Music In Full View

Kathryn Tickell Photo: Graham Oliver

“Then I was a film student, so music and film have been my main interests. When you get into TV, the opportunities for making music programmes are pretty rare so I ended up with a company called Uden Associates who specialised in science programmes, although we did make a series called Classics for Channel 4. Somebody suggested that a good voice-over would be John Peel, so we became friends. We went off and made a programme in Germany called Travels With My Camera which was great fun, and then we did a series called Sounds Of The Suburbs.”

The latter series took the team around some more obscure parts of Britain, and memorably included Peel sat talking to Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson at home in Robin Hood’s Bay. “‘It was a treat,’ Peel said, ‘to go and see them.’ They all sang in their front room, and sat around in their kitchen and Norma talked about Englishness and how it had been stamped out by the Victorians.”

Shortly after that, Uden’s folded and Michael started his own company, whose main bread and butter is making corporate videos for the likes of Rolex. “But I was doing some arts programmes for Channel 5, including a film with Dr Jonathan Miller which got a lot of attention. So I invited their programme commissioner Kim Peat to lunch to talk about maybe making some others. She mentioned a thing they had in partnership with the Arts Council called Five Arts Cities which had done Liverpool the year before and was about to do Newcastle. Because I read fRoots and collect stuff, I thought straight away about Kathryn Tickell and how they should make a programme about her because she just describes that whole area through her instruments. When I got back to the office, I sent Kim a CD and found information about what Kathryn did around her town like teaching kids, things you can make a film about. And sent some photos so they knew it wasn’t somebody with a beard, because that’s what they thought folk music was. And very quickly they commissioned it.”

“We went off and made this film, though she told me ‘I don’t think it’s going to get a lot of viewers, but it fits in with Five Arts Cities and we’ve never originated a music programme before on Channel 5, so go off and make an elegiac film’. And I thought ‘great’, because my other interest is in the English landscape, so I loved the idea of going off to Rothbury and making a film about the landscape and this fantastic music – what else do you need? It was a joy to do.”

In spite of announcing it far too late for music monthlies to trail or preview, the Tickell film surprised Channel 5 by getting 750,000 viewers, more than some editions of Later With Jools and more than double the audiences enjoyed by other peak time arts programmes. It also got some very good reviews including a full page by Victor Lewis Smith in the Evening Standard.