I have finally done it. After two decades of pitching ideas to television executives, one of them has been commissioned. The first episode was broadcast last week and attracted several million viewers.
OK, now for the bad news. The person named as the ‘creator’ of the show is someone who I have never met and who, until I saw his name in the credits, I had never heard of. In other words, the idea was bought from someone else. When I pitched it in late 2005 I was told it couldn’t be done because it would cost too much. Needless to say, they have not been in touch since.
For the record, I don’t think my proposal was stolen. I emailed the commissioning editor I met with demanding an explanation and she assured me that the ‘creator’ pitched one of her colleagues with the same idea about a year later, by which time it had become more affordable. It is nothing more than a coincidence.
Nevertheless, this episode is typical of my experience with television executives. Time after time, they have taken me out to lunch to discuss programme ideas, only to disappear when the cheque arrives, never to be heard of again. I feel like a sad singleton who has been wining and dining the same gorgeous blonde for 20 years and has yet to receive a goodnight kiss. And this in spite of the fact that I have lavished my best material on her — scintillating gossip, witty one-liners, amusing anecdotes, etc. After each fruitless encounter I vow to have nothing more to do with her, but she only has to bat her eyelids and I come running. It is pathetic.
Actually, it is not true to say I have never got anywhere. In 2003, I submitted a proposal to BBC2 for a four-part series called From the D-List to the A-List. The first episode would chart my efforts to get on to the D-List, the second the C-List, and so on. The idea was to send up our society’s obsession with celebrity, a sort of Rake’s Progress of the modern age.
Jane Root, then controller of BBC2, liked the idea and invited me to come and talk about it to a roomful of executives at an ‘open meeting’. She and her lieutenants had set aside an afternoon to review all the best proposals that had been submitted in the previous year. I would be one of dozens of hopefuls, each allotted five minutes. It was a bit like Pop Idol, only for aspiring television presenters rather than singers, and some of the ideas were so harebrained it probably would have made an entertaining TV show in its own right: Pitch Idol.
I was awarded the last slot of the afternoon and, given how bored they would be at that point, I decided my best hope was to turn my proposal into a five-minute stand-up routine. It was essentially a series of gags about why I wanted to be on television. (I quoted Ian Hislop’s line that, on the idiot box, you only have to have a pulse to be branded a ‘sex symbol’.) It went over quite well and afterwards I was told that it was the best pitch they had heard all day.
The following morning I was informed that BBC2 wanted to commission it. According to Jane Root’s second-in-command, it was simply a matter of finding the money from next year’s budget as they had already spent everything in their coffers. But it was a mere formality. As far as her boss was concerned, it was a done deal. I couldn’t believe it. The blonde was finally going to put out.
Then — nothing. At first when I called I would be put through to the relevant executive immediately and told how close they were to finding the money. Then she became mysteriously unavailable and, eventually, Jane Root left the Beeb to work for the Discovery Channel. To this day, I still don’t know what happened. It was like winning the National Lottery, only to discover that Camelot wasn’t paying out that day. Apparently, even if you persuade the bitch goddess to sleep with you, you still won’t end up in bed together. She is the ultimate prick-teaser. She says ‘yes’, closes her eyes, opens her lips — and then disappears in a puff of smoke.
Any day now I expect BBC2 to announce that it will be broadcasting a four-part series in which someone I have never heard of attempts to work his way through the celebrity alphabet. I am sure it will just be a coincidence.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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