Parky: My Autobiography (39 page)

It is impossible to be the dispassionate assessor, the balanced journalist in such a situation. The children sing and dance for us, grab our legs, hold our hands, show off, tumble and chatter – like children do. They don’t know the trouble they are in. Not yet. We know, but feel so helpless. I am so angry that I buy the premises. Now, they don’t have to worry about the rent and we can start building a proper school.

Today, Grace takes us to meet Given. He is sixteen years old and still at school. His mother died of Aids two years ago. She was a single parent. Given is now mother, father, protector and provider to two younger brothers, aged thirteen and ten. The boys sleep in one narrow bed in what is no more than a corrugated shed with a primitive paraffin cooker, a small stove and a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall. They have no running water and no electricity. There is no money for food or clothes. They exist because of Grace and her organisation.

Winter is coming and cold winds swirl through the camp. The brothers scavenge for newspapers. Paper is their only source of fuel. Given is an intelligent boy who wants to continue his education. It is his only hope, his only means of escape. I ask him what he wants to be. He says, ‘A doctor.’ I look at Grace as she translates his answer and she reads my mind. Later, she tells me, ‘You should not be surprised. We must never stop hoping.’

That evening, with the sun going down, we film Given and the local football team in action. Our bodyguard, the Newcastle United fan, is on the touchline, no doubt scouting for talent. The teams play in a haze of dust that, added to the drifting smoke from the evening fires, filters the view across the township to the setting sun. Our bodyguard says, ‘There is an African saying: “At this time of day, everything is beautiful.”’

Remembering Alan Whicker’s advice about listening to phone-ins for a crash course on a new country, I switched on talk radio. They were interviewing young South Africans living in the townships. One was asked to describe himself: ‘Broke, black and living in a shack,’ he said.

We film outside the hut where the women have their headquarters. It has been a long time since I walked and talked to a film camera. Long enough to forget how difficult it is. I used to do it for a living. Now, trying in vain to make it seem natural, I am reminded of why I gave it up.

We send the bodyguard off for food. He comes back with chicken and chips, which we eat in the women’s hut. I am not hungry and push my food away, half-eaten. I suddenly realise what I have done and look guiltily at Grace. She picks it up and takes it into the back room, where children have gathered, certain of rich pickings. They are as aware of our wasteful ways as we are insensitive to their abject poverty.

We save the most harrowing filming to the last.

Maria, a twenty-six-year-old mother of two small children, is dying of Aids. We have met one of her children, the four-year-old, at the school run by Grace. We film the child being picked up from school by Lorraine, another of the helpers. She has been looking after Maria for ten months. Before that, she cared for Maria’s mother, who is dying in a hospice. Like all the women involved in the scheme, Lorraine deals with death and grief on a daily basis. It takes an awful toll. You can see it on her face.

Maria lies huddled under a blanket, curled into the foetal position, head against the concrete wall. Lorraine introduces me; Grace sits in a corner of the room behind the camera.

How do you interview a woman who has a few weeks to live? I ask her about the drugs I see on the bedside table. Lorraine says Maria has pulmonary TB and the drugs help – but she doesn’t take them because she has to take them with food and she gives the food to her children. Maria looks at me with black, deep eyes, waiting for the next question. I don’t have one. I can’t imagine any follow-up to her answer.

Grace says from behind the camera, ‘Ask her what her children will do when she dies.’ I do as I’m told. Maria shakes her head in mute despair. I find myself apologising. I can’t handle it.

Outside, Grace says, ‘You were too emotional in there.’

‘And you weren’t?’

‘Not so I couldn’t be of help.’

Then I see clearly her sense of purpose, the strength and detachment required to be compassionate without ever being overcome with pity.

Nelson Mandela is taller than I expected, straight, pencil slim, elegant. He apologises that his dodgy knee won’t allow him to walk down steps for a photographer. It is not yet 9 a.m. and already he has had two meetings. I ask one of his three PAs when his day finishes. ‘When he has worn us out,’ she says. He is eighty-four, but you don’t have to make allowances. He doesn’t.

Mr Mandela knows the effect he has on people, but seems careful not to abuse that power. He is effortlessly good-natured, even when his office is invaded by a film crew. The cameraman is on his hands and knees looking for a socket in what he takes to be an empty office when, from behind, comes the unmistakable voice of Nelson Mandela. ‘Is it not customary to say good morning to an old man?’ he asks. Noticing that Anna Gravelle, our director, is the only woman in our team, he tells her, ‘Remember, you must not let the men dominate you in your profession.’

He has beautiful manners, even when establishing the rules for our interview. ‘Mr Parkinson, I have to tell you before we begin that I am deaf,’ he says.

‘I hope, sir, you will be able to hear my questions,’ I reply.

He looks at me directly and smiles. ‘I will hear the ones I want to answer.’

After we have filmed the interview with Nelson Mandela, it is time for summing up. If you woke up in the morning and pondered the crisis of South Africa, you would not bother getting out of bed. The problems of unemployment, crime and Aids seem insoluble.

Maybe the answer lies with the kind of initiative Sport Relief is getting involved in. Maybe the tiny ripple created by Grace Sibeka and her helpers spreads outwards and has significance far beyond where they work in Zama Zama. Certainly, the example set by those remarkable and selfless women is something we can all learn from.

Before we depart, Grace gives me a letter to give to Mr Mandela, asking him to visit Zama Zama.‘If he came, it would be glorious,’ she says.

‘He’s a busy man,’ I say, thinking he must have hundreds of similar requests every day.

She senses my caution. ‘Do you know what Zama Zama means?’ Grace asks. I shake my head. ‘Keep trying,’ she says.

39

TIME-SLOT WARS

I imagined finishing my career at the BBC, of being the only man in the history of the organisation to qualify for two brass buckets from a grateful Light Entertainment Department. (This was the Beeb’s version of the carriage clock and presented, I was assured, to only a few, though no one knew why.) Then, in 2003, I read an article suggesting the BBC was moving to regain
Match of the Day
from ITV. The commercial network had pinched the programme, and Des Lynam, from the BBC with great fanfare. It hadn’t worked for various reasons, one of which was outlined by Des Lynam, who said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with the show that moving
Parkinson
to a different time-slot wouldn’t put right.’

We were very strong in the ratings against it. Nonetheless, the BBC wanted to re-establish a relationship with football and saw
Match of the Day
as an important statement of intent.

I asked the question what would happen to
Parkinson
if
Match of the Day
returned? They said what was I worrying about? Not much, really, I said, except it seemed to me that if they had one show that went out after 10 p.m. on a Saturday night – which was the best time for it, as had been proved over many years – and they bought another show that could only go out after 10 p.m. on a Saturday night called
Match of the Day
, there might be a problem.

Oh, we’ll deal with that, old chap, don’t worry, they said. But I did worry and as the deal went through and the start of the new football season approached, I began to press for answers.

Looking back, I think that if, during that time, someone had sat me down and talked through the situation and invited thoughts on a solution, things might have turned out differently. As it was, I was presented with a fait accompli and told they were thinking about alternative slots for
Parkinson
. There weren’t any. At least, none that made any sense. Friday night was out because Jonathan Ross had that spot. How about moving it to Wednesday against
Coronation Street
, they said? How about I sign my own death warrant, I said?

The fannying and dithering went on to the point where one top executive – I will spare his blushes by not naming him – actually ran away from me in the car park at the BBC and fled to his office, rather than have me ask him if he’d done anything about my predicament, as he had promised to do. Lorraine Heggessey, Controller One, tried hard but there was no solution. She bravely suggested Saturday night at 9 p.m., the best offer so far, except I have never seen a talk show as a peak-time event. It has, like all shows, a natural habitat and that is late evening.

As events teetered and swirled, I began to suspect there was a gathering opinion within the BBC that maybe the best way out was for me to retire. At the time I was sixty-nine and not contemplating putting my feet up, particularly at the behest of an organisation that thought it made sense to replace a successful programme with one it had regularly trounced in the ratings. It wasn’t me who needed a rest. It also occurred to me that it had not occurred to them that I might take the show elsewhere and, as I was gently fuming, my agent John Webber called and said ITV was interested in talking.

I met Nigel Pickard, the Programme Controller of ITV, and he said if I wanted to move the show to ITV he would be delighted to accommodate it. I called Sir Paul Fox, my old boss at the BBC, and asked his advice. ‘Go to ITV. Go back to where you started,’ he said. So I did. John negotiated an excellent deal. I asked if I could choose my producers, pick the research team and, most importantly, choose the guests and have control over editorial content, all of which meant producing the show as we had done for many years. Nigel agreed.

I was sorry to leave the BBC but I didn’t see how I could stay. As I said at the time, they flogged my playing field and I had no alternative but to find a new one. I asked my son Michael, who was, by now, already producing television shows, Steve Lappin, whose work at the BBC I greatly admired, and Chris Greenwood to form the nucleus of the production team. We decided that, instead of opting for an independent production, we would hand the show to Granada, which gave me a warm feeling of returning to the womb, except I didn’t realise how much the company had changed.

Simon Shaps, who was in charge of production at Granada, had not been privy to the deal done between John and Nigel Pickard, nor did he want the show, as I was to discover when, shortly after arriving at our new home, I was invited to meet him and his offsider, Jim Allen. We went to the Ivy for lunch, which I imagined was to be a cosy getting-to-know-you occasion. I soon became aware Simon Shaps wasn’t happy with the deal, particularly the question of editorial control. I said it sounded worse than it was but all it guaranteed was our freedom to produce the show as we had done for twenty years or more. This seemed to discomfort Mr Shaps who, at one point, produced a copy of the contract, which I feared he might start quoting at me.

I was not at all prepared for this. I had anticipated a pleasant lunch, yet seemed about to have an argument with my new boss. I decided to stop the nonsense immediately. I told Mr Shaps that if he didn’t put the contract away, I would roll it up and shove it where the sun don’t shine. I went back to the office and told the team that if ever Mr Shaps came to ultimate power in the network we could start packing our bags.

It was not an auspicious start. The media was generally downbeat. Overnight I had gone from the Man Who Had Made a Triumphant Return And Shown Them How To Do a Talk Show to a Man Well Past His Sell By Date Who Should Give It All Up. One paper alleged I had ‘defected’ from the BBC and printed a list of other well-known defectors, which put me alongside the spies Burgess and Philby, Robbie Williams, who left Take That, and Judas Iscariot.

There were also suggestions we would not be able to attract the big names. We answered that with our first show, which starred Tom Cruise, Billy Connolly and Kelly Holmes, who had just won Olympic gold. The commercial breaks meant we had to look more closely at how we edited the show, which allowed for forty-seven minutes of talk and not sixty, as it had been at the BBC. The easy solution was to reduce the guests from three to two, but we decided instead to cut the length of interviews and edit with a keener eye.

Michael began redesigning the set and the configuration of the studio. I sincerely believe that what we ended up with was a product that, at its best, was as good as, if not better than, it had been at any time during its entire history. Charles Allen, then ITV’s Chief Executive, transformed a grotty reception room into a stylish hospitality area, which he used to entertain bankers and investors after the show. Nigel Pickard could not have been more encouraging. The show was working well. We were more than competing with
Match of the Day
, we had a talented young production team, and everyone – well nearly everyone – was making agreeable noises, but the overwhelming problem was that ITV was struggling.

A year after we joined ITV, Nigel Pickard was clinging on to his job. The man who brought Simon Cowell to ITV was now an increasingly beleaguered figure. Shows such as
Celebrity Love Island
and
Celebrity Wrestling
did nothing to improve either the ratings or the reputation of the company. Charles Allen went for a reshuffle. He appointed Simon Shaps as ITV’s Director of Programmes and moved Nigel Pickard sideways. Shaps brought in his own Praetorian Guard. Nigel Pickard left to join the RDF Media Group as director of family and children’s programmes, and I told the team to start the car.