And there was an ability in those early days, was there not, to be able to come up with an idea one minute and by the afternoon be actually making the programme?
It was exactly the same as I was saying earlier about picking people on a flair; ideas were the same. There were no committees in those days, one person could actually make a decision. If you convinced one person, one boss… he might take it one step up but that would be it. Nowadays to make a programme you have got to go through various committees, various people coming to see a programme, have their own criticisms. There you had an idea, you took it to your immediate boss. If he wasn’t interested he might suggest you take it to another department. As you say, very quickly it would be taken up. Same with people, if they met with somebody, they thought ‘this is interesting’ and away they went and employed them.
It was a small company in some ways, there were very few bosses. You would probably deal with about five or six people in a year, if that. So there were instant decisions taken and instant protection of people as well if things were going badly. It was a very small and very tightly run company, very financially solvent and very carefully run company. Quite well controlled I think.
