the serious-looking bloke in an open-necked shirt and slacks was trying to fix his glasses, which had been twisted in the scuffle. He kept trying to bend the frame so that it would stay on his face, but one arm always stuck out from the side of his head. His concentration was fierce, and finally he forced the frame too far, and one of the lenses shot out and skidded across the floor.

“Shit,” he whispered through clenched teeth. He peered around for it, his damp shirt sticking uncomfortably to his sweaty thickset torso.

“Here.” The obvious student handed him the lens.

“Thanks,” replied Chris, unsmiling. It was scratched. He carried on fiddling.

The student looked particularly depressed, and particularly ridiculous. His face was painted green with purple spots and he wore a chain-mail helmet made of cotton dishcloths sprayed silver, with a crusader-style tabard over his jeans and t-shirt which bore a royal coat of arms and the motto:
Fuck the French
. He still clutched a handful of leaflets for his play, and the kid next to him asked if he could see one. He handed one over willingly.

“Oh,
Henry V
,” said the boy. “Where are you from?”

“Cambridge,” said Jonathan, biting his lip.

Nicky grimaced. “I’m with Newham Youth Theatre,” he said, trying to sound professional, and displayed his t-shirt which was printed, rather ambiguously:
NYT: No Future
. “I’ve lost my leaflets but we’re doing a devised play at Heriot Watt, nine o’clock. It’s called
No Future
.”

“That’s a good slot,” said Jonathan, impressed. “We’re on at five.”

“Actually it’s nine in the morning,” said Nicky ruefully. “It was the only slot we could afford.”

Jonathan nodded, losing interest. He checked his watch: nearly four fifteen. The show would have to go up without him, short by one costume and the director. Of course, today was the day three critics were coming. He was counting on good reviews and hoping desperately to win a Fringe First award to kick off his career as a theatre director. He had been on his way to the theatre to welcome the critics with a glass of wine, only dressing up to try and round up a few more punters in the hope of a full house, and now this had happened. Maybe he could get there before the end of the show and amuse the critics with an entertaining account of his misadventures, enabling them to revise the poor opinion of him, which they would probably have developed in his absence… He just hoped the sound cues would be in the right place this time.

Half an hour later they all sat in a row in a cool waiting room at the Central Police Station. The door was locked, but their handcuffs had been removed and water was provided. They tried to get comfortable on the slatted wooden benches, and waited their turn to be interviewed. First to go was little Nicky, summoned by a huge bull-necked sergeant who strode in, glared dispassionately at them all, and announced: “Right. Let’s have the Nit wi’ No Future,” leaving the others to wait and think back over the incident they had been unlucky enough to get involved in.

*

It had been an ordinary, sunny afternoon in Princes Street Gardens where festival folk and holiday visitors littered the grass eating ice cream, and entertainers wandered around performing or advertising their shows. Edinburgh residents were few and far between.

Jill sat under a tree trying to cool off and rest her swollen legs. She looked up at the castle and tried not to hear the hum of the traffic; she felt her baby kicking and hoped against hope that the play she had written would attract a better audience tomorrow. Today’s performance had taken place in front of three people, all of whom were related to a member of the cast. It was enough to make you question whether the public actually cared about new plays. She sucked an ice lolly which dripped onto her cotton skirt, and noticed a young, skinny, punky-looking woman with an orange Mohican stripe in her short blue hair, arrive carrying a soapbox. She put it down on the grass and poked around in a plastic carrier bag, taking out a booklet. She swigged from a can of Coke and climbed on the box, stood facing Jill with her back to the castle, opened the booklet, and began to address anyone who would listen in a strident South London accent:

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.”

It sounded vaguely familiar, and Jill peered at the booklet in the punk’s hand. She thought it was Valerie Solanas’
SCUM Manifesto
.

“A woman,” declaimed the punk. “Not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love.”

A slim woman with spiky hair, feminist symbol earrings and an old Greenham Common t-shirt, who was later to introduce herself as Maggie, paused as she walked past and clapped supportively. She looked round at Jill, who smiled. Sisters recognised one another. Maggie stopped, casually parked her hands on her lean hips, and listened to the punk.

“The male needs scapegoats onto whom he can project his failings and inadequacies and upon whom he can vent his frustrations at not being female.”

“What a load of shite!” exclaimed a man sitting on a bench. Jill and Maggie looked at him: he was in his twenties, evidently a local office-worker, wearing a white shirt and grey suit, with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. He folded up his
Daily Mail
, spread his knees and leaned his elbows on them, turning a disgusted expression on the punk. His eyes were concealed behind reflective sunglasses, but his mouth curled in pure contempt. Jill and Maggie recoiled from him. The punk continued as if he wasn’t there.