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[00:00:00] Do you want to do that one more time?
[00:00:02] Why? Was the testicle not good enough?
[00:00:05] I don't know. I just thought...
[00:00:06] You didn't get your mouth around it properly.
[00:00:07] Yeah, you didn't get your mouth around the testicle. Great, we've got our opening clip there as well. Fantastic.
[00:00:12] Oh, my God.
[00:00:17] This Wittering production.
[00:00:27] All I knew is I wanted to try and understand the way the world works, the natural world.
[00:00:34] More because we are human.
[00:00:39] Science is the storytelling of our time.
[00:00:42] For me, storytelling has always been the way to leave Sahara.
[00:00:50] Hello and welcome to Who Moved the Tortoise?
[00:00:53] A podcast about the science and wildlife films that have inspired people.
[00:00:57] I'm Kate Dooley.
[00:00:58] And I'm Alex Hemingway.
[00:01:00] In each episode, we invite someone from the world of science or the media to share the thing that inspired them most.
[00:01:06] It can be anything. Fiction, comedy, documentary, animation, whatever.
[00:01:11] The only rule at Tortoise HQ is that it has to have some kind of science or wildlife content.
[00:01:17] This time, we're talking to series producer Simon Winchcombe.
[00:01:21] Simon studied civil engineering at Leeds before going on to make educational engineering films
[00:01:26] and then took his wife's advice, who works in the media industry, to produce TV at the BBC.
[00:01:31] He's directed and self-shot Last Man Standing, The Sky at Night, Several Horizons and The Lost Art of Embroidery.
[00:01:40] In the name of TV, he's camped inside a volcano, sailed the Southern Ocean to Antarctica, danced naked with an Amazonian tribe
[00:01:48] and eaten freshly slaughtered reindeer testicle.
[00:01:52] Simon's choice for the film or TV show that inspired him is an episode of the BBC Two series Great Britons about Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
[00:02:35] How hard was it choosing something to talk about?
[00:02:39] It was quite hard.
[00:02:40] I mean, because I never, I didn't, yeah, I didn't, I mean, I didn't really have an inspirational program
[00:02:47] because I never expected to work in TV.
[00:02:49] So it's never, it was never an aim.
[00:02:51] So I thought about, you know, what really inspired me.
[00:02:53] Because I'd worked in these sort of educational videos doing sort of CPD training for civil engineers.
[00:03:00] And then the first job I got was about Brunel.
[00:03:02] Well, I went to see the series producer to talk about Brunel because strangely they had,
[00:03:08] because they didn't realize Brunel was going to be in the top 10 when they did the first vote.
[00:03:12] And of course in BBC, there weren't any engineering graduates.
[00:03:16] So no one knew a thing about him.
[00:03:18] And so I went to see the series producer for an AP role on it and sort of told him,
[00:03:22] because I'd made a short film about Brunel.
[00:03:24] So I knew him intimately and I could translate the engineering principles into TV language.
[00:03:29] And he said, look, you know, he said it was great.
[00:03:31] We met at the National Portrait Gallery.
[00:03:33] And so I told him everything I knew.
[00:03:35] He was sort of this mad character that was sort of much more light and shade than everybody thought.
[00:03:41] And then he phoned me a couple of days later and said, look, I've got to take somebody internally.
[00:03:45] And I went, well, no mind, I'll send you all the stuff I know.
[00:03:47] And then literally two months later, he phoned me back up and said, can you start next week?
[00:03:51] Classic TV move.
[00:03:53] The rest, as they say, is history.
[00:03:55] And yeah, classic TV move.
[00:03:57] And so I was on a three month notice period with this sort of educational video firm.
[00:04:01] And I said I'd go back and rather badly, I never did.
[00:04:05] Well, you can call them now if you're...
[00:04:07] They don't exist anymore.
[00:04:09] They've gone.
[00:04:10] They've gone.
[00:04:10] But it was great because I was making, you know, I did three years of that.
[00:04:14] And I was making, because it was such a small company, it's that classic thing.
[00:04:16] You do everything.
[00:04:17] So I learned how to put a script together to go filming and the sort of practicalities
[00:04:22] of filming, what worked, what didn't.
[00:04:23] Because you're making essentially small, I suppose, news night packages of seven, eight
[00:04:27] minutes.
[00:04:27] You get to make mistakes quite quickly.
[00:04:30] And so when I worked on Brunel, it was like, it was just like inspiring.
[00:04:39] Saturday, the 12th of January 1828 would have begun as a normal working day for Isambard
[00:04:44] Kingdom Brunel.
[00:04:46] He'd have slept on a bale of straw for maybe four hours because he was working 20 hours
[00:04:51] a day.
[00:04:52] He was in charge of the most audacious engineering scheme the world had ever seen, digging a 1,200
[00:04:58] foot long tunnel under the River Thames.
[00:05:01] Now it's just part of the London Underground.
[00:05:04] But back then, it was the first tunnel ever to go underwater.
[00:05:13] I'm going to get all emotional about it.
[00:05:14] It was amazing.
[00:05:15] What was that transition like though?
[00:05:17] Because you sort of going from, you know, this sort of in many ways, quite small scale,
[00:05:21] quite focused filmmaking really, to what was it?
[00:05:24] I mean, it was a huge series.
[00:05:26] That Great Britain series was high profile, wasn't it?
[00:05:28] Yeah, it was massive.
[00:05:29] And clearly had money spent on it.
[00:05:31] What was that transition like for you?
[00:05:33] It was realising the scale of ambition of what you could do when you had a bit of money.
[00:05:38] And I mean, it was huge news.
[00:05:40] I mean, the whole sort of, you know, Churchill, Nelson, you know, Elizabeth I, John Lennon.
[00:05:45] I mean, it was sort of, and it was that sort of period where everybody was pressing the red
[00:05:48] button.
[00:05:48] Everything was voting.
[00:05:49] It was the sort of beginning of Big Brother where all that sort of reality stuff was people
[00:05:53] were voting people out of houses.
[00:05:55] So it sort of fed into that.
[00:05:56] And it was, it was massive news.
[00:05:59] And also it was Clarkson.
[00:06:00] So Clarkson wasn't because it was by the time Top Gear hadn't been, had been decommissioned.
[00:06:06] So he wasn't working.
[00:06:07] He was doing a couple of history documentaries.
[00:06:08] He agreed to do this.
[00:06:09] He was amazing.
[00:06:10] I have to say, because he believed in the subject.
[00:06:13] I mean, he actually asked to do Brunel.
[00:06:15] It comes across that he really believes in him and really passionate about the engineering
[00:06:20] and loved the engineering.
[00:06:21] You know, he's like, oh, this bridge is amazing.
[00:06:23] And you believe that he believes this bridge is actually amazing.
[00:06:26] And it's quite a simple, plain bridge, but he talks about it in such a way that makes
[00:06:31] you go, oh yeah, it is great.
[00:06:33] Yes, I think so.
[00:06:35] I mean, he had as much to do with the script.
[00:06:37] I mean, I worked with a guy called Ed Basiljee, who now does drama.
[00:06:40] He was the director.
[00:06:42] He'd been the lead guitarist, the lead guitarist in The Vapors.
[00:06:46] Ah, but also linked to engineering.
[00:06:49] Via Joseph Basiljee.
[00:06:51] Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:51] The amazing civil engineer who created the central London sewer system and also Peter Basiljee.
[00:06:57] And the embankment.
[00:06:57] Yeah, and the embankment.
[00:06:58] And it was just the variety in the scale and the storytelling.
[00:07:02] I think Ed, you know, pulled together a script which was absolutely fantastic in its
[00:07:05] storytelling and the way it built the sort of various aspects.
[00:07:08] And it was the variety of, you know, the very intimate reading of diaries or putting him
[00:07:13] across the gorge in a basket or, you know, putting him in a studio where we sort of put
[00:07:18] him in a water tank.
[00:07:19] Most of that is me because Clarkson had to leave.
[00:07:21] So I put his suit on.
[00:07:23] And in classic AP style, all the hands and the feet are all mine in that opening sequence.
[00:07:30] I think how you, yeah, who was that in the water?
[00:07:32] Yes, it was Clarkson, but he had to shoot off.
[00:07:35] But yeah, so that's what, that was all me.
[00:07:37] And I liked, I think the intimacy, the authored piece of it, you know, as I say, it was a
[00:07:43] gift for scene variety.
[00:07:45] So you went from these, you know, and gags, there were a lot of gags, you know, the big
[00:07:48] thing where he brings out a spanner.
[00:07:50] He said, this is a sort of spanner that Brunel would have used.
[00:07:52] It wasn't a Brunelian spanner.
[00:07:54] It wasn't one of Brunel's spanner.
[00:07:55] But that was the point.
[00:07:56] It was a, it was a good gag.
[00:07:58] And I think good gags all the way through any program drag you through it.
[00:08:02] But you have to, it's that judgment of whether they're cheesy or not.
[00:08:06] You have to be pitched quite well to make it work.
[00:08:09] And I think sort of Clarkson carried that.
[00:08:11] Oh, he was absolutely fantastic.
[00:08:12] I mean, really brilliant.
[00:08:13] Should we talk a bit about Clarkson?
[00:08:15] Because I miss this version of Clarkson.
[00:08:17] There was a period where he, he was making a lot of these kind of historical slash engineering.
[00:08:24] Also travel films as well.
[00:08:26] And I personally think that's Clarkson at his best.
[00:08:28] Like, you know, I'm aware he's something of a divisive character.
[00:08:31] I'm generally a fan of his, but he's so passionate about this stuff.
[00:08:35] Yes.
[00:08:35] And you really, really feel it as a viewer.
[00:08:38] What was he like to work with?
[00:08:39] He was brilliant to work with.
[00:08:40] I mean, yeah, but not, I've got, not got a bad one.
[00:08:43] I mean, you know, people would come up to him, you know, he'd have time for people.
[00:08:46] I mean, it is, I mean, it's 22 years ago, 23 years ago.
[00:08:50] I mean, you can see he's a younger looking Clarkson in the program.
[00:08:53] But I think once you bought into it, we had a small group, you know, it's that classic
[00:08:56] small documentary crew.
[00:08:58] Everybody got on and it sort of became, I mean, it was in the days when you do doing 16 hour
[00:09:02] days as well.
[00:09:03] I mean, it was mad, you know, driving up and down the West country, sort of getting to
[00:09:08] a hotel at nine, eating, going to bed and getting up at sort of five or six in the morning.
[00:09:12] I mean, it's sort of stuff you wouldn't do now.
[00:09:14] I mean, so I think that culture has dramatically changed.
[00:09:18] But I also think the way he, I mean, you know, obviously in the usual way that Ed had written
[00:09:22] the script, but then Clarkson being the writer sort of would put his own spin on it.
[00:09:26] And there's one phrase when he's walking around the Millennium Dome.
[00:09:30] And because I knew engineering as me, who suggested this as a sort of, you know, a big
[00:09:34] engineering sort of modern engineering sort of thing.
[00:09:37] And it was empty.
[00:09:38] So it looks amazing, this massive enclosed empty space.
[00:09:41] And it was, he's walking around and he talks about how Brunel would have viewed it, that
[00:09:45] it was absolutely pointless.
[00:09:46] And it was, there's one phrase in it, which I think really points up to how it, and Clarkson
[00:09:51] said Brunel would have had a duck fit.
[00:09:53] Now only Clarkson would have come up with that because everybody else might have said hissy fit
[00:09:57] or got quite cross, but it was, it's that intimacy of language that sort of, I mean, Clever's
[00:10:03] probably pushing it too far, but it was, it's just that sort of phrasing it in a different
[00:10:07] way.
[00:10:08] It's that sort of George Orwell thing.
[00:10:09] Don't use common phrases.
[00:10:12] Don't use sort of those sort of things you just hear and see every day, just sort of change
[00:10:16] it slightly.
[00:10:17] And it's all that goes all the way through all script writing is if you can, if it's
[00:10:21] a cliche, just get rid of it.
[00:10:23] In many ways, I suspect he'd have loved this place.
[00:10:27] He'd have loved the size of it.
[00:10:28] That's for sure.
[00:10:29] The sheer scale is very Brunelian.
[00:10:33] He'd have loved the extravagant use of other people's money too, but most of all, I suspect
[00:10:39] he'd have loved the engineering.
[00:10:42] By using these 300 foot tall steel masts to support a sort of spider's web of cables, which
[00:10:49] then support the roof, the actual structure weighs less than the air inside it.
[00:10:55] But I think we sometimes forget just how clever this place is.
[00:11:01] However, Brunel would have absolutely hated the pointlessness of the place.
[00:11:09] If you told him that it was built for a party rather than a purpose, he'd have had a duck
[00:11:15] fit.
[00:11:16] He does have a very specific way of kind of storytelling, of putting his argument forward,
[00:11:22] doesn't he?
[00:11:23] That definitely comes across in the, would people do this?
[00:11:26] No.
[00:11:27] Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:28] You know, it's very him, but it really works because he pulls you in.
[00:11:33] And especially on a programme like this, which is about selling you Brunel and why he should
[00:11:38] be the greatest Briton and none of these other amazing people, you know, vote for him.
[00:11:43] This is why, because he's amazing.
[00:11:44] And he's like the perfect guy to do that, isn't he?
[00:11:47] Yes.
[00:11:47] Brilliant advocacy, basically.
[00:11:49] Because we knew we were up against everybody else.
[00:11:51] And actually we ended up making such a good programme, they put it first in the series,
[00:11:54] which no one expected.
[00:11:56] And I think we came second overall in the big vote at the end.
[00:11:59] I mean, it was sort of...
[00:12:00] Yeah, you did.
[00:12:00] You only came just behind Churchill who won.
[00:12:04] So in the statistics, Churchill got like 27%, 27.9%, Brunel, 24.1%.
[00:12:11] And then the next one was Princess Diana at 14%.
[00:12:15] So like almost double, basically, the next one down.
[00:12:20] So that's how good the programme was and how great Jeremy was at arguing his case.
[00:12:26] I think it always had the advantage that we had things to go and film.
[00:12:29] I mean, if you're doing Shakespeare, you could go with it.
[00:12:33] But yeah, or Nelson, there's a victory, but there's not, you know, you can sail around a bit.
[00:12:38] There's not as much archive in a way, like it's quite still archive, but you've got lots of modern stuff.
[00:12:43] But it speaks to Brunel's legacy, doesn't it?
[00:12:44] Which is, and it's, I think that's the most persuasive part of the whole film.
[00:12:48] You know, right at the end, Clarkson's making the argument that Brunel's legacy is tangible to this day.
[00:12:53] It's all around us and you can see it, you can touch it.
[00:12:57] We use the infrastructure to this day.
[00:12:59] And obviously, yes, as a filmmaker, that gives you stuff to go and shoot, but it's a very powerful argument for his legacy.
[00:13:05] And I was just, I mean, so go back to why I picked it.
[00:13:08] I mean, and we'll go on to connections in a minute.
[00:13:10] But part of the reason, I was just blown away by what you could do in the filmmaking process.
[00:13:16] It was like I'd made it almost.
[00:13:19] And I knew how it was.
[00:13:21] I knew it's, well, it's classic.
[00:13:23] You get that break and you have to work really, really hard and to carry on.
[00:13:27] And then from that, I literally went on to Great Industrial Wonders, which was a big drama doc series.
[00:13:32] They did in that classic BBC way.
[00:13:35] I was told to go and have a chat with a series producer, Debbie Cadbury.
[00:13:38] And someone, as I was leaving, said, have you got your CV with you?
[00:13:40] And I went, no.
[00:13:41] And they went, God, you haven't learned anything.
[00:13:43] You need to take your CV with you.
[00:13:45] Because it was just such an alien world for me, coming where I did from, you know.
[00:13:48] Because I was 33, 34 at that point.
[00:13:51] I came to it really late.
[00:13:53] I mean, I'd spent 10, 12 years working as a civil engineer.
[00:13:56] So it was that whole way of the BBC working, you know, just come for a chat or a coffee.
[00:14:01] I just thought it was, I literally thought it was just a chat, not realizing it was actually a job interview.
[00:14:06] It was sort of, you know, it's that, the way, it's just a different way of working.
[00:14:11] And I think also, you know, I came in with a civil engineering degree.
[00:14:16] I come from a place where I didn't know, my parents didn't know people who worked in TV.
[00:14:19] It wasn't, it just wasn't.
[00:14:21] That's why I was struggling for something which inspired me from my TV career, because it was never even an option.
[00:14:27] But I remember when we, when I started, Tomorrow's World was just still going.
[00:14:32] And I think out of production, the editorial staff were all, there was about seven or eight of them.
[00:14:36] And they all had Oxbridge degrees.
[00:14:39] So an engineering degree from a red brick, solid 2-2 from a red brick, you know, Leeds University.
[00:14:45] It was just an alien world really, the way it operated, the way people talked.
[00:14:50] You know, it was, it was a whole cultural thing about the way TV operates.
[00:14:54] I had to learn quite quickly.
[00:14:56] It was your wife that spotted this storyteller inside you and thought you should work here.
[00:15:01] Like, how did that come about?
[00:15:02] What did she see in you?
[00:15:04] She knew I hated my job.
[00:15:05] Oh.
[00:15:07] I used to take off so many days ill.
[00:15:10] And I've been, engineering was okay.
[00:15:11] I like being out building stuff, you know, but it's a bit, it is, it is, well, it was then.
[00:15:16] I mean, it was quite blokey.
[00:15:18] I remember you used to have sort of cut out post-it note bikinis for the calendars on the wall in the office.
[00:15:24] Wow.
[00:15:25] Because it was just, you know, we're supposed to be the professional engineers.
[00:15:29] We're not even the guys in the trenches.
[00:15:32] We're the ones sort of with our degrees sort of checking it was all working.
[00:15:35] It was just like, and so, I mean, Fee had worked at the World Service.
[00:15:41] And I'd always done sort of lots of photography, lots of painting, got a wide range of interests.
[00:15:46] You know, engineering, I'm quite organized, which I think is an unsung,
[00:15:50] an unsung sort of skill of the TV producer, I think.
[00:15:54] And she just said, you'd be good at doing that.
[00:15:56] And I knew I hated it.
[00:15:57] So I went in, and as I said, I went to this sort of video club.
[00:16:01] I said, should I work in PR?
[00:16:02] I'm quite good with people.
[00:16:04] Should I go and do coding?
[00:16:05] You know, that seems to be becoming a thing.
[00:16:07] Computers seem to be a thing.
[00:16:08] They're on the rise.
[00:16:10] I think there's a future in computers.
[00:16:13] Yeah, whatever happened to them?
[00:16:17] And she sort of said, you'd be good at making TV.
[00:16:20] So I went for this job.
[00:16:21] This job then came up for doing professional video, training videos.
[00:16:24] And I sort of spent a lot of time prepping for it.
[00:16:27] Went along, came home, and I worked out what the minimum amount of money I could live in London was.
[00:16:34] And it was 18 grand a year.
[00:16:35] And I said, if they offered me below that, I can't.
[00:16:37] I just can't afford to make the change in career.
[00:16:40] You know, I'm sort of 32, 33.
[00:16:41] I can't really do that.
[00:16:44] And they offered me 18 grand a year, of course.
[00:16:47] Exactly the amount.
[00:16:48] And so I made the jump and a pittance for quite a long time.
[00:16:53] And then sort of managed to claw my way into the BBC three or four years later and never left.
[00:16:58] You know, and sort of incredibly lucky, really.
[00:17:00] So sort of jumping between science and history, which brings me on to what you sort of like.
[00:17:06] So looking back, if I think there's one program from my youth, which if I could point to an inspiration, I would do.
[00:17:12] And it's actually, having watched them both recently, they're quite similar.
[00:17:16] So it's a technology program.
[00:17:18] And Brunel is essentially a technology program.
[00:17:19] But it's also a history program at the same time, which I really like.
[00:17:24] So I've bounced between doing history and science all the way through my career.
[00:17:27] And I realized that the program I probably loved more than any other was I was growing up was connections, James Burke's connections, which again is almost exactly the same.
[00:17:44] Would you do me a favor?
[00:17:46] I'd like to stop talking for a minute.
[00:17:48] And when I do, take a look at the room you're in.
[00:17:51] And above all, at the manmade objects in that room that surround you, the television set, the lights, the phone and so on.
[00:17:58] And ask yourself what those objects do to your life just because they're there.
[00:18:04] Go ahead.
[00:18:13] It's an interesting technology and history story going back through time with the same sort of trenchant wit of James Burke, who's absolutely...
[00:18:23] If you watch him up against any other presenter during the 70s, he blows them away.
[00:18:27] And if you compare it with sort of 1973 when Brunovsky does Ascent A Man, which is a much slower pace, much more intellectual Oxbridge kind of history program about the growth of science or the influence of science on society.
[00:18:42] James Burke is like his every man.
[00:18:44] He's just absolutely amazing.
[00:18:46] He comes across as fresh.
[00:18:47] The phrasing snappy.
[00:18:49] It's sort of the locations are great.
[00:18:50] It feels really awesome.
[00:18:51] I mean, I think you could...
[00:18:53] I think James Burke is almost the first of the modern presenters.
[00:18:57] Yeah.
[00:18:58] And you can see it in, you know, his jokey things.
[00:18:59] I mean, I remember watching...
[00:19:00] I did a program about the history of science on television.
[00:19:03] And he did one scene about lasers, but he does it as a Mexican bandit with guns, with laser guns.
[00:19:11] But it's hilarious.
[00:19:11] And you think that makes me...
[00:19:14] Because, you know, lasers, he just...
[00:19:15] But it makes it funny.
[00:19:17] And I think that humor of sort of, you know, the way that Clarkson does it as well drags you in.
[00:19:22] I like things that make me smile.
[00:19:24] If it makes you smile, and you can't do it all the way through a documentary.
[00:19:29] But, you know, give me a gag every 10 minutes or something to smile at or make me feel warm towards what I'm watching.
[00:19:35] That I want to spend time.
[00:19:36] This person's entertaining me.
[00:19:37] It's an extended anecdote, essentially, that you have to have your punchlines.
[00:19:42] You have to...
[00:19:42] And James Burke with connections.
[00:19:45] Yeah, it was absolutely fantastic.
[00:19:46] Because I was 13.
[00:19:47] It was amazing.
[00:19:48] And just at that right level.
[00:19:49] And when you're watching that at 13, is watching that setting off light bulbs in your head of potential directions to go in?
[00:19:56] Or did you...
[00:19:57] At that time, were you already interested in this engineering path?
[00:20:01] No.
[00:20:01] I think it was...
[00:20:02] I mean, no.
[00:20:03] Growing up where I did, you need...
[00:20:04] If I was going to go to university and sort of, you know, this was a time when only one in 20 people went to university.
[00:20:10] I was the first in the family.
[00:20:11] There was no way I was not going to do a degree which was vocational.
[00:20:16] I mean, it just wasn't even a consideration.
[00:20:18] It was either sort of, you know, work in the oil industry, become a vet.
[00:20:21] It was all...
[00:20:23] Yeah, which I think is a...
[00:20:24] You know, I could see the reason, you know.
[00:20:26] And obviously, that STEM, those STEM subjects are really, really difficult to get onto now.
[00:20:30] But it was sort of...
[00:20:31] I sort of wanted to do architecture, but I thought that was a bit poncy for me.
[00:20:36] Who knew?
[00:20:37] Maybe that was...
[00:20:38] I think it would have been absolutely up my street.
[00:20:40] And actually, my niece is now an architect.
[00:20:43] So I thought, oh, engineering, that sounds more my thing.
[00:20:46] And yeah, it turns out I wasn't very good at it.
[00:20:48] And I don't think I was very good at it because I wasn't that interested.
[00:20:51] You know, I think it's that classic thing.
[00:20:53] If you're really interested...
[00:20:54] I mean, I don't feel like I've had...
[00:20:55] I haven't really worked in the last 25 years.
[00:21:00] Because you wake up and you think, oh, what's the problem?
[00:21:03] But they're good problems.
[00:21:05] It's problems you want to solve.
[00:21:07] And it's like, oh, God, how are we going to get from there to there and film that in the time available?
[00:21:10] I like that sort of...
[00:21:11] I really enjoy the producing.
[00:21:13] I love a good schedule.
[00:21:16] Yeah, very satisfying.
[00:21:18] I do like a good schedule.
[00:21:19] And then getting into the edit and working out, okay, we've got the...
[00:21:21] You know, you've done the boring edit.
[00:21:23] Now we have to make it interesting and sort of laying on the story over the top of it.
[00:21:27] And you realise that, you know, because you always get that criticism.
[00:21:30] I remember when I worked on the first programme, the first programme I ever made was with Michael Moseley,
[00:21:34] who was my exec.
[00:21:37] And it was about Krakatoa.
[00:21:39] I went to Indonesia, filmed on a mountain.
[00:21:42] We got the boat out, went up Krakatoa, got Heligot.
[00:21:45] I mean, it was an absolutely amazing gig to get because they were doing the big drama docs.
[00:21:49] I was doing the baby documentary to go with it.
[00:21:52] And his first viewing, and this is my...
[00:21:55] And I'm thinking, oh, I'm making programmes.
[00:21:57] And Michael said, oh, this gets going about 40 minutes in.
[00:22:02] And I remember just thinking, oh, no.
[00:22:05] Oh, no.
[00:22:06] And he went, so that bit that's really exciting when it's 40 minutes in, just put that at the front.
[00:22:11] Yeah.
[00:22:12] And it was like, oh, right.
[00:22:13] But it's that problem solving.
[00:22:15] Obviously, you'd make more and more programmes.
[00:22:17] You put your good stuff at the top or at least headline it.
[00:22:20] You can unpack it later, but, you know, make me want to watch the programme.
[00:22:25] And it's sort of that layer of, that layering of the story of sort of, you know,
[00:22:29] and building to those points and then coming down and start to build again.
[00:22:33] I love, I just, I love the whole process.
[00:22:35] And I think the other thing is I've got a very short attention span.
[00:22:37] So I think that whole process of planning a shoot, doing the shoot, going into the edit,
[00:22:40] it's the work equivalent of chocolate at the end.
[00:22:42] And then you go back to the beginning.
[00:22:44] So it's like doing the best school project every time.
[00:22:47] And it really is.
[00:22:48] I mean, you know, what could be more, more, sort of more fun?
[00:22:52] I tell you what's also interesting to that on connections is that John Lynch,
[00:22:55] the man who actually gave me my staff job at the BBC was head of science,
[00:22:59] was the researcher on connections.
[00:23:01] Is that right?
[00:23:02] John Lynch was the person who hired me at the BBC first as well.
[00:23:05] So yeah, I have very fond memories of John.
[00:23:08] And it was a co-pro.
[00:23:09] It must be one of the first co-pros with time life films.
[00:23:13] And you can see that.
[00:23:14] I mean, the number of places they go,
[00:23:15] and literally James Burke sort of is in,
[00:23:16] he's at the Twin Towers and then he's in the middle of Dubai.
[00:23:19] I mean, and they don't excuse his shifts in location.
[00:23:22] He just appears in different places.
[00:23:24] It's fantastic.
[00:23:24] In the trench coat.
[00:23:25] In the trench coat or the safari suit.
[00:23:28] Or the safari suit.
[00:23:30] So I think, you know,
[00:23:31] and the other thing I noticed,
[00:23:32] I've obviously watched them back to back recently,
[00:23:34] just sort of for this is that you could see the directors both use the presenter
[00:23:39] with a torch in a dark place trick.
[00:23:42] No one,
[00:23:44] no one waves a torch around like a presenter.
[00:23:48] No, no one.
[00:23:49] Everyone tends to keep the torch in one place,
[00:23:51] looking at one thing or slowly moves it.
[00:23:53] Presenters.
[00:23:54] Oh no, just flash it across the lens.
[00:23:56] And you could see it this 1979,
[00:23:58] James Burke's doing it.
[00:23:59] And then sort of 20 years later,
[00:24:03] you know,
[00:24:04] Clarkson's doing it.
[00:24:05] I imagine people were still doing it today.
[00:24:07] Oh yeah, definitely.
[00:24:08] I'd probably ask someone to do that as well.
[00:24:10] Yeah, definitely.
[00:24:11] Just flash it across the lens.
[00:24:12] Just makes it look good.
[00:24:13] It's really cool.
[00:24:14] Yeah.
[00:24:15] So you could see,
[00:24:16] sort of, you know,
[00:24:17] directors trying to sort the same problem.
[00:24:18] How do we just zhuzh this up a little bit?
[00:24:20] You know,
[00:24:21] it's a good story,
[00:24:22] but it needs a bit of visual zhuzh.
[00:24:23] New York City,
[00:24:27] like all the other major high density population centers
[00:24:30] scattered across the earth,
[00:24:31] is a technology island.
[00:24:33] It can neither feed nor clothes nor house
[00:24:35] nor warm its inhabitants
[00:24:36] without supplies from outside.
[00:24:38] Without those supplies,
[00:24:40] the entire massive structure
[00:24:41] and the teeming millions it encloses would die.
[00:24:44] And yet, in cities everywhere,
[00:24:47] we act as if that were not so.
[00:24:49] We have no choice.
[00:24:51] The pace of life in New York
[00:24:52] is set by the pace of the technology that serves it.
[00:24:55] You just have to hope it'll stay that way.
[00:24:59] So you start with Ed,
[00:25:03] Basil Chet,
[00:25:04] and you come in and,
[00:25:07] I mean, what are you doing?
[00:25:09] What,
[00:25:10] are you just kind of sorting stuff out?
[00:25:13] Are you suggesting ideas?
[00:25:15] Are you just kind of watching and learning
[00:25:17] how he approaches storytelling?
[00:25:19] What was that like?
[00:25:21] I think because I knew the Brunel story,
[00:25:24] I came to it with a lot of information.
[00:25:28] So I knew about the Maidenhead Bridge.
[00:25:30] I knew about the Great Eastern and the Great Western.
[00:25:32] I knew about sort of the bridge over the Tamar.
[00:25:36] I knew I had a lot of information.
[00:25:39] I mean, sort of things,
[00:25:40] finding things like the landing,
[00:25:43] the slipway for the Great Eastern on the Thames,
[00:25:45] I knew was there already.
[00:25:46] So I had a lot of,
[00:25:48] so it was basically a list of,
[00:25:50] we need to cover this,
[00:25:51] this, this, this, this, this, this,
[00:25:52] and this, and this,
[00:25:53] which ended up being the list.
[00:25:54] I mean, I think Clarkson talks about it all on the train.
[00:25:58] I love that bit.
[00:25:58] And it was one of those,
[00:25:59] and that was, that was directly from my initial sort of research
[00:26:02] sort of saying, yeah, there's all, look,
[00:26:03] look at this thing.
[00:26:05] Look at all these things that we could talk about.
[00:26:07] What do we want to do?
[00:26:08] What do we want to pick out of all of this
[00:26:10] and put into a narrative?
[00:26:11] And I think part of, yeah,
[00:26:12] and obviously the other upside from Brunel
[00:26:14] is that he's got his,
[00:26:15] all his, his papers were Bristol University.
[00:26:19] I think it's Bristol.
[00:26:21] Unlike Stevenson,
[00:26:22] whose papers go to the four winds.
[00:26:23] So he becomes much more of an iconic character.
[00:26:25] There are some really great scenes
[00:26:27] whereby I feel,
[00:26:30] I see that Ed is going to become this amazing drama director.
[00:26:34] And like,
[00:26:35] I love the opening where you have the flood.
[00:26:38] I mean, that was so dramatic an opening
[00:26:40] of Jeremy going down onto the tube.
[00:26:42] It's dark.
[00:26:43] He goes down into the underground.
[00:26:44] He goes down into, you know,
[00:26:45] there's this special access.
[00:26:46] He's in a tunnel on the underground
[00:26:49] and suddenly the tunnel breaks
[00:26:51] and all the water comes in and floods him
[00:26:53] and you see him in the water.
[00:26:54] I mean, it was amazing.
[00:26:55] It was so dramatic.
[00:27:00] The six men working alongside Brunel
[00:27:03] were swept to their deaths
[00:27:04] in the freezing torrent of river water and sewage.
[00:27:08] Brunel himself was knocked unconscious
[00:27:10] and washed all the way back down the tunnel
[00:27:12] to the main shaft.
[00:27:15] Water logged and a whisker from drowning,
[00:27:17] he was plucked to safety by his assistant,
[00:27:19] Mr Beamish.
[00:27:20] And by that simple action,
[00:27:22] by pulling the sodden 22 year old from the water,
[00:27:25] Mr Beamish saved the life of a man
[00:27:27] who'd go on to become quite simply
[00:27:30] the greatest Britain of all time.
[00:27:34] How did that idea come about?
[00:27:36] How was it executed?
[00:27:37] And what did you think about it,
[00:27:39] watching it back?
[00:27:40] Oh, I think, well, it all adds idea.
[00:27:42] We had, I remember we had to go to the
[00:27:44] production manager for more money.
[00:27:46] Ed said, like, I want to do this.
[00:27:47] It was going to cost us a fortune.
[00:27:48] Because we had to build the walls, you know.
[00:27:50] No.
[00:27:51] Oh yeah, well they're all fake.
[00:27:52] The walls were built.
[00:27:54] Yeah.
[00:27:55] Yeah, they're fake walls.
[00:27:56] We had three of them.
[00:27:56] So we had three shots of it,
[00:27:58] where we released the water
[00:27:59] and they were sort of designed to break up.
[00:28:01] And then we spent a day at a big water facility
[00:28:04] up in North London.
[00:28:06] Wow.
[00:28:07] Which was, I mean, that was in these suits
[00:28:09] that I'd managed to wangle from next.
[00:28:11] Can we have three suits?
[00:28:13] You know, in those days of big borrowing and stealing.
[00:28:17] I think these days you'd just buy them, wouldn't you?
[00:28:20] At the BBC, you probably would have to buy them.
[00:28:22] But anywhere else you would try and wangle them, I think.
[00:28:25] Yeah.
[00:28:26] Yes.
[00:28:26] Because you have to pay for things at the BBC.
[00:28:28] You can't just get it for free because you're the BBC, can you?
[00:28:31] But it was just, I think that's why I talked about the scale of ambition.
[00:28:34] It was like, wow, we can, you can actually go and do these things.
[00:28:37] And it's that, it's that having that as a director,
[00:28:40] having that idea in your head and making it manifest.
[00:28:44] It was like, you know, cause I don't know.
[00:28:45] Yeah.
[00:28:45] The stuff we were doing was basically news reports.
[00:28:47] And all of a sudden you're sort of in this half world of presenters or actors,
[00:28:52] to a certain extent, as we know.
[00:28:54] You're in this half world where you can, you can do things like that, you know,
[00:28:58] putting me across the, no, putting me across the gorge.
[00:29:01] I mean, I can't remember whose idea that was.
[00:29:03] I do know we were, we were very close to filming.
[00:29:06] I think the day before we still hadn't got sign off from the engineers to say,
[00:29:11] you can do it.
[00:29:12] So we've got this, we've got a rig, we've got safety advisors.
[00:29:15] I mean, you can, it is quite, it was quite a dangerous thing to go and do.
[00:29:18] Yeah.
[00:29:18] So this is him in a basket.
[00:29:20] Yeah.
[00:29:20] And he, and Clarkson had been out, Clarkson had been out the night before,
[00:29:23] I think, so he wasn't feeling his best.
[00:29:27] And it's like, are we going to send you across this in this basket?
[00:29:30] I mean, it's a long way down.
[00:29:33] And, and I realized I sort of, I was phoning around the day before.
[00:29:36] I think you panicking because we've spent a lot of money on that gag.
[00:29:39] And we hadn't got permission to do it from the engineer.
[00:29:42] We haven't had an engineering sign off.
[00:29:43] And I realized that the engineer who was supposed to sign it was one of my old
[00:29:46] work colleagues.
[00:29:46] So I phoned him up directly and, and got it signed off that way.
[00:29:51] He went, Oh God, I didn't realize it was you.
[00:29:53] So I'll get it sorted in the next hour.
[00:29:55] And then, and then off we went.
[00:29:57] Oh yes.
[00:29:58] It was absolutely fantastic.
[00:29:59] But it was those sort of those big moments, you know,
[00:30:02] contrasted with the sort of, you know, reading diaries.
[00:30:05] I think that sort of constant shifting gear throughout the whole thing sort
[00:30:08] of made it really, really sing.
[00:30:10] Well, that's Brunel's character, isn't it?
[00:30:12] And that's Brunel's legacy is that scale that he always wanted to go bigger.
[00:30:16] The other railways, these bridges, the ships he built.
[00:30:18] I mean, they're massive pieces of engineering and how you visually get to grips with that scale.
[00:30:25] I loved the bit when he's in the ship's propeller.
[00:30:28] He just, you see this massive ship and the shot is of the ship's propeller
[00:30:31] and he just steps out of it.
[00:30:33] And you know Clarkson's a tall guy and he steps out of the propeller
[00:30:35] and you suddenly see him in vision and he's tiny compared to this massive propeller.
[00:30:39] And that gives you this really wonderful, easy, sweet, funny moment of like,
[00:30:45] oh, this ship is massive.
[00:30:49] Yeah.
[00:30:49] And I think the other thing, just as I'm thinking about it,
[00:30:53] is that I think those aspects, and I think this goes back to connections as well,
[00:30:58] that it wasn't so much about the science, it's about the use of the sciences.
[00:31:00] It's their technology shows.
[00:31:03] And I do think, I find those easier to be interested in.
[00:31:07] I think sometimes the pure science, especially when it's so cutting edge that it's,
[00:31:13] yeah, and we all know the problems you have with some of the sort of, you know,
[00:31:17] the real extreme edges of science, whether it's astrophysics or whether it's in biology,
[00:31:21] actually making those, visualising those things is really, really hard.
[00:31:26] Because they're always a representation which is in some way not the real thing.
[00:31:33] Whereas Brunel, this is hard edge science stroke technology.
[00:31:40] And the same with sort of connection.
[00:31:40] We've all been on the railway.
[00:31:41] Yeah.
[00:31:41] We've all been on those bridges.
[00:31:43] We've all...
[00:31:44] Yeah.
[00:31:44] And I think, you know, and with the connections to the thing,
[00:31:46] it was like how technology, without that technology, the world falls apart very quickly.
[00:31:50] That first episode he does where they have this sort of,
[00:31:52] they go through the sort of the blackout in New York and all the way through the
[00:31:56] sort of Eastern seaboard of the States.
[00:31:57] It's like one small piece of this technology doesn't work.
[00:32:00] And the modern world collapses.
[00:32:02] And I think technology is an underserved subject, I think, to a large extent.
[00:32:06] We don't have what's it, Adam Hart Davis and what the Romans did for us.
[00:32:09] Or those programmes don't really exist anymore.
[00:32:11] And maybe, maybe things, I mean, you know, maybe things have moved on.
[00:32:15] But I think there is sort of those, maybe a little window that could be opened on that.
[00:32:20] That sort of thing.
[00:32:21] Because they seem to have gone.
[00:32:23] And it's important in an age of, I mean, we're forever now in an age of technology.
[00:32:28] And technology is rushing past us and forward into kind of AI and all sorts of things that
[00:32:32] are much harder to get to grips with.
[00:32:34] And therefore it's much more important that we make programmes about them.
[00:32:37] So what drove him?
[00:32:45] What was this precocious, prodigiously talented young chap really like?
[00:32:51] Well, he was a little man.
[00:32:53] And if you read through his diaries, which I have here, you can tell this bothered him.
[00:33:00] Even of a dark night riding home when I pass some unknown person who perhaps does not even look at me.
[00:33:06] I catch myself trying to look big on my little pony.
[00:33:10] We can also tell he wasn't given to taking much in the way of time off.
[00:33:15] My birthday.
[00:33:16] Two steam pumps working hard, but pressure will not stop up.
[00:33:20] When the afternoon shift came on, they did not go below, but remained on top, grumbling about last week's wages.
[00:33:27] Going back to you as an AP on this first foray into television, did you instantly think,
[00:33:34] I'm home, this is what I'm going to do now for the rest of my career?
[00:33:38] Oh yeah.
[00:33:38] Absolutely.
[00:33:39] Yeah.
[00:33:40] For the next five years, I worked as hard, worked like stink.
[00:33:43] Yeah.
[00:33:44] I mean, absolutely just dedicated myself to it.
[00:33:47] I mean, yeah.
[00:33:47] Watched as much.
[00:33:48] I mean, you know, you're watching other people's documentaries as homework all the time.
[00:33:53] You're sort of, you're very up and up and less so these days, I have to say.
[00:33:57] But then there are a few documentaries of the type we make.
[00:34:00] You know, it's, it's a, I mean, I remember, so we made, when the BBC, I made a program about a Holocaust survivor.
[00:34:07] I made Surviving the Holocaust.
[00:34:08] I did a three day interview with a Holocaust survivor.
[00:34:11] And we went to the editor, it was Cameron Balburnie, said to me, this is the last program of this type you'll probably ever make.
[00:34:19] And I went, no, don't be ridiculous.
[00:34:20] He went, no, we're riding the back of a dying dinosaur at the moment.
[00:34:24] There are changes coming and it's going to be different.
[00:34:27] Wow.
[00:34:28] And he was sort of right.
[00:34:31] You know, the world has, I mean, of course it changes.
[00:34:34] It's a decade.
[00:34:35] That's a decade ago.
[00:34:37] I think that's history.
[00:34:38] But I mean, you know, after doing Brunel, I did the sort of, you know, as I say, the great industrial wonders, which sort of kept me busy.
[00:34:43] And then, but then slowly became in that classic way, slowly became less an AP with engineering expertise as a, as an AP with TV expertise.
[00:34:55] And there was a, I do remember there was a moment about three years after I'd started that you're stuck between two boats.
[00:35:01] I wasn't, I hadn't quite, hadn't quite established myself in TV, but I hadn't quite left it yet.
[00:35:06] But I knew that I couldn't go back to engineering because I was too long.
[00:35:10] So I had to make this thing work.
[00:35:12] Do you think that life experience stood you in good stead though?
[00:35:15] Yeah.
[00:35:15] Oh, absolutely.
[00:35:16] I mean, I think we did things like last man standing going around the world, a tough guy, a chicken or, you know, in 1998, I was, I was been working on site and earning a,
[00:35:25] you know, working on site, you always got the DMZ work.
[00:35:27] You basically earn a lot more money working out on site because it was sort of quite hard work.
[00:35:32] So I'd, I'd saved a load of money and fee had been made redundant from the world service.
[00:35:36] Um, she'd been working sort of the Russian doing Russian stuff in Russia.
[00:35:40] Cause I got all this money.
[00:35:41] It's like, what do we, so I said, we can either buy a house or we could go around the world for six months.
[00:35:49] And that, and so we went around the world.
[00:35:50] And I think that life experience of actually being able to knowing how to look after yourself or organize things as an end.
[00:35:55] The engineer helped enormously.
[00:35:57] I think, yeah, an underrated virtue, I think in TV has been able to produce.
[00:36:01] Directing is great.
[00:36:02] Organizing yourself so you have the time to direct is, is really, is such a crucial skill.
[00:36:07] It's doing all that prep work and that thought beforehand and being able to sort of, it's, you know, time is resource is that is the most important resource you have.
[00:36:15] There's a lot of talk at the moment about, because of the crisis in the industry about transferable skills and where we can take our skills into other industries.
[00:36:26] And I do think we are master problem solvers on time scales that I think most industries can't even comprehend.
[00:36:34] Yeah. It's project management.
[00:36:36] It is. It's project management.
[00:36:37] But it's project management with the people skills.
[00:36:40] Yeah.
[00:36:41] Because we can organize anything to happen at any time, anywhere.
[00:36:44] It's like, right, I want.
[00:36:45] And convince other people to come with you on that journey.
[00:36:48] Oh yeah.
[00:36:48] Oh yeah.
[00:36:49] It sounds very sort of self-aggrandizing, but I do think, yeah, a TV producer, director in documentaries is, we are brilliant.
[00:36:59] We are.
[00:37:00] Well, sometimes maybe we need to look at that at all.
[00:37:00] I mean, I'm not going to disagree with that at all.
[00:37:02] Absolutely.
[00:37:03] It's a speech I give to virtually every contributor, every place I go to film.
[00:37:08] It's all based on, you have to establish that trust very, very quickly that I'm not going to put you out, make you look like a dick or upset you.
[00:37:18] And you have to get to that point, you know, because you're, you know, you're filming people.
[00:37:22] You can, you can make them say anything or do anything, but they have to believe that you're not going to do that.
[00:37:28] I mean, obviously your intention isn't.
[00:37:30] I mean, because we don't make those sorts of programs, but yeah, people, I think have been burnt by TV too many times.
[00:37:35] So establishing that trust as well as being able to organize all the other stuff and have a vision of what you want to make at the other end.
[00:37:43] And do it on time and on budget.
[00:37:45] Yeah.
[00:37:45] Yeah.
[00:37:46] I mean, that is part of the game these days.
[00:37:48] You can't, there's no, there's no eight, nine weeks or maybe some, but there's no, there's no extra, you know, client gives you the money.
[00:37:55] That's the money these days.
[00:37:57] If you've got a good PM, that all works.
[00:37:58] I think that's sort of, that's a sort of mistaken relationship sometimes.
[00:38:03] There is obviously a tension there, but there's, you know, the best PMs I've worked with and I've worked with quite a few.
[00:38:08] So it's a supportive relationship both ways.
[00:38:12] You know, you can't, you know, don't take the piss out of them and they'll, they'll help you enormously.
[00:38:19] You know, I'm slightly amazed that someone like Princess Diana is being discussed in this series.
[00:38:27] I mean, I'm sure she was a very lovely lady, but she's not really in the same class as Brunel.
[00:38:32] And John Lennon, I am the Eggman.
[00:38:35] I am the walrus.
[00:38:37] Quite.
[00:38:39] And then there's William Shakespeare, a man who's brought stupefying boredom to the classroom for 400 years.
[00:38:47] Let me put it this way.
[00:38:49] In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck says he will put a girdle around the earth.
[00:38:57] Shakespeare wrote about it, but Brunel with his bridges and his ships and his trains, he actually did it.
[00:39:05] Greatest Britain ever? I'm absolutely sure of it.
[00:39:12] Do you think this show could or would or should be made today?
[00:39:19] Oof.
[00:39:20] What, Connect?
[00:39:20] I think Connections could be a modern programme.
[00:39:22] And Brunel?
[00:39:23] I don't know.
[00:39:24] I mean, I think that was a very distinct period of TV when voting for the best book or the best, the best film or whatever was, was, you know, it was always after that one.
[00:39:35] It was so successful they did it.
[00:39:36] They did it recently and it didn't do as well as it was hoped.
[00:39:42] Maybe because the media landscape is so fractured these days.
[00:39:46] I mean, I think it was the last hurrah of everybody watching the same TV at the same time.
[00:39:50] How did you feel sitting down and watching it again?
[00:39:54] I mean, this was the beginning of your TV journey.
[00:39:57] It was how young Clarkson looked.
[00:39:59] And I clearly have changed in exactly the same way.
[00:40:02] That was what I thought.
[00:40:04] I thought, thank God.
[00:40:07] Yeah, I mean, so long as 22, 23 years ago.
[00:40:11] And it was like, wow.
[00:40:12] Yeah, I did.
[00:40:13] It was sort of funny looking back at it and thinking it was amazing.
[00:40:16] It was such a, the memories of it are so vivid because I was so aware of everything and learning so much.
[00:40:23] You know, you're thrown in quite quickly.
[00:40:24] I didn't do the research.
[00:40:25] I went straight as an AP on quite a big high profile project with people who were all amazing.
[00:40:32] Everybody on that team from the archive researchers to sort of the production.
[00:40:37] My Nicola Pinn, I think was the production manager.
[00:40:39] Rebecca Hickey, who I see regularly in the office now is still an archive researcher.
[00:40:42] I mean, Charlotte Moore, I think, directed one.
[00:40:45] I've got, I could be wrong about it.
[00:40:47] But it was like you dropped into this office and we had a separate office and I'm like this idiot engineer.
[00:40:52] He's not done any broadcast TV.
[00:40:55] I was just sort of super aware and just very, you just soak it all in basically.
[00:41:01] Well, it did feel, it felt like coming home, Alex.
[00:41:03] Yes, it did a little bit.
[00:41:04] It didn't really feel like home because I felt this, this is such an alien world to me that people don't talk in the way that I talk or have talked in the past as an engineer.
[00:41:12] Much more highfalutin.
[00:41:14] I think I'm getting there.
[00:41:17] Never change.
[00:41:18] Don't go changing.
[00:41:20] Thanks for suggesting it.
[00:41:21] I really enjoyed watching it.
[00:41:23] Did you learn anything?
[00:41:23] Oh, absolutely.
[00:41:25] Yeah, I learned a huge amount.
[00:41:27] Job's a good one.
[00:41:28] No.