Devil's Advocate

by Karan Thapar

  Charlie must have seen a flicker of doubt on my face because he suddenly laughed and said, ‘Well, even if that isn’t entirely true, it’ll do you a lot of good to learn about your countrymen. This could be a sort of getting-to-know-India experience for you!’

  It was. I spent two months in cities like Bradford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and, of course, the London suburb of Southall, which is where the Asian community resides in large, if not dominant, numbers. In Southall, I stayed as a paying guest after responding to an advertisement on a noticeboard in a popular eatery. It was a grubby home. Fortunately, I ate out, but I wore slippers even when I showered inside the tub!

  In Manchester, I stayed with friends of friends. Elsewhere I stayed in bedsits or small inconspicuous hotels. In Bradford, I discovered a ‘Crescent’ where every house was occupied by Pathans. Back in Pakistan, they had all lived in the same village; now they had recreated a similar environment in this industrial town in Yorkshire.

  My aim was to immerse myself into the South Asian community and try and become one of them whilst also learning about them. To belong but also observe, analyse and understand.

  I think I must have been fairly successful because when The Times started publishing my articles, I received a call from LWT asking if I would be interested in working on a new television programme called Eastern Eye, which would be about the life, interests, concerns and celebrations of Britain’s Asian community. This was to be one of LWT’s offerings for Britain’s new channel, Channel 4, due to be launched in the autumn of 1982.

  As I’ve admitted, television appealed to me. It also paid a lot more. The only problem was that I would have to part company with Charlie, who had become more than a boss. He was by now a mentor.

  When I told him, Charlie was all smiles. ‘I knew this was going to happen one day,’ he said. ‘You’re the sort who likes attention and grabs it when he can. Good for you. I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’ There was a bit of a dig in the praise. Charlie knew how to deftly combine the two.

  I accepted the offer from LWT as a bit of a lark. I approached it as an interesting experience. Little did I realize that I was embarking not just on a new job but a lifelong career. Practically everything I know about television—whether it’s production or anchoring or scheduling—goes back to what I learnt, or taught myself, during the eight years I spent at London Weekend.

  The 1970s and ’80s were, arguably, the halcyon days of LWT. As a channel dedicated to weekend programming, it dominated the Independent Television (ITV) network schedule from Friday night to Monday morning. And because Saturdays and Sundays were when most people watched television, LWT had the biggest audiences. Consequently, its top anchors became household names across Britain. The list included David Frost, Janet Street-Porter, Peter Jay, Brian Walden, Auberon Waugh, Michael Aspel and Melvyn Bragg. Their programmes—The 6 o’clock Show, The South Bank Show and Weekend World, to name just three—were mandatory viewing for a lot of people.

  When I joined, John Birt, who went on to become the director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was LWT’s director of programmes. He was a shy and somewhat self-effacing man, yet it was said that no one knew more about the art of interviewing than he did.

  Birt famously believed that there were only four answers to any question an interviewer might ask—yes, no, don’t know, and won’t tell. The job of the interviewer was to collapse the last two into the first two.

  Birt also maintained that there were two types of interviews, the news interview and its current affairs half-brother. The first comprised a set of straightforward, obvious questions which, primarily, elicited information because one needed to know the details of what had happened. The bedrock of this type of interview was a quest to satisfy understandable curiosity.

  The second interview, Birt argued, was very different. Here the aim was not to gather information, but to probe opinion or seek understanding and, thus, push the envelope further. This meant that the interviewer had to be a ‘master’ of the subject, in the sense that he or she must be aware of what were the possible answers and the costs connected to each of them. Finally, he or she had to explore what the solution might be and put that to the interviewee.

  Such an interview, Birt maintained, was best done when the interviewee could be placed within the horns of a dilemma: damned if they do and damned if they don’t. After establishing the interviewee’s predicament, the first task of the interviewer was to push the guest to embrace one horn or the other. Once that was achieved, the next task was to point out the consequences of this choice and push the guest to accept or, at least, acknowledge them. The final task was to explore potential solutions to these costs and see which, if any, the interviewee was willing to endorse.

  If an interviewer could push the ball thus far down the road, Birt believed that he would not just elicit a fairly comprehensive understanding of the issue he was exploring but, additionally, provide headline-making news for the next morning’s papers. With this in mind, Weekend World was broadcast live every Sunday at noon. In the 1970s and early ’80s, journalists across Britain would stop whatever they were doing to watch the show. Most major papers would lead on Monday with the scoop Weekend World had delivered the day before.

  The highlight of my work on Eastern Eye were three interviews, but for reasons that had nothing to do with Birt. They were with the heads of government of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, the three countries whose natives comprised Britain’s Asian community. Each interview attracted attention and got talked about for rather odd reasons.

  The interview with General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, then dictator of Bangladesh, became notorious for the way it ended. The general fancied himself as a poet and had composed a few special stanzas which he was determined to read out. With a solemn voice and a look suggesting that he had something important to say, his verse began: ‘From the green fields of Bangladesh, bristling in the sun, to the good people of Britain, where there is none…’

  I just about managed to keep a straight face, but it was sufficient to convince the dictator that I admired his poetry. He promised to send me more. Fortunately, either he forgot or his staff ensured it never reached me.

  The interview with Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq is memorable for what happened halfway through. We were, I think, quarrelling over Benazir Bhutto and whether in Zia’s Pakistan she was free to say and do what she wanted to. His tense face was proof that this wasn’t a line of questioning he was comfortable with. The tight smile on his face looked decidedly false.

  Then suddenly from the porch outside the drawing room where the interview was being recorded, came a sound of car doors banging noisily. It’s not the sort of thing you would expect when you’re interviewing a military ruler. However, it completely changed the general’s mood. Interrupting himself, he explained: ‘That’s my family coming home. You must meet them afterwards.’ This seemed to relax him. He was a different man thereafter.

  The interview wasn’t broadcast live, but it was sent via satellite live to London and, thereafter, broadcast without editing. Thus, everyone heard this little interlude and it attracted as much attention as anything else the general had said.

  For me, however, the memory that lingers is of the general’s elaborate courtesy, though, to be honest, it was manufactured, even if artfully. When the interview ended, he escorted me to my car which by then was waiting in the front porch. After thanking him and bidding adieu, I got in and the car drove in a half-circle as it negotiated the round garden at the front of the house. When it was at the other end, with the porch at the back, Gen. Zia’s aide-de-camp (ADC) suddenly said: ‘Look back, Mr Thapar, the general is waving.’

  I turned to discover Gen. Zia standing exactly where he had shaken my hand and bid goodbye. Now, however, he was waving at the departing car. Clearly, this was a practice the general had made a habit of. What’s more, his ADC was aware of this, which is why, even when we had our backs to t
he general, he was able to alert me. No other interviewee, either then or in the decades to follow, has used courtesy so deliberately to create a favourable impression.

  The third interview, this time with Rajiv Gandhi, became famous because of what it revealed about him. For a start, the audience fell in love with his dimples and engaging smile. Though articulate, he had a shy manner that was endearing. But it was his language that caught everyone’s attention. It was informal and quite un-prime ministerial. I don’t remember what my question was, but this was the answer that won all-round praise: ‘You don’t expect me to tell you on telly, do you?’

  There was also a fourth interview with a memorable story, though it happened entirely off-camera. This one was with P.V. Narasimha Rao, then union home minister. It took place in January 1985, weeks after Indira Gandhi’s assassination and Rajiv Gandhi’s notorious defence of the Sikh massacre that followed on the grounds that ‘when a big tree falls, the earth will shake’. In one of his answers, Narasimha Rao said something similar. I noticed, but let it pass. This was a ten-minute interview and I needed to move on to other issues rather than spend time pursuing an indiscreet response. But unknown to me, Narasimha Rao was clearly disturbed by what he considered a damaging lapse.

  The interview over, I returned to the hotel and was taking a shower when the phone rang. I reached out from behind the curtain to take the call. The voice on the other end claimed to be Narasimha Rao.

  ‘Sure,’ I snapped. ‘And I’m Rajiv Gandhi. Now stop it, Siddo, and let me have a shower.’ This was precisely the sort of prank my nephew, Siddo Deva, would frequently play.

  ‘No, Karan, this really is Narasimha Rao, the home minister.’

  ‘I’m sorry, minister. I thought you were my nephew trying to make a fool of me. What’s happened?’

  Narasimha Rao explained that he was worried about something he had said in the interview. He believed it could inflame opinions in India which, under the circumstances at the time, was not just undesirable but could be particularly damaging. Would LWT drop that answer?

  I told the minister that the interview had already been sent through satellite to London and I would have to ask my bosses if they were willing to make the cut. I wasn’t sure whether the answer would be yes.

  ‘Please try your best,’ he requested. I promised I would.

  When I rang up LWT, I discovered that this was a matter that had to be referred all the way to the top. So it wasn’t a short or simple phone call. Eventually, when it ended up in John Birt’s hands, the answer I received was a delight.

  ‘Tell Mr Rao that we make a career stitching up ministers,’ Birt began. ‘Now, for a change, it will be a pleasure to unstitch one instead.’

  Narasimha Rao got the joke at once. I could tell he was laughing, even though I couldn’t hear the sound over the phone. ‘Tell Mr Birt I’m grateful and I like his sense of humour.’

  After three years on Eastern Eye, I was appointed a producer on Weekend World, one of LWT’s most highly regarded current affairs programmes. The three years I spent on Weekend World and the fourth on its successor programme The Walden Interview probably marked the steepest learning curve in my career as a journalist. The rigorous manner in which Weekend World approached the subjects it discussed taught me two things that have proved invaluable thereafter.

  First, I learnt to think in a clear, linear fashion. ‘Push your thought to the furthest extreme it takes you’ was the accepted mantra of the programme. When you did, you could come to surprising but still logical conclusions.

  The second lesson was how to structure a story. The idea was not to discount or ignore elements that were difficult to accommodate in the line you had adopted, but to find a way of incorporating them without damaging the logic of your argument. In part this was a writing technique, but more often, it required going back to the starting point and thinking your way through the issue all over again. Never easy, but always rewarding if you did it rigorously.

  This meant that Weekend World documentaries were very different to those made by competing BBC programmes like Panorama. We would think our way through the story and carefully structure a script before starting to shoot. Consequently, we knew fairly precisely what we were looking for. Others tended to shoot first and then script according to the footage they had obtained. As a result, Weekend World was more cerebral but less visual. Its strength was its focus and penetrating direction. Panorama, on the other hand, was more beautiful to watch, full of delightful human touches, which were revealing and emotionally gripping. But the actual logic and structure could often be all over the place. Intellectually, Panorama often felt messy.

  When I started working on Weekend World, Brian Walden, the anchor, was at the peak of his fame. A favourite of Margaret Thatcher—or so it was said—she gave some of her most famous interviews to him. Indeed, it was Brian who dubbed her social philosophy ‘Victorian values’. Mrs Thatcher loved the term and readily agreed. After all, dedication, persistence, thrift and a black-and-white idea of right and wrong were values close to her heart.

  I first met Margaret Thatcher in 1975, while I was still at Cambridge. At the time she was the upstart leader of the opposition, dismissed by Tory grandees as a mere Grantham grocer’s daughter. Dressed in a bright canary-yellow dress trimmed with a startling black band, she was hard to miss. Her voice was also rasping. The refined faux-upper-class accent was still years away. Consequently, she caught one’s attention but did not necessarily win one’s admiration.

  Maggie Thatcher had come to the Cambridge Union as a special speaker. The university mood was dominated by the belief that Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Lib–Lab Pact of 1977–78 (between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party) could deliver. The winter of discontent was three years ahead. At the time, the avuncular prime minister was both liked and trusted.

  Impressions changed dramatically when Thatcher started to speak. There was something about her delivery that forced you to listen. There was a lot more to her content that made you sit up and think. But above all, her passion and conviction stole the day. It was years before her economics won widespread support, but the feeling that she could make it to the top and even dominate British politics had already begun to rouse emotions, both in favour and against.

  I was a member of the Cambridge Union’s Standing Committee and got to meet Mrs Thatcher over coffee and sandwiches. Perhaps I was overawed by her manner or lost in reverie, but I recall her repeating a polite question I had failed to answer. It was a casual enquiry about what I was studying and when I replied ‘political philosophy’, she harrumphed. ‘Rather you than me,’ she snorted. ‘I prefer to get on with things!’

  The next time we met, she was prime minister and had just won her third successive election. The coiffed hair, large pearl earrings and carefully, if artificially, modulated voice were firmly in place. She was, after all, at the crest of her political power. Her position was unchallenged.

  I was part of a team from LWT at 10 Downing Street to record an interview. Afterwards, she invited us to stay for a beer and then, jug in hand, circulated around the room, topping up glasses.

  As she did the rounds, Mrs Thatcher filled the glass of a new redhead Cockney spark who, brimming with enthusiasm, burst into eager conversation.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he began, addressing her as if she was the queen, ‘there’s a question I have to ask.’

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Thatcher replied, unruffled by the surprise elevation. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘When do you agree to give an interview and when do you refuse?’

  The prime minister froze. Clearly, this was not what she had expected. But the question posed a challenge and she wasn’t going to duck it.

  ‘When I’m in trouble, when things are going wrong and when my stock is falling, I say yes.’ Then she paused for effect. ‘But when it’s smooth sailing I prefer to keep silent.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’ The redhead thought he had detected an anomaly a
nd wasn’t ready to let it pass.

  Mrs Thatcher laughed. It sounded forced. She was never good at allowing her emotions to show.

  ‘When things seem to be collapsing, I need to prove I’m in charge and that I have the answers. I also need to reassure people. That’s the time to speak out. But if you do so when the going is good, chances are you’ll put your foot in your mouth and fall over your own feet. At such times it’s better to keep mum.’

  How true. Unfortunately, in India, our politicians do the opposite. They choose to crow whenever they can and thus invite misfortune. But when they need to bolster public confidence, reassure supporters and silence critics, they’re as quiet as church mice. Actually, that poor animal scurries around and is at least noticed. Not our politicians. When in trouble, they become invisible.

  ‘You media guys are the cause of at least half the so-called political dissidence we read about,’ Arun Jaitley once sagely commented, although I suspect he may no longer remember when or why he made this observation. It may even have been said jocularly, but then many a truth is spoken in jest.

  Arun’s remark reminds me of something Mrs Thatcher once said of Norman St John-Stevas. He was, briefly, a colourful if inconsequential member of her Cabinet. His reputation was built on his differences with her. He christened her ‘the blessed Margaret’, a tongue-in-cheek reference to her saint-like rectitude but also her unbending obstinacy. The British don’t like saints. They distrust them.

  ‘Speaking of Norman,’ said Mrs Thatcher in one of her interviews to Sir Robin Day, the premier television interrogator of his time, ‘he had no idea he was a major dissident until he read of it in the papers and then belatedly started to behave like one.’