Melvyn Bragg
I gave up on the BBC’s Shakespeare marathon after half an hour
My interview with Melvyn Bragg is not going as expected. I have no idea how we got on to Keeping Up With the Kardashians (“I really ought to watch it”) by way of
Big Brother (“It worked well at first but then it became too calculated and lost all its appeal”) with a pit-stop on the subject of Arsenal (“It’s time for Wenger to go”).
I’d heard reports that the veteran broadcaster was a testy interviewee, with a tendency to shut down if reporters meandered too far from the subject at hand – in this case, Sunday’s South Bank Show Awards – and yet here I am in the London office of the high priest of the arts being offered Jammie Dodgers while debating whether it would be worth him sneaking a glance at the big-bootied universe of Kim, Kourtney and Khloe.
“I do feel embarrassed that I haven’t seen it,” continues the 76-year-old, spry and smiling in a well-cut charcoal suit. “Because when something comes on that’s obviously important, I’ll sit down and watch a few episodes. But you see, I’ve got a lot of reading and a lot of work to do.”
It’s hard not to laugh at Bragg’s apologetic tone. He does, after all, keep himself busy. Made a Labour life peer in 1998, he likes to keep a good attendance record in the Lords, and he writes pretty much a book a year (21 novels and 15 non-fiction books), alongside being Chancellor of Leeds University and presenting The South Bank Show. He has done the latter for nearly 40 years, moving it from ITV (which slashed its budget by 82 per cent in 2010) to Sky in 2011 and interviewing some of the most famous names in the arts world over the years, from Judi Dench and Dennis Potter to Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney and Pavarotti. Twenty years ago, Bragg created the South Bank Show Awards, which honour the best of British culture. This year’s wideranging nominees include electronica band Years & Years, an embroidery of Magna Carta, Banksy for his Dismaland, the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s
Wolf Hall, and novel dance productions such as Northern Ballet’s 1984 alongside the Almeida’s new version of Aeschylus’s Oresteia.
Range and accessibility within the arts are important to Bragg, though the word “accessible”, I say, can imply condescension. “That’s exactly right, and I deplore that,” he agrees. “Did you see the BBC’s Shakespeare evening?” he asks, referring to the patchwork of entertainment commemorating the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death. “I stuck it for half an hour, gave myself a medal and then knocked it off. They were saying ‘look at this man in dance, drama and song’. But it didn’t work, because all you wanted to hear were the words of Shakespeare – and they didn’t use them. So to simplify and condescend with the material itself is completely wrong. But to put, say, soap actors known to people who don’t usually watch Shakespeare in the material would have been a very good way of making it more accessible.”
Bragg talks about the BBC with affection and he seems genuinely saddened by its weaknesses. “Partly because I feel so much gratitude towards the BBC from my childhood,” he says. “I was born in a radio world and I got so much from it.”
Growing up in Wigton, Cumbria, above a pub – where his father was the landlord – Bragg remembers “listening to The Mill on the
Floss and all the Trollopes adapted to radio on Sunday nights”. Those early experiences – as well as singing in his church choir and an inspirational teacher – cemented Bragg’s love of the arts at a young age. Having read history at Wadham College, Oxford, he embarked on a traineeship at the BBC in 1961, which, he says, seemed like “a pretty wonderful way to make a living”.
Fifty-five years later, Bragg still feels the same way about his career. And though the BBC has disappointed him sometimes, he doesn’t feel it has deserted the arts. He does, however, despair for the future of public broadcasting if Culture Secretary John Whittingdale – whose recent White Paper would circumscribe the BBC’s scope and independence – has anything to do with it.
“That man is an absolute disgrace. There is something in the disclosing of pay packets, because people want to know where the money goes, and I think the BBC is very wonky about all that. But you cannot take the licencepayers’ money and use it for social policy [ Whittingdale has forced the BBC to take on the £700 million cost of free licence fees for the over-75s.]. I pay for television and radio licences. I do not pay for pensioners like myself to have a free licence fee.”
The only other subject to provoke the slamming of his palm against the desk is the suggestion that Brexit would lead to an artistic “renaissance” in Britain. “That’s rubbish. What’s driving all this is a nasty idea that ‘little old Britain’ is best and that we’ll all put on our tweed waistcoats and become old Brits again.”
Bragg is not immune to nostalgia – he tells me a touching anecdote about his mother, “who never gave me compliments as a kid”, but once bought him a little globe-shaped pencil sharpener when he came top in a school test. Yet despite this very human streak, and an unflinching interest in the past, he has always been curious about the present – and the future. And it’s this that has made the South Bank Show such a success.
Ask him whether he will ever feel ready to join the world of social media, however, and once again he looks apologetic. “I’ve been asked to but I won’t – just because of the time issue.” And I like the fact that despite all Bragg’s progressive positivity, he’ll never get round either to tweeting or the Kardashians.
The South Bank Show Awards will be held at the Savoy Hotel in London on Sunday and broadcast on Sky Arts on June 8. Details: sky.com/watch/ channel/sky-arts
‘There is something in the disclosing of pay packets – the BBC is very wonky about all that’