Clips from a life

In an extract from his new autobiography, Denis Norden remembers the early life of the Writers’ Guild.

In 1960 fifteen of us got together in a basement room below 7 Harley Street to form the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. The group, which included Ted Willis and Bryan Forbes, had as its main purpose the negotiation of some kind of agreed minimum payments for television writers. At the time, there were TV companies who were paying as little as £15 for a sixty-minute drama.

There had also been some odd anomalies. Before the introduction of techniques for recording programmes, the only way they could repeat a live Sunday night TV play on the following Thursday was to have the actors reassemble and re-enact the whole thing. However, as they and the production crew were now that much more familiar with the material, the play tended to go at a much faster lick. The result was that the second performance was often significantly shorter than the first, sometimes by as much as five minutes. As certain companies were wont to pay for scripts on the basis of so much per minute, this meant that the writer’s payment for the Thursday transmission would be noticeably less than he had received for the same play four days previously.

It didn’t take long to persuade the TV companies of the quaintness of such practices, Associated-Rediffusion taking a little more time than the others. Soon enough they were agreeing to terms that distributed the wealth a little more fairly.

***

When Marks & Spencer first began selling avocados, they were accompanied by an illustrated leaflet explaining how they should be eaten. As I recall, the preferred method was to remove the stone and fill the holes in the two halves with dry sherry. It was an era when we were being introduced to all manner of foods we had never sampled before. One such played a significant part in what Frank and I came to refer to as ‘The Scampi Parable’.

It centred round Fred Robinson, the writer of a successful ITV sitcom of the early sixties, The Larkins. Starring Peggy Mount, David Kossoff and Ronan O’Casey, the show’s origins had become something of a media fairy-tale. Fred had originally written its first six scripts for a series of concerts put on by his local Boy Scout troop while he was working as a ticket clerk at East Croydon railway station. A leading London agent had seen one of the concerts and was so taken with it he had borrowed the scripts and, in the face of much opposition, persuaded ATV to commission Fred to adapt them for television.

The series was a success from the start. At the time, I was fairly deeply involved with the Writers’ Guild, and it was there that we began to hear a slightly different account of the show’s origins. In this version, after the Scout show had been seen by the agent – I’ll call him Jimmy G, though that’s nothing like his real name – he had indeed collected the scripts and after reading them that same night made an appointment to show them to ATV the following morning. The company had immediately appreciated the quality of the writing, so much so that they had there and then given the green light for a series, at an agreed writer’s fee of £125 for each script.

That evening, Jimmy G went back to Fred and delivered himself of something along these lines: “Well, son, I’ve now spent all day poring over your scripts and there’s something about them I like. In fact, as a gambling man, I’d be prepared to make you a proposition. I will give you the sum of £75 per script in return for your permission to try and persuade one or other of the television companies to put them on as a series. If I manage to talk somebody into buying them I’ll keep whatever sum they go for. If I can’t sell them – well, as I say, I’m a gambler, I’ll take the loss.”

This, remember, after he had already sold the six scripts at £50 more for each one than the £75 he was offering. Fred, however, was so overwhelmed by this unexpected stroke of good fortune, he accepted immediately. At the Guild, after we had confirmed that this was how the series had really come about, we decided that, in all fairness, Fred should be told that he was being taken for a ride.

When I rang him to suggest a meeting, he asked if he could come to our Conduit Street office so that he could meet Frank as well. After we had shaken hands and had a coffee, we congratulated him on The Larkins and then, as gently as possible, explained the royal screwing he was getting as regards his fee entitlement. Although slightly taken aback at the news, his response was unhesitating. Almost apologetically he said, “I really don’t mind how much Jimmy G is getting out of it. I’ve never earned anything near £75 a week in my life. As it is I don’t know how to spend all of it. If I was to get any more, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. So he’s welcome to the extra £50.”

We were unable to budge him. What’s more, his feelings about it were so obviously heartfelt, we didn’t really try to. Even though he let slip that on top of everything, Jimmy G was also subtracting 10% from the £75 as agent’s commission. So the matter rested. That first series of The Larkins finished in a blaze of glory and the show was well over halfway through its second series when we received a phone call from Fred. Could he come up to the office and talk to us about something? Buy us lunch, possibly? We had both liked him enormously at that first meeting, so we agreed immediately.

When he turned up, we could not help but notice the change in his appearance. As well as a different style of haircut, he was wearing a smartly cut camelhair overcoat. Moreover, his manner of speech was more direct.

Coming straight to the point, he said, “Can the Guild still do something about my arrangement with Jimmy G?”
”Of course,” we said. “Be no problem at all.”
His relief was evident. “I need the extra,” he said. “Just can’t seem to make do on that money any more. It’s like everything’s got more expensive.”
”Don’t worry about it,” we said. “He’ll cough up.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ve booked a table at Verrey’s.” And, as we were going down in the lift, “I already know what I’m going to have.”
“What’s that?”
“Scampi,” he said. They had only recently begun to feature scampi on restaurant menus and Fred was vehement in his enthusiasm. “I have them all the time,” he said. “With everything.”

Now it was plain what had happened. Fred had crossed what Frank and I came to think of as the Scampi Line. We could redress the financial balance in his favour, but now that he had tasted scampi, the damage had been done. Back there in the sixties, the scoffing of the scampi brought about the same consequences as the eating of the forbidden fruit.

***

It was during my tenure as chairman that the Writers’ Guild became affiliated to the TUC and has been represented at every annual Congress ever since. Despite this, I have never yet plucked up sufficient courage to enter a discussion with, “Well, speaking as a former trade union leader ...”

***

The least enjoyable period of my Writers’ Guild chairmanship began when, much to our surprise, the Duke of Edinburgh consented to be guest of honour at our first awards dinner. A few days later a Palace equerry briefed me on the protocol I would be expected to follow on the night. Pre-dinner, we must arrange for a private room with bar, and that would be where I introduced the members of the Guild’s Executive Committee to the Duke. The drill here would be that I would present each member individually, HRH would have a few words with him or her, then, when he shifted his gaze, that member would move away and I would present the next in line.

I should have foreseen what would happen when I relayed these instructions to the Committee at our next meeting. That year’s Committee harboured a more than usually high quotient of socially committed firebrands, whose eyebrows went skyward at the very mention of “moving on when his gaze shifts”. All of them holding strong views on such matters, there was an immediate rumble of dissent. How could I have agreed to such a feudal procedure? One by one, they proclaimed their intention of using the occasion to buttonhole His Highness regarding various social concerns on which he needed enlightening.

To this day, I’m not sure whether they were winding me up. All I know for certain is that nothing I said would deter them and I spent the next few meetings veering between appalled and desperate. Then, to my enormous relief, the King of Greece died. The Court was immediately plunged into official mourning and all Royal engagements were cancelled.

I received a charmingly regretful letter from the Duke’s secretary and the Committee promptly replaced him at the top table with the totally undemanding Richard Marsh, MP.

***

The most enjoyable, not to say thought-provoking, of the Writers’ Guild negotiations I attended was the first time we came up against Lew Grade. Receiving us in his office, he handed round his daunting cigars, then assumed his role as ATV’s one-man Industrial Relations Committee. He listened courteously to our carefully rehearsed arguments and when we concluded, he thought for a moment, in silence. Then, “Here’s how I see it,” he said. “Bring me a ninety-minute play by a Clive Exton or an Alun Owen or a John Hopkins, I’ll pay them whatever they want for it. What we’re here to negotiate today is how much per minute do you want me to pay for crap?” He put the question in all seriousness and, thanks be, we had the sense to address it the same way. We left his office with a satisfyingly generous minimum terms agreement and I suspect that, to this day, Lew’s query lies at the heart of most negotiations relating to television output.

Clips From A Life by Denis Norden is published by Fourth Estate, priced £18.99

This extract first appeared in the Guild magazine, Uk Writer (Winter 2008)