How The Word changed television for ever | Television & radio | The Guardian
Television & radio
How The Word changed television for ever
The show's creator on how, 20 years ago, Channel 4 changed television for ever with an outrageous late-night programme that was a deliberate challenge to the establishment
Terry Christian presenting The Word.
Tuesday 10 August 2010 03.00 EDT
First published on Tuesday 10 August 2010 03.00 EDT
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The Word, one of the most notorious TV shows of all time, was born on Friday, 17 August 1990. Its first presenters – Amanda de Cadenet and Terry Christian – somehow managed to get up everyone's noses. But its mix of A-list guests, the hottest bands, filmed stories and studio stunts got people talking about it more than any other "youth" show before it.
Loathed by many, especially the press, the show's defining moments arose from its choice of live music and its dozens of innovative items – Oliver Reed being secretly filmed drinking in his dressing room, Lynne Perrie doing her own special (and lubricated) version of I Will Survive after being sacked from Coronation Street, a strand called The Hopefuls in which viewers came on and did unpleasant things such as snogging an old woman, because, as they said: "I'd do anything to get on television."
In this post-Big Brother and X Factor world it is hard to imagine now how revolutionary the show was, but in 1990 multichannel TV had hardly started, the independent television production sector was tiny, and the most risque show on TV was Blind Date. People used to go to bed at 11pm, even on Fridays. It was only when Michael Grade , then chief executive of Channel 4, changed the Word's transmission time from 6pm to 11pm a few weeks after it began that the programme became essential post-pub fodder, and it changed viewing habits for ever.
Social attitudes now reflect the outlook of the generation that watched The Word rather than the ones who complained about it. But in 1990, Britain was a different place, with Margaret Thatcher in her final days as prime minister and only the first flickerings of the optimism and prosperity that would be the abiding spirit of the late-90s and early noughties. Members of the establishment (especially politicians) invariably wore ties. The Word reflected the rift between the laidback attitude of younger people and the establishment, something that no other TV show was then doing.
Our brief was to appeal to an audience of 16- to 34-year-olds. My goal was to get it talked about the next day – the "watercooler moment" as executives would describe it later. Channel 4 , then a different place, supported and encouraged the controversial. Liz Forgan (then Grade's deputy) told us that if she went to a dinner party, and The Word wasn't being attacked by the chattering classes, it wasn't doing its job.
I had graduated from another influential programme, Network 7, which was a hybrid of journalism and entertainment, and I'd just been in charge of Club X, a much-criticised arts show for young people. As part of the renewal plans for Club X, I had told Channel 4 that the audience wanted entertainment, not the arts, and that they'd rather see Johnny Depp (a rising, relatively unknown star of the time) than Theatre de Complicite. Channel 4, which at that time was just realising that though it had a public service ethos it needed ratings, went along with me and The Word was born. I set up a production company, 24 Hours Productions (later Planet 24), with my partner Waheed Alli – and we were off.
What gave the show its edge was that everybody who worked on it was firmly in the target age group, and we put it together to please ourselves. I cultivated a tabloid editor's eye for a story, and thought I knew how to captivate – or annoy – the public. The combination of posh-sounding De Cadenet (who was actually smart and sweet) and Mancunian Christian was calculated to appeal across the board as well as look good in a press photo. All the better when a bitter rivalry sprang up between Mark Lamarr and Christian, which spilled over on to the screen. (Simon Cowell, who used to do TV and radio promotion for many of the bands that appeared on The Word may well have taken note for The X Factor.) We had an agenda. We wanted to be positive and have fun, a reaction to the depressing view of Britain that was seen in the Daily Mail. We wanted to reflect what our contemporaries really thought. For example, we wanted to make being gay ordinary – we were all delighted when Lamarr took the rapper Shabba Ranks to task over his assertion that homosexuals should be crucified. Primarily we wanted to have fun – so we were often very naughty, and the post-show hospitality could be wild (on one occasion Christian and Lamarr's mutual dislike resulted in me having to separate them.)
It was hell to produce, because we were so ambitious. Though seemingly chaotic, the running order was planned with military precision. Every item was rigorously vetted by lawyers, so much so that in its five years we only had one threatened libel action (when Malcolm McLaren complained about John Lydon's live remarks as a guest on the show) and as far as I can recall only one judgment by the regulatory body against us (when a man dressed as Father Christmas was pulled across the studio by his testicles). We were careful to do things properly and responsibly: The Hopefuls had a dedicated Harley Street doctor whose job was to give us advice – is it preferable to have a bath in horse or pig faeces? Are there health issues involved in eating a sandwich of toenails and corns? And we did think about the morality of what we did.
There were occasions when we went too far. Because we occasionally used secret cameras on the public, I once used it as a justification for secretly filming Christian and Lamarr, while the actor Margi Clarke flirted with them one after the other, to compare their reactions. Christian thought it quite funny, but Lamarr pinned me against a wall telling me not to use it (we didn't, but my relationship with Lamarr never quite recovered). On another occasion, one of the researchers got hold of some stolen home video of an actor masturbating, which we were going to surprise them with in their interview. Channel 4 lawyers put paid to that. Once we came across a message from the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, with a cassette of some songs he'd written in prison on a little keyboard, especially for The Word. We edited a story about it for the gossip strand, but again, the lawyer wouldn't let it go to air.
It was always a challenge, and sometimes it could be scary. Just before one live link, our presenter Alan Connor was kidnapped by people at a swingers' club in Germany who wanted to blackmail us. On another occasion, when the bigwigs from Channel 4 were with me, someone whispered in my ear: "We've just had a phone call from someone who says his friend is in the audience, drugged up, with a gun and wants to kill Terry Christian." The show went on – but we installed metal detectors the following week. I believed that everything was possible and drove the team mad with my refusal to accept a no.
For these and other reasons, The Word would never have got made today. First, people are much more sensitive and politically correct. We seriously investigated filming an item called "are all scousers thieves?" where we would put a car in the centre of Liverpool and secretly film it. We had an item called The Revengers that was a very extreme version of Beadle's About – someone who thought they were witnessing their car being stolen was offered help by a vaguely Arab-looking man – who suddenly got out shears and, with the help of prosthetics, started cutting the thief's arm off. This would fail the 2010 test in so many ways it is hard to know where to begin. And it wouldn't have occurred to us that the victim should have had some psychological counselling, because we were making up the rules as we went along.
Second, programmes have to go through a lot of hoops to get made today. The Word would have failed "the dial test" – the latest way for broadcasters to gauge audience response, where people turn a dial to register their reaction to a show minute by minute. Without doubt, The Word would have received resoundingly negative feedback.
The Word was by no means democratic, but everyone from runners upwards was empowered and encouraged to suggest ideas, and often the best things were created by juniors hungry to get material on air. One runner, who later became a senior executive at Channel 4, successfully persuaded a viewer to gamble the life of their much-loved dog for the possibility of a cash sum. The item never made it on air, mainly because the idea was so controversial it divided the office. Today, broadcasters run a mile from controversy and are especially nervous about shows being live, as The Word was. The moment when Donita Sparks, singer and guitarist with the rock band L7, removed her underwear would never be broadcast now that most shows have a time delay.
The show provided a glimpse of the future of television – some would argue a horrifying one. No longer could celebrities be treated with total reverence, as on The Des O'Connor Show or Wogan. Five-minute videotaped pieces tackled subjects that would these days be given whole series on ITV – dog plastic surgery, fat farms, child beauty pageants. Its use of ordinary people predated reality TV by years. And it wasn't pointless: before her song, Lynne Perrie talked movingly about her relationship with her daughter. We wanted to connect with lonely teenagers in bedrooms around the country and make them feel part of something. I would be the first to say that a TV schedule dominated by the kind of subjects you saw on The Word would be a nightmare, but its role as an innovator is unimpeachable.
In the end The Word became a victim of its own success. A show that had set out to upset people at dinner parties eventually upset too many, and it couldn't go on. There had been a story about a boy who used his parents' credit card without their permission and was being pursued by all the newspapers: somehow one of our team had persuaded him to do an exclusive with us. We were taking him to New York for a live interview and spending spree. We had actually got permission from his parents, his school and the lawyers.
But when a Daily Mail report resulted in questions in parliament our fate was sealed. We had already helped earn Michael Grade the unfair sobriquet of "pornographer in chief", and by the fifth series there were regular private meetings between Channel 4 and the TV regulators, and this wasn't an issue it wanted to fight on. We were told to pull the link from the Empire State Building with the credit card boy. I didn't want to waste expensive transmission time, so the team, who had arrived in New York on the morning of the day that show was due to go out, had to set something else up in a matter of hours. What was it? It was more in the spirit of the TV times to come – a cat show. Live, of course.