Jilted By The BBC Twice In Three Weeks

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Progress on publicity for my forthcoming pub signs book is mostly going well. My press releases helped gain me some newspaper coverage and magazine features. Pub & club goers, photographers and science fiction fandom all find some interest as do the people of my home county, Lancashire, as well as my city of birth, Manchester. There may even be a few publications referring to me without necessarily getting back to me. I’m also mentioned on several blogs, and my book has its own Facebook page to tell my friends about it there. More disappointing is the visual-audio media response. I’d love to have a TV interview as it would be good to have a camera crew follow me to see just what I do on pub sign hunts and hear how I think about freshly found signs. So far the TV folk have largely ignored me. Phooey. Regional radio initially reacted well, only to so far let me down. BBC Radio Lancashire sent a tea-time show presenter, Brett Davison to pre-record an interview with me at home. Excitedly I, I cancelled some voluntary work I signed up to, (giving the university department I help out at plenty of notice), tidied the flat, bought in milk & biscuits (which he politely declined) and the interview went well. I liked Brett (and still do). He had a genuine interest in the subject and asked some great questions, making me think about some directions for future work on pub signs too. A week later a producer from the show messaged me to tell me my interview would air on the Wednesday show (Brett has the 4-6pm show on Radio Lancashire every Monday to Friday). Taking this as a promise I quickly sent out messages and phone calls to family, friends and everyone expressing interest in my book to tune in, only to find on listening myself that I wasn’t featured at all. I had to then send apologies all round wondering if they might think I just plain lied to them. Disheartened I asked why the show left me conspicuous by my absence, to be informed that as the Brexit news boring the nation to distraction already, dominated Brett’s show, my interview was held over for an unspecified future date. Two weeks on, and just a week to go to my actual book launch, I was told it would air on the Wednesday show (last night, same times as last time). I avoided telling others this time in case history repeated itself, as I can tell everyone to catch up with my appearance on Iplayer if need be. As I already half-feared, I was shelved again. Much of the show was dominated by TV theme contests with no prizes and talk of the newly found black hole (that is swallowing me obviously). The problem is not Brett, but the kind of show he presents. Interviews like that with me are not for quick transmission, but for keeping on a shelf to dust off if things get quiet, though they all too rarely do in the current political climate. Brett likes to talk on the burning issues of the day though he does not break any new news or exclusive angles. He just offers his 4-bobsworth opinions on the stories the listeners hear on the two short hourly news broadcasts on his shows. Anything else, including the interview with me I just sits there in case nothing else happens, otherwise I’m stuck in a can and left to rot, as lost as the wiped episodes of The Dalek Master Plan. I’m like a theatrical understudy not able to shine unless the lead actor falls down a well, or a singer offered a chance to play a club until Paul McCartney just happens to pop in. It is deeply depressing to see that while deemed interesting enough to record at all, I am never going to be drawn into the front lines. It is extremely saddening to think one of what I believe to be my best interviews ever may now never see the light of day. I feel my time was wasted. Brett’s show is genuinely entertaining and informative, but when I have just been put on a low carb diet and meds to reduce my critical blood pressure, listening twice to a two hour show on a promise that I‘m on it and then seeing the hour glass run out is one of the most horrible nerve shredding things I have ever experienced. The word disillusioned springs to mind. I imagined my blood boiling as my anxiety levels exploded into the stratosphere. I wonder how many other potentially great interviews get orphaned by the BBC this way. My betting is way too many. It is not impossible my interview could still surface but time is running out and thinking about as my mind whips it round in my head like an expanding hurricane it isn’t good for my health right now. Such is life. Ke Sera Sera. One astonishing reaction came from the show's producer, who told me a few times that in complaining about what she did I could have got her in trouble with her employers just as her contract is due for renewal. This effectively tries to burden me with blame and fault. Her superiors are only likely to take any disciplinary action if they think she is not doing her job right and upsetting the people involved in items recorded for her shows, and that would mean the senior staff feel that she did an injustice to someone, in this case me. It is like saying to a judge that you are not guilty of a crime because it must be the fault of the person you robbed for phoning the police. Arthur Chappell