Reaching for the stars – in their dressing rooms
For 20 years at the BBC, Jenny Bardwell sprinkled stardust over dull broadcasts. Now she’s found the old tapes – with their rich, lost voices
Isaw Broadcasting House in Langham Place for the first time aged 14. I was hovering outside with a gaggle of girls from Purley, longing for a glimpse of David Cassidy. My mate Jacqui told me that some of the people working inside that iconic battleship were secretaries, and that turned out to be my way in.
Aged 19, I wrote to the Beeb and then did a speed test on a ‘golfball’ typewriter. They put me straight to work on their radio ‘secretarial reserve’. Over the next 20 years, wherever I ended up in the BBC, I would try to inject a little theatrical glamour into the programmes (and my life) – on the slenderest of pretexts.
An old shoebox contains cassette copies of radio I was involved with during the 1980s and ’90s. Before they perish on a skip, I wipe down my old ghetto-blaster and insert. Suddenly, the room is alive with rich, tremulous voices.
Me: ‘And what is your favourite meal in the whole world?’ Sir Michael Hordern (with a wicked twinkle in his eye): ‘Oh, I’m very fond of oysters – but you don’t have to cook them [laughter].’
Next, a nasal drawl from across the pond: ‘I never eat kinky food – I would rather die than eat an oyster, a clam, a squid or any of those terrible things.’ Ah yes, Dame Quentin Crisp.
I was a true stage-door Jenny, much happier chatting up the stars in their dressing rooms than ordering stationery back in the office.
Derek Cooper (now there was a voice – every syllable – redolent of a peaty Talisker from his beloved Skye) was presenting The Food Programme in 1989 and I was the broadcast assistant. One morning, I overheard him complain about an envelope shortage because ‘Jenny hasn’t done a chit.’ I’d never heard of a chit. When I took him his tea in a polystyrene cup, he would say, ‘You do know how to spoil a poor old soul.’
I was a hungry wannabe producer although, back then, I was more interested in theatre than in food.
‘Sure, I can use a Uher,’ I assured Food Programme producer Vanessa Harrison in 1987, as I hurried down to the National Film Theatre, weighed down by the burdensome reel-to-reel machine to interview Frank, their catering manager, about food in places of entertainment.
Frank said his bar was always ‘drunk dry’ after a showing of Lawrence of Arabia because the audience felt they’d spent so much time traipsing across the desert. ‘I order two extra barmen who will be very busy – it’s a fact of life.’ A Waterloo commuter, tucking into his egg-salad supper at the bar, admitted he’d never actually seen a film there.
Then it was back over the river to interview ‘the fastest barman in London’: Wally, at the Royal Opera House, who proudly told me he’d served 48,000 bottles of champagne in the Long Bar. Opera audiences spent more on sandwiches than balletomanes, because they ‘love smoked salmon and have more money’.
When the topic of ‘food and the elderly’ was proposed, I didn’t suggest a feature about a lonely pensioner making tough culinary choices on a tight budget. I visited the Haymarket Theatre where Michael Hordern and Michael Denison were appearing in You Never Can Tell.
I was right, they were very interested in food: Michael H said he’d enjoyed some charcoal-grilled lamb’s liver that very day at the Garrick.
Michael Denison told me, in his beautiful plummy voice, ‘Cucumber has always disagreed with me – and then I played Algy in the 1952 film version of The Importance of Being Earnest whose whole career revolves around cucumber sandwiches.
‘The props department at Pinewood had produced these beautiful, wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches and I said, “It’s no good. You can’t give those to me. You’ll have to give me slices of apple; cucumber is out, as far as I’m concerned.” ’
Living in my Highgate bedsit, frequently on the breadline myself, I needed every bit of glamour I could lay my hands on. The only way I could get promoted to producer was by travelling 60 miles up the M1 to Milton Keynes, where I worked for the next 12 years at the BBC Open University.
A new challenge – how to get my showbiz chums into educational OU programmes. A friend teased me, ‘So, who is it this week – Ken Branagh on quantum mechanics?’
I had delightful meetings with obvious targets such as playwright Willy Russell, who created the OU student Rita in Educating Rita. Lenny Henry and Sheila Hancock were, handily, both OU graduates. Then there were the big fans of the OU, like darling Jonathan Miller, who told us, ‘Philosophy is a very good bullshit-sniffer.’
I had to produce a programme called Open Forum, aimed at potential students, to tempt them with courses, incorporating items about summer schools and course fees.
Rapidly, ‘blurbs’ were smuggled in – brief recommendations from eminent people about a book, play or piece of art that had stirred them. In other words, three minutes of fairy dust to cheer up potentially dry radio about OU credits or the funding council.
A postcard soon arrived for my office wall: ‘Three minutes wouldn’t give me time to clear my throat! Best wishes, Dirk Bogarde.’
These blurbs made wonderful radio and provided me with a perfect excuse to meet my heroes of the day, including the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble, who chose ‘someone your listeners will never have heard of – Ariane Mnouchkine’.
He greeted me charmingly in his office at the Barbican in an extraordinary pair of leather trousers which looked as if they belonged to somebody else. The RSC had only recently moved into the Barbican and Adrian was just as lost as anyone. His parting shot was ‘Don’t ask me where the box office is!’
Barry Norman gave us three minutes on the joys of P G Wodehouse. Professor Charles Handy went into raptures about the beauty of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Enoch Powell spoke of his surprise at the low attendance at A E Housman’s lectures and Fay Weldon told us how pointless it was to clutter up our shelves with half-read books.
It gave me an excellent chance for a little snoop around some gigantic, book-lined rooms. The late John Julius Norwich’s pad in Little Venice won the prize for sheer jaw-dropping square footage.
Time to return to Michael Hordern in his dressing room. ‘Now that I’m living on my own, I don’t eat as well as I should. I tend to fall for yet another ham sandwich – mind you, it’s very good ham.’ The dear boy probably had a few reviews like that.
Was I abusing my position as a BBC employee by chasing the great and the good to keep my sanity, while toiling away in worthy broadcasting cul-desacs? Yes, I suppose so.
Would I do it again? You bet.
‘Frequently on the breadline, I needed every bit of glamour I could lay my hands on’