BBC’s slur on Woking
Radio 4 arts chief compares catering for 50-year-olds in the town to ‘dumbing down’
tHE BBC has been accused of intellectual snobbery after a Radio 4 boss suggested catering to 50-yearolds in Woking was ‘dumbing down’.
Arts chief James Runcie told the corporation’s Feedback programme that the station can deal with ‘highbrow’ subjects in a simple manner.
But he emphasised his point by citing Dame Hilary Mantel, the Wolf Hall novelist whose works have been broadcast on Radio 4 – and who formerly lived in Woking.
‘I think you can have a highbrow programme as long as it is explained clearly and produced clearly and has proper signposts in it. I mean, Hilary Mantel doesn’t dumb down in her novels. She doesn’t write for 50-year- olds in Woking,’ he said.
His remarks angered residents of the Surrey town, who yesterday accused the BBC of ‘patronising’ and ‘insulting’ licence fee payers.
Jonathan Lord, Woking’s 56- year-old tory MP, said: ‘the intellectual snobbery of BBC bosses knows no bounds. they just can’t seem to keep their prejudices to themselves.
‘If memory serves, Hilary Mantel was herself a 50-year-old in Woking when she wrote some of her most successful books, so this particular outburst seems peculiarly inept and inapt.’
Janice Parker, a Woking resident who will be 50 in two weeks, said: ‘It’s a very patronising thing to say. I might not go to the opera every weekend or listen to every radio arts show but to say that a programme would have to be simplified for the likes of me to understand... it’s incredibly insulting.’ Web designer Ryan thompson, 53, said: ‘It is appalling. How dare he describe a group of people who live in a town full of arts and culture as not being cultured enough to understand arts programmes? We don’t need anything to be “dumbed down” for us.’
Samantha Coburn, 59, who moved back to the town four years ago after living in London, said: ‘I listen to Radio 4 all the time and have no trouble understanding their programmes.
‘Maybe if Mr Runcie bothered to visit Woking he’d think twice before making comments.’
the BBC said last night that Mr Runcie did not ‘intend’ to offend Woking residents.
A spokesman said: ‘James compared making high quality arts programmes for a wide audience to how Hilary Mantel writes for more than just those who might be expected to read historical fiction, referencing Woking residents in this context.
‘Any other interpretation is not what James intended.’
Mr Runcie, whose father was the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, went to Marlborough College and Cambridge University.
He now describes himself as a ‘man of letters’, dividing his time between his job in charge of Radio 4’s arts coverage – which he does only two days a week – and a parallel career as a novelist.
He is best-known for his Grantchester books, about a clergyman detective, which have been dramatised on ItV.
Woking’s key cultural figures include Dame Hilary, who has written about her love of going to the theatre there and attending lectures at the Surrey History Centre in the town when living in Knaphill on the outskirts.
She said that it gave her ‘ the chance to see opera and ballet as well as plays, without going into London’.
HG Wells’s move to Woking in 1895 aged 28 inspired some of his greatest works, including the War Of the Worlds. In his 18 months there he also wrote the Invisible Man and completed the Island Of Dr Moreau.
Singer Paul Weller of the Jam was born and raised in Woking, as was Countdown lexicographer Susie Dent, while Booker and Nobel Prize winning author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro went to Woking County Grammar School.
‘Inept and inapt’