Читать книгу Antiques Roadshow: 40 Years of Great Finds - Paul Atterbury, Paul Atterbury - Страница 6

On 17 May 1977, a group of antiques experts and a BBC production team came together in Hereford’s town hall to make a pilot programme for a possible new series, to be called the Antiques Roadshow. The idea was simple. Members of the public would be encouraged to bring their own objects for identification, discussion and valuation to a team of experts assembled for the purpose in a large public space, with television crews standing by to film the best bits. On paper, it seemed like a good idea, but no one knew on that May morning whether it would work or not.

The inspiration had come from one of the regular valuation days organised by auction houses, whereby members of the public could bring things along for a free valuation, as a means of generating business. One such occasion was visited by a production team from BBC Bristol, and the idea of developing it into a public event that could also be

a television programme was born. At the planning stage, advice was sought from Sotheby’s by BBC Bristol. For the programme, however, there was to be no commercial agenda.

A PROGRAMME IS COMMISSIONED

Plans were drawn up, Hereford town hall and the expert team were booked, and the event was widely publicised, with the offer of free transport for large pieces of furniture and other items that could not easily be carried by their owners.

A programme about antiques was not a new idea for the BBC. Talking about Antiques, a radio programme presented by Bernard Price, had enjoyed long-lasting success in the 1960s. In 1965 Going for a Song, presented by Max Robertson and, later, Collectors’ World, first broadcast in 1970 and presented by Hugh Scully, brought antiques successfully onto the television screen. All these programmes generated a large mailbox from listeners and viewers keen to find out about their own objects, and so a programme designed to help those people do just that was considered to stand a good chance of success. Thus, the pilot for the Antiques Roadshow was commissioned.

A key figure was, of course, Arthur Negus. After a long and successful career as a valuer and furniture expert with a Gloucestershire firm of auctioneers, Arthur started a new life as a television personality at the age of 62, when he joined the panel of experts on Going for a Song. He was an immediate success, thanks to his relaxed manner and West Country accent, and quickly became the face of antiques on television. Needless to say, Arthur Negus was at the heart of the team of experts assembled by the BBC for the Antiques Roadshow pilot, although it is important to remember that he was never the programme’s presenter.

At Castle Howard in July 2017, to mark the Roadshow’s 40th anniversary, a special guest was Bruce Parker, the show’s first presenter, seen here with Fiona Bruce.

Angela Rippon, the presenter for the Roadshow’s second and third series, with Arthur Negus, the programme’s most famous expert in the early days.

On that May day in Hereford, the Roadshow quickly developed the winning formula, format, shape and style that it was broadly to follow for the next forty years. In a programme nominally about objects and their values, it soon became apparent that it could also be about their owners. As Hugh Scully once said: ‘The programme is a cameo of the British character and its foibles, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. It is the people that we most readily remember. They are the Antiques Roadshow. They give it the colour, charm, interest, anecdote and humour that delight us on Sunday evenings. We enjoy their happiness. We share their hopes. We feel their disappointments.’

In 1996 the Roadshow was awarded a BAFTA, the Lew Grade Award for a Significant and Popular Television Programme. Hugh Scully and Christopher Lewis, Executive Producer at the time, show off the award.

Pilot programmes are rarely transmitted, but that first experimental show at Hereford went so well that it was included in the first series, once it had been commissioned. Between April and August 1978, the Roadshow visited Bedworth, Yeovil, Newbury, Northallerton, Buxton, Perth and Mold, setting a pattern, and a geographical spread, that has remained much the same ever since. As the Roadshow’s popularity grew, so more filming locations were steadily added. By 1986 it had risen to twelve and by 1997 to twenty five, with a filming season that ran from 16 April 1997 to 19 March 1998. The next series started filming just over a month later, on 23 April 1998. More recently, the Roadshow’s filming schedule has settled at twelve episodes each year, but with two programmes being made at each location. Also consistent has been the programme’s popularity and, forty years on from that day in Hereford, the Roadshow continues to attract on the day between 1,500 and 4,500 people keen to queue for hours for the chance to discuss their objects with the team of experts. For the first twenty or so years, the Roadshow was filmed from indoor locations such as sports halls and civic centres. In the late 1990s, the first outdoor locations appeared and, since then, the Roadshow’s locations have generally been both outdoors and at places of architectural or historic interest.

Michael Aspel fronted the Roadshow for eight years, hosting 200 episodes between the years 2000 and 2008.

A HARD-WORKING PROGRAMME

The Roadshow’s core values have never changed. All objects, and their owners, are treated equally, regardless of the value. On the day, the team may assess and discuss between 7,000 and 12,000 objects, of which around fifty will be filmed and the experts will see everyone who comes in to the location before the entry deadline, which is usually 4.30pm. After that, everyone who has made it into the location before the deadline will be seen, and so the experts have a long day, usually starting at around 9am and finishing at any time between 5pm and 7pm, depending on the numbers present. The actual filming starts at 9.30am and finishes at 7pm. There can be no previewing of the objects, because there is no way of knowing in advance what the public are going to bring in. There is no ‘B’ team to deal with the less valuable or interesting objects. There is only one team, and it sees everything and everybody. When it comes to the filming, there are no rehearsals or run-throughs. Every item is filmed as live, but these live conversations will be edited into the items that are included in the transmitted programme. Finally, the Roadshow is not only a flagship programme for the BBC, but is also a major public event and a classic example of traditional public service broadcasting.

During its forty years, five people have presented the Roadshow. The first series was introduced by Bruce Parker, a familiar journalist and presenter for BBC South. For the second and third series he was replaced by Angela Rippon, then a nationally known news presenter, keen to develop her career in new directions. For series four, in 1981, Hugh Scully took the helm – a presenter much closer in both interests and experience to the world of art and antiques – and he was to remain the face of the Roadshow until 2000. Above all else, he appreciated the Roadshow’s special quality: ‘It is a programme that has maintained its freshness without having to make any drastic changes, purely because of the unpredictable nature of the event.’ Michael Aspel, who took over the presenter’s baton from Hugh, agreed. ‘Having spent many years on programmes where every moment of the recording is planned, it is very exciting to approach a day on the Roadshow with absolutely no idea of what is going to happen. The people and their objects make the programme, and we react accordingly.’ In 2008, Fiona Bruce took the helm, and she has been at the heart of the Roadshow ever since. Famous for her hands-on approach, Fiona also loves the programme’s particular quality: ‘It’s all spontaneous and entirely unpredictable.’

Fiona Bruce has been presenting the Roadshow since 2008.

Outdoor Roadshows started in the late 1990s, and since then scenes like this have come to define the modern programme.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF A ROADSHOW EXPERT

From that small band of experts recruited for that pilot programme in Hereford has grown a remarkable team of knowledgeable and enthusiastic men and women drawn from all areas of the world of art and antiques. An expert on the Roadshow has to possess several attributes. Knowledge, and the ability to present that knowledge in an accessible manner is key, but they also have to be great team players and always ready to share their knowledge. They must have great patience and be willing to talk for hours to owners about their objects, not all of which will be very exciting. In short, they should like people and enjoy engaging with them. They must remain friendly and enthusiastic throughout a long and sometime challenging day, often with very few breaks. Most importantly, they have to be ambassadors for the programme and the BBC. At most Roadshows there will be a team of twenty to twenty-five experts on duty, covering all the disciplines, but the make-up of the team will vary from show to show.

Today, the Roadshow has around fifty-six experts in the team, but this number has never been consistent. In the days when more programmes were filmed for each series, the team reached over eighty to ensure that every discipline could be fully represented at each event. In the current team there is one expert, David Battie, who was present at that first Hereford programme, but many others joined soon after. Indeed, the Roadshow is remarkable for the longevity of its experts, with well over half the team having served twenty years or more. At the same time, new experts join each year, usually recruited either by the production team or by experts who sometimes act as informal talent scouts.

MOVING WITH THE TIMES

During its long life, the Roadshow has had three executive producers: Robin Drake; Christopher Lewis; and Simon Shaw. Longevity has also been a feature of the programme’s production team, with many working on the show for years. Making the Roadshow is an immensely complex process, and planning can take months or even years. Every show is dependent upon the great skills of the production, technical and support teams.

There have been changes during the last forty years, but these have generally been introduced in a gentle and unobtrusive way. Most obvious are the titles. Having been changed or developed every few years, these have now gone through several versions. For the first few years, the theme music was an electronic version of Bach’s Third Brandenberg Concerto, but this was replaced by the now globally familiar tune, a specially commissioned piece written by Paul Reade and Tim Gibson. The most important change has been a gradual shift in emphasis away from the antiques and their values towards the owners and their stories. This is partly reflective of significant changes in the world of antiques itself, as the interest in traditional antiques diminishes, replaced by new enthusiasms for more modern items. The Roadshow has now entertained more than two generations of viewers, and the tastes of the modern viewer are not the same as those who watched the programme in the late 1970s and 1980s. In its own leisurely way, the Antiques Roadshow has had to move with the times.