A Very Private Celebrity (35 page)

In May 1976, Brian Tesler became managing director of LWT and John Freeman moved to the little office next door as chairman. Later that year, Tesler summoned all the senior staff to a three-day brainstorming conference at the Selsdon Park Hotel in Croydon. The aim was to review programming in the light of the IBA criticisms and to inspire some corporate bonding. Tesler had been aware for some time that the management structure at LWT was virtually non-existent. The creative staff worked directly to Cyril Bennett in one-to-one meetings so that they hardly knew what each other was doing. John Birt recalled, ‘There was no sense of community or fraternity of programme-makers: there was no forum in which we discussed things in general.’ Freeman’s style of delegation and laissez-faire was all very well but this was
surely a shortcoming. For a former chief of staff who admired army hierarchy and ran the
New Statesman
‘like a quartermaster-general’ it seems out of character. According to Tesler, ‘John never said to Cyril “something’s not right. Where’s the organisation? Shouldn’t it be like this?” Surprising because John was an organisational man.’
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The conference opened with a hard-hitting critique by John Birt – ‘when I arrived at LWT it clearly had a flavour of the moment about it; but ideas become sterile, individuals become jaded and programmes become predictable’
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– and ended in the bar with excited talk and no doubt the telling of in-house jokes. Later that night Cyril Bennett’s body was found beneath the open window of his sixth floor flat in Westminster. There was soul-searching at LWT whether the robust self-examination at Selsdon could have been to blame. The funeral was awful, with Birt weeping on Freeman’s shoulder. It was left to Tesler to restore morale in the months ahead and to implement a management structure in which each department had a controller who regularly reported to the director of programmes. He in turn held regular meetings with all the controllers to review existing programmes and consider new ones. In February 1977, Grade became the new director of programmes and, when he left LWT in 1981 to work in the States, he was succeeded by John Birt.

In 1976 Judith Mitchell became John Freeman’s fourth wife. The gap of five years between his leaving his first family and his remarriage was because Catherine was not prepared to give him a divorce. Initially she could not believe that her husband’s liaison would last (‘What happens when Judith plays jazz at midnight, Dad?’ asked Matthew, aged nine). Nor did she want the children to think she had agreed too easily to the separation that had hurt them so much. And finally, as she now admits, she was prepared to be bloody-minded and make
Freeman wait for the five years that the law at that time required; his betrayal had been too much to accept gracefully. It wasn’t so much the divorce itself, or the secrets and lies that led to it, she said, but ‘his refusal to engage, to say what the problems were, his blanking out of any discussion. This is what did the damage.’

Freeman was very angry. No longer was he aloof and beyond personal confrontation (‘I strove with none for none was worth my strife’). He wrote to Catherine: ‘I very seldom choose to fight, but when I do I always win.’ Robert Cassen could not believe that John was capable of treating her so badly: ‘He behaved in a very chilling way, so chilling that I found it hard to believe. To persuade me she was not exaggerating Catherine showed me some of his letters. They were cold, very cold indeed.’

Were you surprised by this? ‘No. I knew that’s how he was, though never to me. Catherine was so hurt, so aggrieved, that it was impossible for me to see John again.’
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The marriage came to an unseemly end in the Family Court of Registrar Elizabeth Butler-Sloss: John erect and composed, Catherine in tears. He agreed to give her the house in Perceval Avenue, Belsize Park, to which she and the children had moved after South Hill Park, and the sum of £5 a year. That was that.

Slowly, Catherine’s life began to improve. In 1976, she was invited by Thames TV to become editor of their daytime programmes, and so began a fruitful period that lasted for twenty-five years. She became controller of documentaries, features and religious programmes at Thames and then an independent producer-director with her own company, Dove Productions. This led to a partial reconciliation with her former husband. She was able to support herself financially and he also appreciated her success. They met for lunch and discussed the children ‘without ever disagreeing’. When Matthew became an
adult he took great pride in their achievements. Matt became a leading geneticist and one of the youngest members of the Royal Society. Tom joined the Merchant Ivory film company as an editor and later worked for Pixar in America. Lucy read Classics at Oxford, became a barrister and later a book editor. Freeman was an amiable, if remote, father and grandfather to Lily, James and Conor. At LWT, the chairman’s lifestyle was ‘spartan’, according to Brian Tesler. He lunched on his own off a sandwich in his small office. His favourite way of communicating was by a handwritten note, and if there was not enough room on the page he would continue writing round the side. Ron Miller told me that John Freeman was ‘very un-commercial as far as his own salary was concerned. After he left he told me what his savings amounted to and they were ridiculously small for a man of his achievement.’ In fact, he could have made a lot of money because LWT became a public company in 1977 and the shares went up far higher than expected. LWT had a Rolls-Royce and Miller tracked down the registration plate LWT 1. He offered the car to Freeman who said, ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in it.’ According to Michael Grade, every month the LWT directors would exchange a file of their own correspondence so others could see what had been going on:

Freeman was not interested in the trappings of power but he also said at this time that he did not like power itself: ‘Power is a disagreeable element in life. I tend to think those who like it have disagreeable elements
in their personality and I include myself in that.’
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I read this to John Birt. His reply was unexpected but I think it is absolutely right:

Was it that Freeman wished to protect himself from self-exposure or simply did not wish to impose himself or his views on others? Probably it was both, but in either case clearly he had not been cut out for political life.

Although Freeman did not enjoy social small talk, when the occasion demanded the LWT chairman was extraordinarily capable of handling it. Michael Grade remembers arriving early at a party for advertisers and Freeman telling him that he did not expect to know any of the sixty or so guests who were coming. Yet when they arrived he handled the introductions impeccably; he knew names, companies and connections. Typically, he had prepared for the event and memorised the guest list. Chan Canasta would have been proud.

A meeting more to his liking was the confrontation with Gavin Waddell, LWT shop steward of the ACTT, over the Bullock Report of 1977 on industrial democracy. Although its radical recommendations for trade union representatives on the board, with shared responsibility for hiring senior staff and disposition of resources, did not strictly apply to LWT because the company had fewer than 2,000 employees, nevertheless the ACTT saw this as an opportunity to increase its power within LWT. ‘We will have to meet Gavin,’ Freeman told the directors, ‘but don’t worry, I’ll deal with him.’ As usual, he had
done his homework and thought through the implications for a small company. It seemed Waddell had not. The outcome was similar to the famous Frank Foulkes grilling on
Panorama
. ‘Waddell was completely humiliated,’ remembers Michael Grade, ‘filleted like a kipper! John was coldly polite but knew every trick in the book. He would have made a gobsmacking QC.’

The 1970s was arguably the worst decade in post-war Britain with rampant inflation, a three-day week, widespread industrial strikes, even a sense that the country was ungovernable. Freeman had moved a long way politically from his socialist ideals to a centre-right position. He was a ‘dry’, as opposed to a ‘wet’, in the labelling of the times. He believed that his chairman’s priority was that LWT should fulfil its contract and if that meant taking on the unions he was ready for it. According to John Birt, he had prepared a management and
nonunion
labour task force that would keep LWT on the air should there be a strike: ‘He was unshakable in his resolve.’

The chairman was not always the imperturbable governor of all he surveyed. In November 1978 Michael Grade concluded a secret deal with the Football League whereby ITV won a three-year exclusive contract to televise League football in return for a load of money (£5 million).
Match of the Day
had become ‘snatch of the day’. The BBC was livid and threatened court action. Freeman was summoned on his own to the IBA. Somewhat shaken and fearing the worst, Freeman told Tesler that if necessary he would resign to save Tesler and Grade, because they were ‘the future of LWT’. To Freeman, loyalty to his team went as far as professional self-sacrifice. In the event, a new deal was struck that allowed both ITV and BBC to show League football – at a much higher price. Grade found out about Freeman’s resolve only afterwards.

In the summer of 1980, Freeman led an LWT delegation to the IBA. It was franchise time again, this time a formal presentation and
critique before Lady Plowden. According to Ron Miller, ‘John was at his brilliant best. After fifteen minutes it looked as if he was interviewing the IBA.’ At the end of December, Freeman and Tesler arrived back to be given a sealed envelope. They opened it and read that the LWT contract had been extended for another eight years. The IBA noted its ‘diverse good qualities over recent years’. As usual, flattery got nowhere with Freeman. He was not the only ITV leader to criticise the whole franchise-awarding process, but his memo to senior staff at LWT written in August 1981, showed how determined he was to change public opinion: in effect to persuade politicians that the system should be abolished and the IBA cut down to size.

Basically, he thought that the system of fixed-term contracts, which required ITV companies to re-apply for their licences, was a huge waste of time and money. Further, the ‘amateurish and unrealistic attitudes of the IBA, many of whose members had little qualification beyond assiduous reading of
The Guardian
and
The Observer
, led it to demand changes that were plain wrong.’ He gave the example of Southern TV that had lost its licence not because it had made bad programmes but because the IBA considered another company might make better. ‘This sort of haphazard selection is a luxury broadcasting can no longer afford.’ What would happen to the BBC, he asked rhetorically, if after ‘a lean period, the board of governors and top management would be collectively dismissed in the hope that someone else might do better?’ He concluded:

‘At the end of his time at LWT John found the IBA very irritating and he had not much time for Lady Plowden,’
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said Sir Christopher Bland, who had been deputy chairman of the IBA in the 1970s and was soon to join LWT. In 1990 the Broadcasting Act changed the award of franchises to an auction process, incorporating safeguards for quality. After the next round in 1991 Lord Thomson, who had been chairman of the IBA between 1981–88, admitted that this was wrong too. The best way, he said, was a system of rolling contracts. This is what Freeman had proposed; but it was wisdom after the event.

By now Freeman was becoming a media mogul himself. Additional top jobs in the media were his without asking – chairman of ITN (1976–81), chairman of Hutchinson (1978–82), governor of the British Film Institute, vice-president of the Royal Television Society. Hutchinson, the publishers, had been bought by LWT in 1977 when, as Freeman said, ‘We were flushed with cash.’ It seemed a good investment at the time with a mixture of educational books and popular authors such as Frederick Forsyth. However, from 1980 it began to lose money so LWT determined to make many staff redundant. The lot fell to Freeman as chairman, which perhaps accounts for this view taken of him by Terence Blacker, then an editor at Hutchinson:

Freeman was certainly cold in a crisis and that had been his reputation for years. However, the former senior staff at LWT deny that this was his nature. ‘Perhaps he mellowed,’ Brian Tesler remarked. ‘I had heard he was a very cold man but all I can say is that none of us found him like that.’ Ron Miller remembers a convivial drinking session with Freeman in Frankfurt when they went to inspect an outlying financial office. Michael Grade recalls how Freeman put his head round the door after Grade’s marital problems had become the stuff of Nigel Dempster’s gossip column in the
Daily Express
and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve all been “Dempstered”!’ John Birt enjoyed lively conversations with Freeman – ‘he was incapable of speaking an ugly sentence’. Aloof, private, not given to talking about himself and not a ‘joiner’, but not cold nor humourless either: that was the consensus at LWT.