Western Daily Press (Saturday)
West Country broadcasting legend tells his own big story
Regional television’s Clinton Rogers has seen a lot of West Country life in a long career in broadcasting. Now he has put it all down in biography A Life in Broadcasting, Celebrities, Wars and all, for sale in aid of St Margaret’s Hospice, Taunton. Martin
THERE are many people who are very good at their jobs, but for the most part it’s only their colleagues, immediate clients or customers who know about the standard of service they provide. But some forms of work thrust a person into the public eye on a permanent basis, and that is when the whole world gets to see just how good they are.
We begin what is actually a book review in this way because Clinton Rogers must have one of the best-known faces in the region, having served as a broadcast reporter in the South West for over four decades. As such he had – and has – one of the best known faces anywhere in the region. Just about everyone reading this newspaper will have seen him on BBC Points West or on BBC Spotlight at some time or other, and if so, they will know that Clinton was extremely good at what he did.
If by any chance you didn’t know how good he was then, as a fellow journalist who joined the trade at almost exactly the same time nearly half a century ago, I can vouch that he was very talented indeed at the art of conveying other people’s stories to a wider public. Which is basically what a journalist does.
During all his broadcast years, until he retired recently, Clinton had a unique, vibrant and engaging way of telling those stories. Which is an important thing to say here, because he has now written what is arguably the most intriguing and interesting story he could tell – the one which tracks his entire working life.
A Life in Broadcasting, which is the name of Clinton’s newly published book - subtitled Celebrities, Wars and All - is a truly cracking read for anyone who loves the greater West Country in general, and the county of Somerset in particular. If you are a certain age or over, you will probably remember many of the major stories which Clinton covered down the years.
But of course, what you will not know about are the many anecdotes which hide behind those big stories. You might recall the often-moustachioed man with the slight burr of Somerset accent appearing on your TV screen, but you will not know what he and his camera crew had to go through to bring you that particular story, or how they felt about what was happening around them at the time.
And seeing that Clint (as he is known to his friends) was present at (or in the immediate aftermath of ) just about every major happening in the South West – or certainly in Somerset – since the 1970s, then you can see why such a book would be a cracking read.
If that wasn’t a good enough reason to purchase the book for £12, then please note that every penny of that cover price will go to St Margaret’s Hospice Care. Clint’ has boxed clever in getting the estate agents Wilkie, May and Tuckwood to cover the production costs of the 192page tome.
Despite being the consummate professional, no one who knows him (and that would included hundreds of thousands of people) would expect this Wellington boy to be anything but modest in his approach. And so we hear all about the inevitable near-misses and dreadful cub-reporter mistakes that he made during the very early years after being given his first media job at the Wellington Weekly News. As an ardent football fan, for example, Clint thought he could simply assume the whys-and-wherefores of the local rugby match he was sent to cover, without having a clue as to how the game was actually played.
He was found out almost immediately but somehow Clinton charmed his way into getting expert advice, so that his very first match report made sense to all. And there, I suspect, lies one of the secrets of his success. Clinton’s very obvious open and frank sense of hones
ty – mixed with a blend of cheekychappie charm – seems to have saved him from numerous scrapes down the years. Scrapes, I hasten to add, that all journalists inevitably find themselves in, because the act of entering the lives of complete strangers and telling their stories is always going to be a minefield waiting to happen.
Indeed, the fast-thinking charm undoubtedly allowed him to become the man sometimes known as the “BBC’s Mr Somerset”, because it allowed to him to more or less run the corporation’s first fully dedicated radio station in the county. After a spell at HTV, Clint was working for the Beeb when they decided to launch what was then known as Somerset Sound – and the shoestring nature of the operation meant he had to spend countless hours
behind a microphone broadcasting live and, for a lot of the time, completely unscripted.
I know how hard he worked and how potentially tricky that could be, because he used to hire me as a freelance radio reporter on a shift by shift basis – and I was somewhat in awe of his easy-going mastery of the genre.
In the book, Clinton describes his next move in a chapter entitled Transition to Television, where he was (I will say, because he does not) a ‘natural’. And the chapter called Ordinary People, Extraordinary Stories helps to explain why…
As anyone who has ever seen him on screen will know, Clint seems to have a natural affinity with just about everyone, whether it’s some high and mighty politician or the stressed-out families of some poor child dying of a dreadful rare disease. And there are some very moving stories about the latter in the book.
Moving to the other end of the social barometer, Clinton tells how he has also dealt with numerous celebrities – always in his own unique “boy-next-door” kind of way, I will add. Not that this is how he puts it, but I have always felt that the sometimes overused “boy-nextdoor” label has helped with Mr Rogers’ appeal. All too many journalists (especially high-ranking broadcast journalists) come across as arrogant to some degree or other, but never the humble family-man from Wellington.
For example, I can imagine few other seasoned broadcasters walking up to someone like Fiona Bruce (which Clinton did when Antiques Roadshow went to Minehead) and telling her what a fan they are. Clint writes about how he told Fiona just how much he admired her work, thinking she must have such compliments showered by fellow professionals all the time, and then was somewhat taken aback when the famous presenter seemed almost moved to tears in gratitude.
Talking of celebrities, one of the most amusing stories in the book is about the day when Mr Somerset met James Bond. Or Roger Moore – to be exact – who was staying at a hotel in Taunton in order to watch his daughter in a play at the Brewhouse Theatre. Only Clinton would have dared ask the man who played
James Bond to go along with a couple of on-air gags to liven up his local news report, but the amiable Sir Roger was only too happy to oblige. No wonder Clinton won so many television awards.
Other anecdotes in the book are fairly harrowing, but in general Clinton has decided to skip over some of the grimmer parts of his reporting life so that he could bring us what could be described as a light and jolly read. Having said that, there are accounts of war zones – even a story about a somewhat drunken mock battle with Royal Navy pilots aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships, which resulted in our man accidentally breaking one helicopter captain’s nose.
There’s even an account of how
‘Only Clinton would have dared ask the man who plays James Bond to indulge in some on air gags’
Clinton managed to have a little fallout with that other Mr Somerset, one Michael Eavis, of Glastonbury Festival fame. A minor fall-out which is now patched up and long forgotten by two of the county’s most amiable men. Clinton covered no fewer than 20 Glastonbury Festivals and interviewed a Pyramid Stage worth of rock idols during that time.
To sum up, when I told Clinton Rogers I would review his book for the newspapers, he emailed saying: “I’m not really a ‘writer’ and found it all rather hard - altogether different from writing two-minute TV scripts. With hindsight, my criticism is it sounds like an overly long Points West script! But that’s how I write.”
And that is part of the book’s charm. You pick it up for a quick read, then cannot put it down because it feels like your favourite TV reporter talking inside your head. The rapid-fire of his two-minute script has you hooked. It is entertaining. And for a very good cause.
A Life in Broadcasting - Celebrities, Wars and All, but Clinton Rogers costs £12 and is available from St Margaret’s Hospice Care shops in the region and from https:// www.st-margarets-hospice.org. uk/a-life-in-broadcasting