And then I did my first World in Action and that was a really big deal, because it really was testing… and it was 1983 and it was produced by Ian McBride, and it was a film about Jesse Jackson, and actually on the road with Jesse Jackson, who was undecided about seeking nomination or putting himself forward for nomination for the Democrats. But what he was doing though was going out there to try and encourage blacks to register to vote, and this was called The Race Against Reagan, so it was to challenge Ronald Reagan. And it was just the most brilliant, for me, first thing, because it was real – it wasn’t archival stuff that, you know, a lot of current affairs stuff, they build programmes nowadays without actually having been out there. But this was typical of World in Action. Steve Anderson was a researcher on it, and it was great. And there was interviews with Jimmy Carter, it even had Stevie Wonder in it at one of the rallies. And he played the song, I can’t remember what it was now, it was the first airing of this song, and I got it done in time, and I think everybody was quite happy with it. I was then asked to do more World in Action, so I think I did two series of World in Action, and worked with what I considered to be some of the great directors – Stephen Clarke, David Hart
Paul Greengrass?
I didn’t ever work with Paul, no. for some reason, Paul was always in the cutting room next to my cutting room, and I would be working on… it all depended on which shows you were doing. Paul’s always ran over, so they were always given two weeks to edit, and World in Action always had a programme going out. And I always seemed to be on the wrong programme! But having said that, I worked on some really great stuff. I did a couple of Southeast Asian World in Action’s with David Darlow, and I think John Smithson was part of his set up then, and I did a film about Lockerbie… I mean, everything… even David Hart, I did a World in Action about living off a tip.
Oh, Bidston in Birkenhead.
Yes. And the Animal Liberation Front with somebody else, and Charles Tremayne, did something about an MP, Sir John Browne, you know, some reasonably big World in Action’s, and then a lot of fillers. David Mills was always used for NHS stories and quick turnaround, and there would be those… and, yes.
So you’re a fully fledged film editor at this stage.
By this stage I’m a fully fledged film editor, yes. …….
That sort of led to sort of that probably current affairs was something I’d like to do more of. But again, I think other people were sort of saying, “Well, you know, don’t get bogged down with that, because you could be there forever.” And other editors had enjoyed doing that forever, and Kelvin Hendrie was one of them. I know Roland (Coburn) always liked to do World in Action’s and stuff, you know, and of course he made money. I mean, some of those… on the first series of World in Action I did, I made so much money that I came out of that series and I took my family to Cannes, and we had a fantastic, very expensive family holiday in the South of France! So there were some benefits to it. You know, that was when you could work through the night and end up on Monday where, for every hour you worked, you got five hours worth of pay. You know, it’s extraordinary. You did have a sort of sense that somebody was going to kind of catch up with all this and, you know, stop it, but it was amazing.
