BBC’S new talent hunt...only 70-year-olds need apply

Corporation searches for ‘experienced’ presenters who can follow success of Attenborough and Berry

IF YOU have reached the age of 70 without becoming a television star, don’t worry. There’s time.

Alison Kirkham, BBC head of documentaries, is on the lookout for presenters who have amassed decades of experience in their field.

“Who are two of the biggest faces in factual television?” she said. “David Attenborough and Mary Berry.”

Television executives are waking up to the success of older presenters. Sir David and Berry are 91 and 82 respectively, yet their fan bases span generations. “I think society for too long hasn’t revered experience or wisdom,” Kirkham said. “People always interpret ‘new talent’ as 20-year-olds new on the block. But I always say: in the specialisms when we’re thinking about new talent, who’s the 70-year-old that we haven’t discovered yet?

“Mary Berry has a huge young following and Planet Earth II had a bigger 16-34 audience than The X Factor. Sometimes there are preconceived notions that in order to appeal to a young audience it’s got to be youth TV.”

While not “on a massive hunt for older talent specifically, nor younger talent specifically, our programmes should reflect our audiences at their broadest,” she added. “What is key is expertise.”

Tomorrow sees the start of Blue Planet II, Kirkham’s “blue-chip” series, deploying the latest technology to capture natural wonders that have not been shown on television before.

Programmes coming up soon include a documentary about the richpoor divide in the London Borough of Kensington, commissioned in the wake of the Grenfell disaster; a history of the Suffragette movement; a programme on the Commonwealth presented by Sir Lenny Henry; and a dementia film presented by the Line of Duty actress Vicky Mcclure, who has campaigned on the issue since her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Suffragettes will be presented by Lucy Worsley, the chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, who pops up regularly in the schedules. In the past year alone she has been on screen guiding us through opera, the court of Elizabeth I, the private life of Jane Austen and the wives of Henry VIII, and before that she was covered the Romanovs, Versailles, Mozart, Blackpool, the WI, the Georgians and the art of horse dancing.

But Kirkham insisted we have not reached peak Worsley, and that any criticism of ubiquity is unfair.

“She is the perfect person to do Suffragettes. Lucy is much-loved and brilliant at what she does, and there’s absolutely a place for her within our history content.”

Kirkham, who began her career on

‘In the specialisms when we’re thinking about new talent, who’s the 70-year-old that we haven’t discovered?’

Radio 4’s Today programme and worked on This Morning and I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, was appointed BBC controller of factual commissioning in September last year.

She defended the corporation against criticism that too much of its history programming is beginner level. “It’s a universal licence fee and I don’t think we should only be making specialist programmes for one bit of the audience,” she said.

Tomorrow night she will be following the reaction on social media to Blue Planet II. “No one goes on forever, but if anyone could you would hope it were David Attenborough, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down.”