Interview: Jon Snow, Channel 4 News (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

WHEN the Archbishop of Canterbury denounced journalism earlier this month, blaming its "lethally damaging" practices for dehumanising Britain, he was witheringly put down by pundits from The Guardian to Sky. But over at Channel 4 News, Jon Snow found himself nodding in agreement. Snow, the famously opinionated son of an Anglican bishop, had had his doubts about Rowan Williams, previously accusing him of "running scared" of public debate. Yet now, he says, he is delighted that Williams has questioned what Snow sees as the media's "massive unaccountable influence".

"I certainly thought he was right to question standards and agendas," he explains in ITN's basement canteen. "It is absolutely time we have a look at what we do. It's better in broadcast, because we're regulated - and I never thought I'd thank God for the regulator - but print is where the problem is. They are just desperate to have a privacy law inflicted upon them, which seems odd." He arches his eyebrows disapprovingly. "I'd rather have a regulated press than strong libel laws, but I don't really see how you could inflict regulation now."

The "fiction" of newspaper editors sitting in judgment on themselves, Snow suggests, is "a manifestly absurd process" which only further exposes the industry's lack of accountability. The problem, he says, is that a cynical culture within journalism leads politicians to respond with spin. "There's a feeling that most people in public life are liars or bastards, and I don't think that's true. Politicians may get things wrong, but I don't think they're out to line their pockets. We are a remarkably uncorrupt society."

Snow, 57, one of broadcast journalism's most accomplished figures, enjoys that rare privilege among his peers of his editors' acquiescence when he speaks his mind. A self-declared "bloody public-school pinko liberal", he infuriates the conservative press with his perceived Leftwing views, and peppers his daily Snowmail email bulletin with unguarded comments about Robert Mugabe's latest "atrocity" or the "absurdity" of Government transport policy. His autobiography, Shooting History, is packed with examples of his political engagement getting him into trouble, not least his rustication from Liverpool University after a student protest.

Yet isn't ITN, as a public-service broadcaster, obliged to be non-partisan? "I don't have 'views'," Snow replies, a little disingenuously. "I am shaped by what I see, and sometimes that's at variance with what 'the view' should be." Besides, he points out, he has written extensively for The Daily Telegraph as well as The Guardian. "There's no such thing as a neutral human being. You've got to tell it as you see it, to take the side of justice and truth. But did I call Mugabe a 'fascist'? No. When the Attorney-General said to me the other day, 'You've got an agenda,' I replied that my agenda was to search for the truth. Though I knew what hemeant."

In 29 years at ITN, 16 of them presenting Channel 4 News, Snow has reported from around the world, winning a number of Royal Television Society awards and this year the Richard Dimbleby Bafta for "outstanding" work. In that time, the decline of serious foreign reporting, he says, has been "tragic". "You used to be able to start from square one, spend weeks out there finding out what was going on. Now, you're paid to sit in an edit suite, watch the stuff streaming in and read the Reuters copy."

Channel 4 News may be "the last bastion of doing it the way it should be", he says, but developments elsewhere in the ITN building clearly have not impressed him. "I worry about the sausage-machine effect of new technology - to want it all now, [rather than striving to get] a pair of eyes out there to report back. One of the reasons there's been a haemorrhage of people watching television - though thankfully not on our programme - is that the news is boring, samey, there is a process ... ITV News is much more about electronics and gizmos than it is about faces. It's not my idea of fun."

This week, he is back on the road, hosting the show from Uganda from Friday to next Tuesday as part of a dedicated African season. On tonight's 7pm bulletin, Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning author, presents a special report from Nigeria, followed on other nights by films from Congo and Liberia.

"We felt strongly that we should transmit Channel 4 news from an African perspective," Snow explains. "What does Bob Geldof look like from Africa? What do they think of Live8? Do they mind that it's an essentially white, rather geriatric line-up? It must be quite odd, mustn't it, for white men in suits to visit some golf centre to discuss them?"

Uganda holds a special meaning for Snow: it was here, as a VSO teacher before entering journalism, that he was radicalised. "It raised my awareness and changed the way I looked at life," he says. "That's something we can do in journalism too. We can introduce people to a place about which they know little and care less, and maybe change their sense of connection to it."

Having come to the media from the voluntary sector, he admits to "an afterburn of a conscience, a sense that you sold out and took money". He may one day take his conscience to an NGO - possibly working to reform the UN, which he suggests might be done by locking each nation's "brightest and best" on an island for six months and telling them to find a better way of working together. "And," he chuckles, "you could call it Celebrity UN Island ... "

Is Snow a celebrity? "No, absolutely not," he says firmly. "Do celebrities bicycle?" Ah, but that could be part of a well-crafted image. "In which case I've spent 30 years cultivating it," he replies, affronted. "Listen, I came up with the one scoop in the bloody general election - the Attorney-General's opinion on the legality of the war. The person who leaked it to me didn't say, 'Hmmm, I wonder if Cliff Richard would be a good person to leak it to?' No, I worked at it."

Yet would he have been paid around £600,000 for his memoir, had HarperCollins not considered him to have showbiz pull? The book's disappointing early sales were said to have contributed to the departure of Caroline Michel, head of the publisher's literary division. "They tell me it's doing very well, with 42,000 sold in hardback, and 25,000 [paperbacks] in the first month," Snow retorts. "And whatever HarperCollins decided, there were five other publishers bidding."

The book offers a fascinating glimpse into Snow's career, from an invitation to join MI6 (he said no, apparently) to the nepotism that won him his first job (his cousin, the broadcaster Peter Snow, worked at ITN). Yet he writes with a degree of emotional distance: he treats the bullying and sexual interference he suffered at school as simply curious mind-broadening experiences, and fails to mention his brief engagement to Anna Ford.

"There's nothing I regret, apart from any pain that I've caused," he reflects. I presume he means the sacrifices made by his long-term partner and mother of his two daughters, the civil-liberties lawyer Madeleine Colvin, as he risked his life in war zones. But no: when I mention her name, he is startled, and clarifies that he is referring again to the Attorney-General.

A final question. He recalls in the book a childhood ambition to become a Conservative MP, after meeting the then prime minister, Harold Macmillan, a family friend. Does he ever think, "what if"? "I'd have been a very distressed person," he says, with a pained expression. "It's this absolutely dogmatic 'good behaviour' issue that would bother me. It's just not a natural human condition to tie yourself into a team from which you may never dissent."

(Evening Standard, June 29 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Competitive eating (The Times)

By David Rowan

Hungry? How about a quick snack of 552 oysters, 65 hard-boiled eggs and 5 litres of vanilla ice-cream? For all the warnings of an obesity crisis, the American "sport" of competitive eating is establishing itself as a stomach-churning trend on this side of the Atlantic, too. We might struggle at Wimbledon, but Britain, you will be relieved to learn, is finally making its weight felt on the international bulk-eating circuit.

It all used to be so innocent, with little more than the annual World Stinging Nettle Eating Championships - held in a Dorset pub - to tempt international players. But this year, eating contests have popped up across Britain as a form of popular entertainment. At Southport's Pleasureland amusement park, teams have fought it out over hot dogs, pizza and candyfloss; in Birmingham, they have raced to guzzle pork pies. Last month, a winner was declared in what was said to be the UK's first National Competitive Eating Championship. With two books and a Channel 4 documentary in the works, it's clearly time to trade in your gym membership for a few training sessions at the local chippie.

Our new national champion, Rob Burns from Birmingham, managed 18 pork pies in 12 minutes at the Newark Showgrounds, earning himself a place next week in the World Cup of competitive eating, Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, New York. According to George Shea, who does PR for Nathan's and chairs the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), this is Britain's opportunity to redress our "woeful" performance against the world's greatest binge-eaters. "This is an opportunity," Shea asserts, "for the UK to showcase its top athletic talent and get back on the sporting map." Not to mention an opportunity to put Burns off hot dogs for life.

Shea and his brother Richard formed the IFOCE eight years ago after seeing how much press coverage the Nathan's contest brought their client. Since then, they claim, competitive eating has become the fastest-growing sport in the world, the federation's own list of approved contests having grown from 12 "eating events" in 1997 to almost 200 today. Participants can specialise in cheesecake contests, tamales, even kosher matzo balls - or, like Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, ranked as the world's number two, they can take whatever's going. Thomas, a 37-year-old Korean-American who weighs just 7st, currently holds world records for speed-eating 161 buffalo wings, 80 chicken nuggets and 65 hard-boiled eggs - but not, thankfully, all at once.

The secret, Thomas explains, is "hand speed and hand-eye co-ordination, as well as chewing and swallowing fast". A Burger King manager by day, she is now training to overtake the world's number one, Japanese legend Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi, who last year demolished almost 54 Nathan's hot dogs to win. Let's hope for Rob Burns' sake that Britain fails to come anywhere close.

Yet away from the dining table, divisions are breaking out. As sponsorship money flows in, rivals to the IFOCE are fast emerging. Worries are also being voiced about the health risks competitors are taking to keep their sponsors happy. We may have followed the US obesity trend, but do we really need to reduce eating to a meretricious if lucrative "sport"?

(The Times Magazine, June 25 2005)

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Interview: Steve Morrison, All3Media (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

AT 6AM yesterday, Steve Morrison emerged exhausted but buzzing from a gruelling 22-hour negotiating marathon. By clinching a deal to buy Mersey Television from Phil Redmond, Morrison - edged out by Charles Allen from his job running Granada three years ago - could unquestionably claim to be back. Mersey, the company behind Hollyoaks and Grange Hill, would sit nicely alongside Morrison's other recent purchases, including Lion TV and Company Pictures. But more than that, it would finally give him control of Britain's biggest independent TV production house.

You may not have heard of Morrison's company, All3Media, but since it launched two years ago it has quietly bought a portfolio of programme-makers responsible for hits such as Richard and Judy, Shameless and Midsomer Murders.
Endemol claims to produce more hours of television, but the Mersey deal - worth a reported £35-£40 million - makes All3Media indisputably the UK's biggest in terms of turnover, which this year it expects to hit £205 million.
"And profits will be more than double what they were two years ago, when they were in the low sevens," Morrison, 58, says after a snatched two hours' sleep. "Business is looking very good."

That is because "super-indies" like All3Media are positioned to gain most from a fundamental shift in the economics of television. With more channels competing for limited advertising and diminishing audience share, the programme-makers who can sell them sure-fire hits - Midsomer Murders went to 204 countries - are valued at a premium.

Hence the wave of consolidation currently sweeping the independent sector, backed by City investors who see huge profits once such firms go to the stock market. As Morrison sees it, the "value" in television is flowing from the broadcasters to the biggest producers. "Independent production is gradually moving towards a more conventional business model which will attract investors, as opposed to the more hit-and-miss basis of the small indies we had before," he says. "With an expansion in the number of channels cannibalising the advertising revenue, the need for premium content will grow more intensely. Combined with the content creator's [greater] ability to retain their copyright, that should make the content side of the business more attractive in the years to come. There are at least 100 programme formats in development in this company on any one day. The international potential is fantastic."

But is consolidation going to diminish the variety of programmes available to watch? Some independent documentary makers complain that they can no longer finance their less mainstream films, as broadcasters now rely on the super-indies' ability to raise international funding. There are also fears that big production houses reliant on City investors - All3Media is backed by the venture capitalists Bridgepoint - will avoid taking the risks that can discover new talent.

MORRISON, a Glaswegian former World in Action director who rose through Granada over three decades, insists that the opposite is the case. "On the contrary," he says. "We have acquired companies such as Lion and North One which make dozens of one-off, quirky documentaries a year, because they sit within a mixed economy, among the perennial shows like Under the Hammer and Animal Roadshow which offer them the stability to do so. "And with our scale, we can bring programme-makers access to intelligence [about the broadcasters needs], stable finance, international distribution, as well as general encouragement."

Viewers, he claims, will benefit from greater choice, such as the expensive, high-quality drama that only a super-indie, with its international reach, can afford to make. "Take the four-hour miniseries about Elizabeth I, starring Helen Mirren, that we're currently making," he says. "We've managed to attract funding from Channel 4 and HBO, but there's still a deficit. So we're having to go around the world. It's the only way to finance the best possible programmes."

Morrison, who executive produced the Oscar-winning film My Left Foot while at Granada, launched All3Media with David Liddiment, former ITV network programme director, and Jules Burns, previously MD of operations at Granada. (The name refers to the three partners, as well as the business's reach into television, film and multimedia.) Starting with the £45 million buyout of Chrysalis's TV interests, they now have a business rumoured to be heading for a stock market flotation next year valued at hundreds of millions of pounds - although Morrison explains carefully that "we haven't instructed anyone to take us to market".

It is this financial clout - together with the founders' collective 90 years in the industry - that, he says, lets it provide a "safe haven" for smaller firms or individual producers who can pursue their creative interests inside the company. He sees it as another example of scale, offering talented programme-makers new opportunities. With BBC or Granada staff jobs less secure than ever, a super-indie offers them a valuable alternative to the "Wild West" of setting up alone.

The business's devolved structure - whereby acquired firms retain day-today independence - is what convinced Redmond to sell to All3Media, Morrison says, even at a lower price than offered elsewhere. Redmond will stay as executive producer of Grange Hill, but Carolyn Reynolds, a former Coronation Street executive producer, will expand Mersey TV as a standalone company within the wider empire. Meanwhile, the shopping spree will continue - initially to fill "gaps" in entertainment and comedy.

Yet what is driving the former documentary-maker who, with his £1 million Granada payoff and £343,000 pension, has no evident need to remain in work? Could it be a need to prove to Allen and colleagues that his humiliating departure - amid blame over his role in the ITV Digital fiasco - was not all in vain?

"The real story was nothing to do with ITV Digital," he says, suddenly engaged but displaying no perceptible emotion. "I know I wasn't responsible. It wasn't my baby." He moves on without pausing for reflection. "No, there was no bitterness at all," he says, flatly. "What happened was simply the inevitable consequences of Granada merging with Carlton. The two chairmen got married, and didn't require any best men at the wedding. It was actually a very positive development."

With ITV's ratings at record lows this summer, and its share price suffering, it does rather look as if Morrison left at a fortuitous moment. "Well, I did my 28 years," he says. "Now I'm doing what I really enjoy best - encouraging great talent to make great programmes."

(Evening Standard, June 22 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Design-it-yourself fashion (The Times)

By David Rowan

If you want to be hip, it's no longer enough to be seen wearing the right shoes: now you also have to design them yourself. What began as a grassroots revolt against the conformity of global clothing brands has become a powerful new movement. In a trend analysts are labelling "consumer creativity" or "the democratisation of design", millions of us are suddenly demanding clothes customised to our tastes. For the mass-market fashion labels, it's a serious business threat - which is why the smartest of them are jumping on the design-it-yourself bandwagon.

Take trainers - long the coolhunters' touchstone in an ever-shifting street culture. Hang around a skateboard ramp and you'll see elaborate graffiti colour schemes decorating the skaters' branded footwear. The best are miniature works of art. Driving in Los Angeles a few months ago, I passed a hand-scrawled roadside sign pointing to a nearby shop where my frayed trainers could be hand-painted to my tastes for $20. I should have invested: Jor One, a fashionable Brooklyn graffiti writer, recently drew a few dollar signs on to five pairs of new Nike Air Jordan 10s. He sold each pair for $450.

Nike knows what's cool. That's why it has just relaunched its Nike iD website (www.nikeid.com), through which the public can design their own shoes, sports bags, even golf balls. If you happen to believe that a loudly coloured trainer is the truest way to express your personality, it offers you 144 separate boxes to tick, covering everything from the "swoosh" border to the tongue covering. Pay your £65, and five weeks later a customised pair of Free 5.0 iDs will arrive through the post along with a personal "blueprint" that flatters your creative abilities. "Once you try it, you become vested in your own design," claims a company spokesman. "There is a Nike iD customer who sees value in being able to design their own shoe, and they're willing to pay a slight premium for that customisation."

If you prefer Vans, you can go online (www.vans.com) "to express your creativity" by personalising Old Skools or Classic Slip-ons. Fans of Puma can visit shops to "touch and play with" fabrics as they formulate their one-off styles. Nor is it just the footwear firms that are scrambling to offer customisation. Ralph Lauren's www.polo.com website has a "create your own" option for T-shirts and bikinis; so, rather more expensively, do Gucci and Armani. Pfz, an online crockery firm (www.pfz.com), specialises in "personal branding" for your next dinner party. "The fashion-conscious," the company gushes, "can unlock their creative juices to design dinnerware that reflects their individual personality and styles."

Trend forecasters call it "fingerprinting" - the desire to make our own small mark on the impersonal global economy. Others say it's simply the same technology-led revolution that has turned amateurs into podcasters, video-bloggers and garage musicians. Either way, the experts agree that customisation will be a major fashion trend.

Still, even the most street-cred brands have their limits. When Jonah Peretti, a student, was designing his Nike iD running shoes, the website offered to stitch a word of his choice on the side. Peretti famously typed in "sweatshop", but Nike rejected it as "inappropriate slang". Whatever happened to the democratisation of design?

(The Times Magazine, June 18 2005)

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The Times Op-Ed Page: The wrongs of extending copyright

Copyright wrongs: we can't let the music industry suits stifle creativity. By David Rowan

BOB GELDOF is not the only superannuated rocker whose political gifts overshadow his more limited musical contributions to recent cultural progress. Sonny Bono, too, is a name currently buzzing through the Culture Department's chill-pad in Cockspur Street, even though Bono departed his California stage set seven years ago. His biggest hit, you may recall, was the audaciously self-serving law he championed that extended United States copyright protection by 20 years. Worryingly, it is a tune that our own Culture Minister, James Purnell, appears unable to clear from his head.

Mr Purnell, who is in charge of our "creative industries", believes that we, too, need to "modernise our intellectual property framework" along similar lines. Following a music industry campaign to extend the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years, he has been rapping in rhythm with the EMI and BMG massive: in a risky, talent-driven business like pop, the suits, apparently, need guarantees of long-term financial returns. As he told the Institute for Public Policy Research yesterday, the record labels need copyright reforms "that will allow them to make returns on their creativity and to invest in innovation". What he failed to explain was the damage that such a short-term corporate grab would do to the public good.

Copyright has always been a delicate compromise between the needs of artistic creators and the cultural richness of a wider public domain. Our first such law, the 1710 Statute of Anne, "for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books", limited protection to 14 years, extendable for a further 14. Authors were expected to have ample time to exploit their works within such a term. Over the years, the time period was gradually extended - to 50 years after death in 1956 - but the principle remained unchanged: copyright was never simply a right for publishers to maximise their investment.

The music business, in the guise of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), has decided otherwise. The IFPI claims that the "huge disparity" in copyright terms with the US makes it "hard to do business" here - funnily enough, Bono used the same argument when the old US system offered less protection than in Europe. You may have heard its heartfelt appeals for social justice: Kenney Jones, of The Who, protesting that extended royalties could usefully pay the school fees; Sir Cliff Richard, furious to be deprived of income "simply because I have outlived the copyright on my sound recordings".

Please don't tease. Such half-baked arguments owe more to the short-term financial pressures facing the perma-tanned hipsters running the record labels. They are wilfully ignoring the vital creative role of the public domain in reinvigorating our common culture. Had they been genuinely innovative over the past decade - beyond discovering Crazy Frog and "girl power" - the moguls would have noticed that their industry's greatest injections of energy have originated not within their own well-cushioned empires but in the public domain. Remember their aversion to MP3 downloads, now a vast corporate revenue stream? Or the copyright-breaching "mash-ups" - unauthorised combinations of existing music samples mixed by DJs - that first attracted music industry writs, and then were worked into Kylie's routine?

Digital technologies are merely amplifying the historic tendency towards mixing and sampling that has shaped works from Macbeth to Mickey Mouse. Once creative works are in the public domain, people frequently make wonderful new things with them - a process denied by the encroachment of corporate interests through copyright extensions. Would West Side Story have been made if Shakespeare's heirs could protect Romeo and Juliet? Would Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life have been reinvented as a Christmas TV classic had it not slipped out of copyright in 1975 and been rediscovered by a new generation who could buy it cheaply on VHS?

By extending the protection term, would artists be encouraged to be any more creative? It is unlikely that Sir Cliff would have sung Summer Holiday less perkily if he had known it would have benefited him for only 50 rather than 95 years. And what of the Joyces and Plaths, whose controlling families could use ever longer extensions to suppress material at whim?

There are also the interests of lesser-known artists to consider. A blanket copyright extension would encourage record companies to restrict access to their entire back catalogues, even works (the vast majority) that they would never exploit. Yet freely available, on other labels' cheap CD collections, otherwise forgotten performers could discover new life. In that odd way in which markets work, the benefits of such cultural entrepreneurial drive could accrue to the original owner of the rights.

The essayist and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay understood the perils when a similar battle to extend copyright was being waged in 1841. Amid calls to stretch the protection to 60 years after death, Macaulay saw no public benefit from a monopoly lasting longer than 42 years or life. "Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not?" he asked in the House of Commons. "Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? An advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action." Many valuable works, he argued, would be suppressed - and publishers treated with such contempt that the reading public would happily turn to "piratical booksellers".

A 20-year patent limit forces other industries to innovate, so why should the innately risk-averse record labels need any more than a 50-year monopoly? If Mr Purnell truly wants to foster creativity, he ought to broaden his musical tastes.

(The Times Op-Ed page, June 17 2005)

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Interview: Frank Gardner (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

ON 6 June last year, Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent, was filming in a residential suburb of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a day before he was due to fly home. He and his cameraman, Simon Cumbers, were travelling with a government minder and driver, and Gardner, a fluent speaker of Arabic, had no reason to believe that their officially sanctioned trip was anything other than routine. Suddenly, they were ambushed by two carloads of men, later identified as al Qaeda sympathisers. Cumbers was killed by a bullet; Gardner, shot six times at point-blank range, was left to die.

He was saved only after a police car arrived to take him to a nearby hospital, where he remained unconscious for eight days. Paralysed, his stomach and intestines riddled with bullet holes, Gardner was at times close to death. Yet now, sustained by painkillers after an unimaginable series of operations, he is easing back into his BBC beat, resuming contact with his security sources, and this week celebrating an OBE just announced for his services to journalism.

For all his traumas over the past year, and his likely permanent need for a wheelchair, Gardner, 43, is remarkably upbeat about his suffering. "There are limitations," he says without self-pity. "I can't jump in and out of helicopters like before, and I am in pain for much of the day. I'm also more risk-averse, now that my body has been prodded, poked, injected, tweaked, ripped open and put back together a dozen times. I've become very aware of the frailty of the human body. Even if I got my legs back tomorrow, I wouldn't be doing some of the roughy-toughy things I did before."

He still faces further surgery - "My last operation was to reconnect my stomach to my intestines" - but now, once again able to eat normally, he sees his daily physiotherapy as just another commitment to fit around work, his book-inprogress, and the young family he credits with giving him the will to pull through. "I've been very lucky that I've had so many motivating factors, but my heart goes out to people who've got broken spines and live on their own," he says.

He is "thrilled" by the OBE, which he sees as recognition for his work explaining the al Qaeda threat, rather than for surviving six bullets. Yet he remains angry that his friend's death, and his own nearfatal wounds, were, as he sees them, avoidable. "They failed us twice, our minders," he says. "First, they took us to a dangerous location we didn't ask to go to - I'd never even heard of this particular dead militant whose house it was. They led us into a death trap and then ran away. And they've never apologised."

WERE he and Cumbers set up in an al Qaeda plot? "I don't believe we were," he reflects. "I believe it was sheer incompetence by the ministry." Besides, it would have proved counterproductive to silence one of the few correspondents who sought to explain al Qaeda's position, he believes. "How many other Western broadcasters bother to convey that they actually do have aims and grievances, that they're not just nihilistic idiots? The people who shot us were idiots. It was pointless, and helped galvanise the Saudi authorities to even more efforts to crush al Qaeda there."

Gardner's life has taken on new stresses beyond his disability - for instance, he wishes the interview's location to be kept from this piece ("I got away. That might possibly be annoying to some people"). For therapy - and a healthy advance - he has been writing 2,000 words a day for a book deadline. Blood and Sand, due to be published next May, will trace his painful recovery and his dawning realisation that he is unlikely ever to walk again. It will also explore his passion for the Middle East, which began when, aged 16, he met the travel writer Wilfred Thesiger, a family friend, and decided to study Arabic and Islamic studies at Exeter University.

While there, Gardner was invited to join MI6, something he has never talked about. "Yes, a diplomat in Cairo approached me in 1983," he recalls. "I was intrigued. I went along for an interview in London, and a particularly grey, faceless person interviewed me. He gave me a name I'm sure wasn't his, and laid out the negative points of the job. I thought, 'Do I really fancy having to spend large parts of my life doing mundane diplomatic duties as cover, not being able to tell my friends, then if I'm successful being unlikely to ever get any public recognition?' I thought, 'No, I'm too vain for that. If I'm good at something, I want people to know.'" Instead, he "drifted into banking" in the Middle East, first the Saudi International Bank, then setting up an office for Robert Fleming.

Has he ever subsequently been approached? Some BBC colleagues have certainly raised eyebrows at Gardner's close relations with his security sources ... "No, never," he says firmly. "I have never informed for the intelligence services. I'm a journalist, I work for the BBC, nobody else. I find it mildly amusing that people think I have enough spare time to do a second job for the spooks," he says. "Because I pioneered the idea of doing a stand-up piece to camera outside Vauxhall Cross or Thames House, people are bound to associate you with them. But I've never been inside either building."

HIS life as a banker was comfortable yet unfulfilled. "Sure, at 29 I had everything - a speedboat, a servant, a taxfree salary, a soft-top convertible," he says. "But I wasn't that excited punting somebody else's money around." In 1995 he took a diploma at the London School of Journalism, found an unpaid attachment with BBC World, and was soon setting up a bureau in Dubai.

Gardner's BBC colleague, the producer Adam Curtis, suggested in a documentary series last year that politicians have been issuing warnings to exaggerate the domestic threat from al Qaeda for their own ends. Is that how he sees it? "I totally disagree," he replies. "Though there have been some unguarded comments by people in authority who should know better. David Blunkett was a little too ready to use the words 'al Qaeda' when a suspect had yet to be tried. That, I know, embarrassed the police."

Have the media given a fair picture of the risks? "There's been much too much hype in the whole terrorism story," Gardner says. "Often I've been rung up by our newsdesk on Saturday evening, to check out a Sunday paper story. A tiny portion would be true, but the rest would be denied by whichever agency was being quoted."

Yet haven't Gardner's own reports played into this trap by repeating the authorities' warnings? For instance, the north London ricin "plot", which he reported as "very significant", was later proved to be far less threatening. "I'd hope that I always apply a pretty rigorous journalistic standard of test and proof to everything I'm told," he replies. "Some people have the idea that security correspondents just wait to be rung up by spooks and then parrot what they're told. That is so definitely not how it works. Usually we have to pry information out of them. Yes, if they say something's very significant, I'll quote them. But I try and balance it by facts that are known or not known."

After the horrors of the past year, Gardner could be excused for wanting a quieter life away from frontline journalism. Yet for all he has suffered, he has no intention of giving up his second career. Even now, he can imagine no buzz greater than covering a breaking story.

"I'd encourage anybody who's thinking about journalism to do it," he reflects. "It doesn't mean that you'll end up with six bullets in your guts."

(Evening Standard, June 15 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Fan films (The Times Magazine)

By David Rowan

If you don't fancy sitting through the latest Star Wars movie, here's a newly fashionable alternative: make your own. Amateur films that pay homage to big-screen blockbusters have suddenly become a mainstream entertainment phenomenon, with millions downloading them from the internet and special screenings being held at Cannes. As digital cameras and editing software become cheaper, home-made tribute movies are moving from the geekish fringes to become a popular creative hobby. Lacking the budget of a George Lucas epic, directors are making do with imagination, humour, and the charm to persuade their collaborators to give their time freely. And don't tell Lucas, but the best are winning far greater critical acclaim than Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

The genre is known as the fan film, and it goes far wider than Star Wars. With a broadband connection and a free afternoon, you can enjoy polished home-grown remakes of The Matrix, Star Trek, Tomb Raider and Doctor Who. But, ever since a 13-minute parody called Hardware Wars emerged in 1977, Star Wars has been the fans' main focus. There is now a gangsta rap version, as well as Sith Apprentice, in which Darth Vader assumes the Alan Sugar role. One fan film site, theforce.net, currently lists 89 hit titles, from Matrix Jedi to Beer Wars. And as long as they don't make money, Lucas seems happy.

But in recent weeks an extraordinary 40-minute fan film has brought the trend to wider attention. Since it went online on April 16, a home-made movie called Star Wars: Revelations has been downloaded a remarkable three million times, with critics gasping over its special effects, from spacecraft chases to lightsaber duels. As word spread, a million people watched it in the first week alone, according to director Shane Felux, a 33-year-old graphic artist living in Virginia. "This is as close as you get to the real-deal Star Wars - minus the big money, of course, and Uncle George's involvement," he says proudly.

Felux, the father of two young children, spent three years making the film, which you can find on his website, panicstruckpro.com. "I'd come home from work each night, maybe eat and pat the kids on the head, and then work till 3am," he says. It cost him around $20,000, most of which went on a new computer, a digital video camera, and enough new hard drives to edit around a terabyte of data. "You can't replace the money or talent of a big-studio film," Felux reflects, "but fan film is undergoing enormous growth because of the speed at which the technology is advancing and becoming more affordable. Film-making used to be restricted to the elites in the major studios, but now all you need is your home computer and an editing package."

The internet also played a central role. Felux used it to recruit his volunteer actors, to liaise with a special-effects team stretching from Britain to Australia, and to co-ordinate location shoots which involved up to 180 people at a time. "It's about living a childhood dream," he says.

Still, isn't he secretly hoping that Hollywood will come calling? "If it can be a springboard to making an original movie, then great," he says. "But I'm not holding my breath. We're still a bunch of nobodies."

(The Times Magazine, June 11 2005)

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Interview: Rupert Heseltine (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

THE official line at Haymarket Publishing is that Michael Heseltine is "immortal". But if the founder of Britain's biggest privately owned publisher ever does step down, the Hon Rupert Heseltine, his low-profile 37-year-old son, is the man lined up to take over a vast empire stretching from Autocar to What Hi-Fi?.

Over five decades, Heseltine Senior, 72, has built Haymarket into a global powerhouse, turning over almost £200 million a year from more than 100 magazines and scores of live events. Last month, it added Media Week to a portfolio that includes Stuff, Management Today, and lucrative specialist titles such as Renal & Urology News. It made £24 million profit in 2003, yet as a family-owned business has no City investors to satisfy. No wonder Rupert, during his swift 11-year rise through the firm, has never felt the need to face the press.

Until now. With Media Week and three other Quantum titles in the bag, and ambitious plans to double the company's size in a decade, Heseltine Junior has finally agreed to grant his first interview. Actually, he recalls in his Hammersmith office, he did talk to BBC radio at the age of seven about his famous father - but, he adds wincing, "I sounded a complete prat".

But why, having so evidently been groomed to inherit one of the UK's media giants, has Rupert been so keen to remain in the shadows? "I've intentionally kept my head down as it would be too easy to be seen as a spoilt brat," he replies in a tone that combines nervousness and natural self-deprecation. "I hope I'm not that." Besides, unlike quoted businesses, Haymarket has no need to charm the stock market with PR. "You can let the brands do the shouting," he says triumphantly. "And as Michael has always had a fantastic relationship with the bank, they've always been willing to help."

"Michael" - Lord Heseltine - remains group chairman, in the office for three days a week. But while daughters Annabel and Alexandra remain indirectly involved through a family trust, Rupert has been given increasing responsibility since being brought in after his father's 1993 heart attack. He has overseen business development and run magazine launches, and was recently put in charge of the profitable events-andexhibitions division, with 122 staff. Is he now simply biding time until the big job comes up?

"I don't know if there's a 'What to do with Rupert' file," he says, a little embarrassed. "But if you're talking about the future, Michael tells me he's immortal, so it's not an issue. And if I look at the senior management, all of these guys are on long-term contracts. Succession is hypothetical, really."

YES, but he's clearly the heir apparent, isn't he? "It's a family-owned company," he says carefully. "I'm the son of a politician on that answer, I'm afraid. But I do love this company."

After Harrow and Oxford Poly, he had hoped to become a photographer, but "wasn't very good". So he sold advertising for Robert Maxwell's business magazines. "I wasn't a truly aggressive salesman, someone who could scream down the phone," he recalls. Nor, being dyslexic, did he take easily to writing for magazines. But when his father had his heart attack, he knew that Haymarket held his future. "There was suddenly this horrible 'what if ' question. So I worked on BBC Gardeners' World Live, on a car hifi magazine, a wine-and-spirit trade title. Then on the launches of Revolution and PR Week USA."

His company loyalty extends to his own family: he met his wife, Sarah, at Haymarket when she worked on a wine-tasting event and he was ad manager for Car Hi-Fi?. They live in London and Oxfordshire with children aged two and five months. He confides that they plan for two more, and that he insists on changing nappies as "life is about teamwork".

He may share his father's height and (cropped) blond locks, but Rupert comes across less as the hard-nosed publishing impresario than an enthusiastic if sensitive man who seems acutely conscious of his personal advantages. "Maybe they do judge me," he says when asked if it was difficult coming in as the boss's son. "I could spend a lot of time worrying about it. But you've got to find a balance between worrying and getting your head down."

As for living in the shadow of his father's achievements, "you could worry about that, too. But he will achieve his things in life and I will achieve mine. He didn't work on the launch of PR Week in America." He pauses. "Ah, he did, actually... But he didn't physically sell advertising on Revolution or Gramophone. I did that. And if I increased circulation by five per cent, that will be my achievement."

Does Michael nod through all his proposals? "Absolutely not. But I see him every weekend, talk to him twice a week. I'm exceedingly proud of him, and we're friends. I'm going fishing with him tomorrow in Russia." Sounds competitive. "It might be." He laughs.

Spitting Image puppets of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher look down from his office bookshelf. So does Rupert share his father's political interests? "Ha ha ha. No. No." No ambitions, then, to stand for Parliament and save the Conservatives? He pauses. "No, though I do think about it. But it's not what I'm about." No preference, then, for party leader? "Whoever they elect, however they elect him," he says with a smile. "I'm not here to talk politics. Though I have some issues that I feel utterly passionate about, such as Iraq... "

He appears less driven by more immediate political concerns. Last month, his father publicly condemned controversial Office of Fair Trading proposals to reform magazine distribution. Rupert, when asked for his views, deflects the question saying that he has been too busy to look into it. It is hard to imagine a prospective IPC or Emap CEO taking such a casual approach to the industry's most immediate challenge.

HIS views of Haymarket's future plans are clearer. The acquisition of the Quantum titles "completes the circle for us" and, alongside Marketing, PR Week and Campaign, lets Haymarket "serve the [media] industry better". Will the titles' staff be cut? "No," he replies. "I can 99.99 per cent say that's not the case." As for why Haymarket turned down Press Gazette, another Quantum title, he will only say: "It's not an area that we're active in."

He describes the company's expansion strategy as "opportunist" - actively shopping for titles (such as the BBC's Eve) that take Haymarket into new markets, and then rolling out international editions. "We weren't in women's publishing, but with Eve we acquired a team who understood that sector. It's very exciting. We've already had some initial licensing discussions. Eve goes very well in Muslim countries."

Wouldn't a stock-market flotation be a simpler way to finance growth? The company has been valued in the high hundreds of millions. "We've made it very clear this is a family-owned company, and the staff like that," he says firmly. "They know whose money's behind it. They see the passion in Michael's eyes. We're not going to sell it. The door's shut. And I hope it will remain private for ever."

Yet in today's market, doesn't that favour the publicly owned Emaps with their £16 million launch budgets? "We haven't done badly," he reflects. "When I joined the company in 1994, we were 800 people. We're now 2,000. We were in two countries; we're now in seven. We're probably publishing's best kept secret. But we like it that way."

As for his own editorial vision, he is toying with a monthly magazine for men in their late thirties. "There's nothing for someone of my age," he says. "I don't want to be a 'father', I want to be a man who's going to be 38 in July, who buy cars, kitchens, everything." He thinks aloud. "I probably want a slightly older GQ, actually. I read GQ, but I'm not very stylish."

Another pause. "I worry that I'm quite dull, really."

(Evening Standard, June 8 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Vlogging (The Times Magazine)

By David Rowan

Reality TV has a lot to answer for. Just as the summer schedules are filling with ever more D-list celebrities, along comes a trend promising that you too can be an instant video star. The video blog, or "vlog", is the fashionable new way for amateur performers to find an internet audience, whether by chronicling their domestic minutiae or wittily parodying mainstream news bulletins. With audiences typically in the dozens or hundreds, the vlogs aren't yet threatening ratings at the BBC. They are, however, creating a new generation of online stars - from schoolgirls as young as 11 to a bubbly New York actress with a cult international following.

To join them, all you need is a digital video camera, a high-speed internet connection and a website that will host your oeuvre. Ian Mills, a 17-year-old college student from Milton Keynes, spends around £5 a month to host his daily show, The 05 Project. But his growing fan base, currently around 100 visitors a day, has already donated enough cash to keep him online for another six months, and Mills is determined to upload a fresh three-minute video every day this year. "I'll spend two or three hours filming and editing whatever amuses me that day," he says. "The most popular entry was probably the one where I had my Spider-Man doll make a cup of tea. It's the feedback that keeps you going."

Recently, several British vloggers have come to the attention of directories such as VlogDir.com. As with many weblogs, the appeal can be hard to understand: recent video-diary entries by a 15-year-old London schoolboy, Topher Collins, included him eating a banana, and screaming into the camera. Occasionally, though, you encounter bursts of creativity that are at least as compelling as anything on Saturday-night TV. Rocketboom, a daily three-minute vlog produced in New York, is just waiting to be picked up by an established broadcaster.

Each weekday, Rocketboom's anchor, 23-year-old actress Amanda Congdon, introduces bizarre film reports about breakdancing bodybuilders, sarcastic items about Arianna Huffington's weblog, even serious local investigations into alleged police brutality. The show (at rocketboom.com/vlog) claims to reach 30,000 viewers. Last month, when it advertised for an unpaid weather forecaster, more than 300 applied. Not bad for a show made in a one-bedroom flat using a standard video camera, a laptop and a $10 map as a backdrop.

If you want to join the party, then an explanatory site such as Freevlog.org is a good place to start. Better still, explore the best of what is out there. Start with The Dylan Show, in which 11-year-old Dylan Verdi takes you on outings with her dad and grandma (dylanverdi.blogspot.com). Or, if you can't quite break that reality-TV habit, tune into The Carol and Steve Show (stevegarfield. com), in which a Boston couple share their trips to the carwash. Hardly riveting, yet the Garfields are now internet superstars.

Will vlogging be more than a fad? Google certainly thinks so, and is investing to profit from the expected boom. The vloggers, meanwhile, seem determined to nurture their small-time fame. "It makes you a semi-celebrity, and you get to leave your mark," reflects Ian Mills. "Although no one has yet come up to me in the street and said, 'Hey, aren't you that idiot with the videoblog?'"

(The Times Magazine, June 4 2005)

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Interview: Kelvin MacKenzie (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

WANTED: media opportunities big enough to accommodate Kelvin MacKenzie's legendary ego. Having lost the battle to buy the Wireless Group to Ulster TV, MacKenzie, the former's chief executive, is at 58 about to find himself out of a job. The deal has made the former Sun editor £7 million richer, but MacKenzie, mischievously opinionated as ever, has no intention of retiring quietly to his Cote d'Azur villa.

Far from it: the brains behind the News Bunny and Freddie Starr's hamster is currently shopping around for his next media venture. "I'm looking for businesses - in television, radio or print - which need a new direction," he says in the office, just down from talk-Sport's studios, which he will be leaving any week now. "If things were going well, I'd be entirely the wrong person to hire - within 18 months all kinds of things would have gone rather badly and I'd be joining the P45 brigade. But if things needed changing, I would be very interested in investing and also running the businesses.
It just doesn't suit me not being in charge."

MacKenzie has certainly done well out of radio. A consortium he headed bought the loss-making Talk Radio for £25 million in 1998, before rebranding it as talkSport and watching the business's value quadruple over seven years. Although he failed to attract City backing for a management buyout, he has not given up on running another radio venture. His only condition is that this time he has outright control: with only seven per cent of the Wireless Group, it was "painful", he says, being unable to steer the company through difficult times.

So what's next? His invitation to appear on I'm A Celebrity, he fears, has been quietly withdrawn after he mocked the show's researcher in print ("Celebrity Fat Island's more my thing, or, given my current shape, maybe sumo wrestling," he says now). He is equally flippant when pressed about his entrepreneurial plans. "I'd love to own the Telegraph, but I'm just short of 800 million quid," he begins, less than helpfully. "Actually," he continues, more calmly, "I'm slightly more interested in pay-TV, to be honest."

Would this consist of babes-and-gambling formats? He is reluctant to be drawn, in case his interest boosts any acquisition costs. But he does roar at the suggestion that there might be a role for Live TV's News Bunny. "You know, if Trinity Mirror hadn't made a shocking decision in shutting down Live TV [which MacKenzie launched alongside Janet Street-Porter], it would be number six or seven on the electronic programme guide by now. Its audience would be bloody huge. The News Bunny, the bouncing weather dwarf, topless darts - they'd all be major television personalities. I worked out that Trinity Mirror would be making £8-£10 million a year. But the management were just too po-faced."

Never one to drop old vendettas, MacKenzie delivers an unflattering impression of Street-Porter, before launching into a familiar diatribe against executives at Rajar, the radio-audience monitors he unsuccessfully took to court ("They're probably throwing a party to see me go, which is unutterably disgraceful"). Within a few minutes, he is also attacking the Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude ("makes you want to buy a short piece of rope"), the "absolutely bloody mad" Independent, with which he has severed links after it let the BBC respond to one of his articles, and Goldman Sachs, advisers for the Wireless Group's sale. "For their £1.8 million, Goldman Sachs seemed to pick up the phone a few times," he says, in serious mode. "Well, I employ people for £4.85 to pick up phones."

Still, he doesn't seem to have done too badly out of the sale. "Yeah, I've multiplied my investment by four, but I put a lot of bloody work in," he replies. "Talk Radio was totally clapped out, and me and my colleagues worked hard to reposition it, make it a brand. I wish I could have been the one to grow the business. But Ulster are good guys, and I have no doubt they'll continue to make it successful."

MACKENZIE has always been part entrepreneur. Before joining the South East London Mercury at 18 as a junior reporter, he tried unsuccessfully to raise money for a magazine he describes as "a less raunchy FHM". Even while editing The Sun, he launched a freesheet in Gravesend, again unsuccessfully. "After finishing editing one evening, I had to go down and lay out the freesheet," he recalls. "Not very well, I might add. But I've always liked to take a punt."

Reports that he planned to back Piers Morgan's bid for Press Gazette are wide of the mark, he insists. "No, that was never a goer," he says. "I just wasn't interested. But I wish Piers every success - he'll certainly add value, just through his energy."

A rather more mischievous suggestion, in Private Eye, is that Rebekah Wade's days at The Sun are numbered, and MacKenzie's availability may lead Rupert Murdoch to get in touch. "They're having a laugh," he shrugs. "Editing newspapers is a young person's game, not for old codgers. At 58, your interests are going to be radically different from someone like Rebekah's. I'd be very interested in life insurance and wills and inheritance taxes, whereas in your mid-thirties, these things don't play a big role in your life."

He laughs. But if Rupert called? "Ha! I'd say, I think you've dialled the wrong number."

Still, he does not lack opinions on why the red-tops' circulation is declining. Faced with the challenge of the internet, and the rise of Metro in the South-East, it is not surprising, he says, that numbers are falling across the board.

But while he has only positive things to say about The Sun (Murdoch was an investor in the Wireless Group), he takes a further opportunity to knock Trinity Mirror. "The collapse of the Mirror Group titles is quite shocking," he says gleefully. "There's nobody in the management who gives a damn about the titles editorially. So they've got somebody who can count the money. What kind of genius does that take? If you're going to go down, at least go down fighting."

What advice, then, would MacKenzie give other journalists looking to make their millions? "You need a passion, to believe in stuff, to take a risk," he says, almost avuncular for an uncharacteristic moment. But that soon changes. "If you fail, who cares? Well, obviously, your wife and kids may care, as you end up in a caravan sharing the Ramsgate caravan park with asylum seekers and pikeys ..."

He laughs loudly, delighted to be back causing offence. MacKenzie may now be the corporate multimillionaire - but red-top Kelvin is never far away.

(Evening Standard, June 1 2005)

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