Sun 10 Apr 2005
Will Big Brother be hailed a classic in 30 years? The man behind it thinks so
BAZALGETTE. It sounds vaguely like a scandal, in the ignoble traditions of Watergate, Squidgygate and - only in Scotland, eh? - Piegate. And a quick squint at Peter Bazalgette’s press clippings suggests that the way he earns his living is indeed scandalous.
This is the man who, some would say, is destroying television. He’s responsible for programmes which are "gross, ghastly, inane, cynical, sad, dissipated, desperate, seedy, voyeuristic, creepy, phoney, a new low... " Correction: all of that and more has been said about just one programme, Big Brother.
He’s a descendant of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the great Victorian engineer who built London’s sewer systems. If he had a pound for every time the comparison has been made between excrement and reality television he’d be very rich indeed. As it is, he’s very rich indeed. Last year, he’s reckoned to have earned £1.5m. In all, he’s said to be worth £10m.
So, of course, as a child of the golden age of television, I want to hate him...
To get to the HQ of Endemol UK, which produces Big Brother in Britain, you travel along a different subterranean network of tunnels and chambers to the one constructed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette until you are spewed out of the Tube at Shepherd’s Bush. Then you take a lift to the fifth floor of a red-brick building, walk past pods of Nathan Barley types with wacky hairstyles... past cupboards purporting to contain "Very Interesting Things"... and are told to wait in a conference room dominated by a big glass table.
"Crazy socks," you think to yourself when Peter Bazalgette - 51, friendly, posh - slips his skinny frame under the table. They’re the zazzy kind worn by creatives and, for a few seconds, as he self-consciously crosses his legs, we peer through the glass at them, as if we were watching a reality show.
You think that sounds too dull to ever make it onto the goggle-box? Well, Bazalgette is the TV tycoon who, with Changing Rooms, got us watching paint dry. On Ready Steady Cook, he gave us the dreadful Ainsley Harriot. Through Ground Force, he made the nation less green, a result of back gardens being swamped with decking. His TV crimes, according to his critics, are manifold.
Rest of article .
Scotland on Sunday
