by Anita Rani
This was it. The ultimate. Everything in my life had been leading to this point. I was in my element, full of energy. I offered to help everyone with everything at work. Keen and totally green. There was another, more highbrow music show called Inside Tracks being filmed in Maida Vale every Sunday that I’d heard about. I asked if I could be involved and help out. The producer said if I wanted to turn up every Sunday morning as their runner, I was more than welcome to work on it. Who’s going to refuse free labour? I was skint, but a student loan, plus a student grant, plus buying the cheapest sandwiches (and pints) you can find, living as frugally as possible, could sustain a year in London. It’s also handy to mistake your bank manager for your dad . . . My bank manager called me up to discuss my finances, or rather lack of, while I was working. It was a northern man who said hello, so I naturally said, ‘Hello, Dad’. This stranger became invested in my adventures and increased my overdraft limit for me. I was quids in.
I was swanning around at record label events, heading off to launch parties for albums and new young pop acts. These were a great place to get fed sweaty finger food and have a couple of drinks for free. I was watching and learning as well, the whole time figuring out how the hell TV works and how those in the entertainment industry roll. I was learning that everything is casual: the dress code, the conversations, the sexism, the racism and the regionalism, all casual. Young runners were thought of as fair game back then. Jokes about being from up north were regular, but I was expecting them. I played along: ‘All kids have to do a shift down the pit before school’, ‘Toilet? We have buckets up north’. Sexism was just part of the culture around me. As a northern brown woman, I had already absorbed that to get on, I needed to just get on. Where’s the line between ‘cheeky British slap and tickle comedy’ and some bloke at work telling you he likes you in tight T-shirts? We were a nation who had women with their boobs out in a national newspaper – daily!
I was learning about dodgy older TV producers who take a shine to young naïve runners. Note to young self: when approached by this breed, do what your title suggests and run.
I was keen and full of energy but totally naïve. Then there were the self-styled rock stars of the office, the maverick male directors (anyone would think they were creating Oscar worthy feature films rather than five-minute TV items about East 17). The no-nonsense series producer who gave me stern looks (never make eye contact with them). The moody producer who was hungover every morning and would get me to go and buy his fags and a bacon and egg butty, but I’m not sure he ever knew my name. The bouncy researcher who LURVED pop music, all pop, only pop, who’d enthusiastically tell the music PRs how much he adored S Club 7. I’d sit in the corner wondering if we were listening to the same music . . .
Music PRs were the friendliest (bordering on patronising) women on earth, husky-voiced, good time girls, who oozed confidence and sex appeal and were always out out and always blonde. I was also learning London slang. When one Hip Hop music PR (Nihal from 5 Live in a previous life) signed off a phone conversation with ‘OK, Homes’, I was slightly confused and replied, ‘OK, Watson.’ The learning curve was steep. I was mates with everyone, but particularly looked after by a crew of awesome women, Katie, Jo and Kim. They’d buy me the odd beer and teach me how to navigate my new TV life in London. I was the youngest person in the office, but I felt as though I was in Neverland, as no one in TV had to grow up, it seemed.
After my six months was up, I’d got to know enough people (proper hustler) to be offered a job, an actual paid job, as a junior researcher on none other than . . . Top of the Pops. I got a job at Top of the Pops. Even writing that now seems surreal. My commute to Elstree Studios was now from a student cesspit in Lewisham. A seven-bedroom house, with 15 people crammed into it, where no one had washed up or cleaned the bath since the eighties. It had some kind of dungeon room in the basement, with someone living down there who no one ever saw, and one girl who only ever seemed to wear her dressing gown. Typical students. My job involved working on an offshoot programme, filming and interviewing artists and bands backstage. The excitement would begin at the start of the week and would build to a crescendo on Thursday. The buzz would start after lunch as bands would begin to arrive, get taken to dressing rooms, then be brought out one at a time to rehearse in the studio. I was all over it. Free rein to run around the place as I wanted. The best person to have on side is always the floor manager. Then you can sneak into the back of the studio and watch the rehearsals from behind the cameras.
The kid who watched Top of the Pops religiously every week, dancing right up close to the TV, wishing I was dancing in the studio, was now actually there. JLo, Destiny’s Child (in their original line up of four), Cher (who didn’t rehearse on stage but watched someone else go through her steps, what a genius), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eminem (who had to dye his roots on the day), Billie, Ricky Martin, Manic Street Preachers, Macy Gray. I’d run around with a small camera, ready to interview anyone, totally not star-struck. Well, maybe a little. I wanted to make sure I was prepared for each interview and had something interesting to ask each of these mega stars and not make a total fool of myself too. If you don’t do it, there’s a queue of kids waiting to get in for the opportunity, remember? The queue was usually made up of kids whose family or family friends already work in the industry. They are usually from Surrey and usually not that keen to make cups of tea.
Twenty-year-old me had bags of energy and youthful confidence. I didn’t care about fitting in or what other people thought. My first ever office Christmas party, the most glamorous event in the calendar, I was utterly clueless. I’d saved my pennies and made a special trip to Camden Market to get a new outfit. I haggled the price down to £50 (the market trader in me), which was a huge sum of money for cash-strapped me. I went dressed in a black kung fu suit, complete with Dr. Marten sandals and hair in pigtails, to the Christmas party. No, it wasn’t fancy dress. I thought I looked the business. Plus, this outfit was perfect for the dancefloor. Did I feel embarrassed? Not one bit. I’m in awe of the girl who rocked up to that party wearing whatever the hell she wanted. The last thing on her mind was what people thought of her, only how she was going to maximise having a great time. Thinking back to that girl, I wonder when it started to change. When did I start to care what people thought, when did I start to worry about what to wear, when did I start to think again about what’s to be expected, and become aware of my difference? Ironically, probably when I officially entered the world of TV and became a TV presenter.
After my time at the BBC was over, I had to go back to uni to finish my final year. On the day of my last ever exam, I got an email from Katie, the lovely producer I’d met, asking me if I was interested in coming to Manchester for an interview the very next day. I got a job as the researcher on a Channel 4 music show called The Dog’s Balearics, coming from Ibiza every Friday night. Jammy git here was off to spend two months in Ibiza, my first summer out of uni, getting paid pennies, but getting paid – when you have nothing, a small amount is a fortune.
If I was bemused by the social lives of my flatmates at uni, nothing had prepared me for San Antonio, Ibiza, in the year 2000. Club 18–30 holidays, British kids popped up on pills and cheap booze, falling down stairs, throwing up in plant pots and humping in the corner of clubs. It was total carnage, a perfect situation for late-night TV. My job was to work in the office in our villa in the morning, interview DJs in plush villas in the afternoon, then film the chaos of the clubs through the night. These clubs didn’t really get going until 4am. It was a wild and wonderful and utterly exhausting two months of my life.
My next job was working for a great TV company that specialised in music TV, called Free at Last. It was set up by a group of brilliant outsiders, who championed outsiders. These are the people that gave me my first break, Barry and Katie (same lovely Katie). It was Barry who one day said to me, ‘We should put you on TV.’ It was Barry’s partner David who directed my first ever presenting job. It was
this company that, without me knowing, had cut a showreel of me that they took to commissioner Sham Sandhu at Channel 5, who happened to be looking for a new presenter for a weekly live TV show. Sham thought I had something special and gave me the job. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a Punjabi man spotted my talent. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was gay men who empowered me and gave me my first opportunities. People who are ‘othered’ see others. I presented Party in The Park, the MTV European Music Awards and a few other live music events Channel 5 put on next, all thanks to Sham. He kickstarted my career and I’ll always be grateful to the people who supported me and gave me my first break.
I was now officially trying to a forge a career as a TV presenter. I wasn’t self-conscious in front of the camera, I didn’t take myself too seriously, I loved writing my own scripts, didn’t mind early starts and was happy to work long hours. I was never short on something to say and crucially, I adored talking to people and made them feel at ease. It was a job that needed self-motivation and discipline because you only get out of it what you put in, AND to top it all off, it paid. Plus, I was good at it. I thought, I’ll give this a go and see how far I can go. Which was as far as possible. Why the heck not? No false modesty here. I’m reclaiming ambition for women. I was, and always have been, ambitious and, in my mind, there are no limits to what I can achieve. There, I’ve said it. I used to keep this to myself because society has made me believe that ambition and drive are acceptable, admired even, for men only. I say let’s actively encourage it, let’s instil in our children that success is something for everyone, if that’s what you want. We need our children to grow up in a landscape of equality and with a belief in equality that starts with something as simple as the belief that they can do whatever they want, regardless of gender. Then let’s work on making sure the system is open to this idea, too. Therein lies the problem.
Once my year at Channel 5 ended, however, and I was out in the world of jobbing presenter, things got a little more complex. I was up for screen tests and would get to the final stages. The feedback was always ‘she’s a brilliant presenter’ but:
‘not sassy enough’
‘a bit of a risk’
‘so clever and funny but doesn’t fit with what we are looking for’
And my absolute favourite, that has come up time and time again, ‘Why you?’
Why me indeed. The only time this question doesn’t come up is when I talk about anything to do with being brown, because somehow everyone gets that I’ve got that subject covered. I was even once asked in an interview if I saw myself as British. I took all these comments at face value. I thought I needed to change something about me to fit whatever it was those hiring were looking for. What was it that I could do to make sure I got the next job? I never wore my disappointments or my failures too heavily. I was pragmatic and positive, or maybe stupidly blind to what was really being said: ‘We don’t know what to do with a brown face.’
This may well have been the first time they were encountering an Asian woman, from Yorkshire at that, who was trying to explain to them that she wanted to be the next Oprah or Chris Evans. My thinking wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand what was being played out. I never thought about my race and stupidly didn’t think my ethnicity played any part in how other people perceived me. Particularly when it came to getting work as a presenter – I thought people just saw what I was capable of. I was ready to duck and weave and charm and graft and do whatever it took to make a career for myself. It was exciting. It wasn’t easy but then I wasn’t expecting it to be. But then you do get to realise it’s not that hard for everyone, just harder for some.
* * *
Work is not a straightforward space to navigate. No one who looks like me holds the keys to power, so you are beholden to someone who basically doesn’t get you. As well as doing your job, you feel you have to educate and explain who you are constantly. Battering the stereotypes constantly. Asian women are seen as meek and mild. We won’t fight back, we’ll do the job for free, be grateful for the scraps we are given. We’re incapable of being leaders and if we speak out, we are angry and disruptive. Those in power think we are subservient and submissive. Off to have an arranged marriage then pop out a load of kids. This narrative doesn’t just apply to Asian women but all women to varying degrees. Those in the workspace don’t understand the depth of our complexity and brilliance. Or the fire that rages within us.
We begin to self-censor and keep our thoughts to ourselves and, in turn, don’t show our true qualities and capabilities of being total badass boss babes. We hold our tongues to avoid conflict in the workspace because our gut tells us it won’t end well for us, even if we are right. I’ve had a co-presenter throw ice cream in my face because he didn’t like what I said. I’d made a very gentle, friendly joke at his expense. He thought he was being funny. Would he have done the same to a male colleague? I said nothing, just wiped it off my face and carried on, looking at the shocked faces of the people behind the camera. How telling that no one felt they could say anything to him.
I took the opportunities that came my way and made them work for me, which meant constantly having to prove myself. If I wanted to succeed and have any kind of career with longevity, I needed to be able to adapt. I’m adept at adapting. I’ve won a Royal Television Society Award for Best Presenter, have worked my ass of at every job I do, and yet I can still feel like an outsider. It’s just what we misfits always have to put up with. I’ve had moments when I’m angry at the system, a system I have no control over, and all I can do is find the energy to soldier on. To keep pushing forwards so that I can continue to have a career and buy sourdough bread, but also change the landscape for the next generation. The system that works against me is helping to stoke the fire inside me.
Is it OK to talk about? How long before those in power think I’m ungrateful, or have a chip on my shoulder? Are these the conversations I should only be having behind closed doors with my black, Asian and trusted colleagues? Or should I speak out now? I still don’t know. But what I do know is that it’s time we were understood. What have I got to lose? A hard-fought career.14 If I feel like this, as someone who has gained success, how must other women feel, with less of a platform and no authority? But adult Anita has made a decision. I don’t want to feel like an outsider anymore. I want to own my space and recognise my power. I want to be grateful but not so much that it cripples me. I spent so long wanting to please, trying to fit in, losing my mind over the lack of control I had over my life, that I’m just going to let go. I’m here, I’ll work hard, I’ll always do that. But I have also more than earned my right to be here, in any space, but especially in my profession.
14 Two days after writing this, I was asked to join Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. What did I do to celebrate? I went for a long run listening to Kate Bush. I then called my brother and he cried with happiness for me. THE Woman’s Hour. It is an honour and a privilege, and an important seat for me to be taking.
You’ll Never Feel ‘English’
I don’t have the same feelings about being ‘English’ as I do with being from Yorkshire. I’d never say I was English, as it’s always been abundantly clear to me that English is not something I could ever claim to be, what with my skin not fitting the colour palette definition of white, cream or beige.
If I ever saw a St George’s cross flying outside a pub it was a clear marker: do not step in. If you wanted any kind of confirmation about how I was made to feel about England, it’s all tied up in the flag. Appropriated by racists/fascists/the extreme right wing and football hooligans, ‘It’s ours not yours, so fack off back to where you came from’, is what I can hear the flag shouting at me. The St George’s cross could do with washing its mouth out with soap and water and then have a complete image revamp. Send it on a diversity training scheme, or simply to school instead.
If I was second generation Italian or Dutch, Polish or Norwegian, would I feel the same about being English
? Well, no one would question my identity in quite the same way if I just blended in. I may feel shut out of being English, but I am British. Of course I am. Or am I British Asian, or British Indian? Which makes me wonder, when will I be seen as just being British? I think I’m the modern-day definition of being British. It’s factually correct that my nationality is British. Born in Britain equals British. One for the forms, but even then, I’m in a sub-category of British Asian. See, always on the outside. On the periphery. I’m proud of being from my country. It’s my home. And I am within my rights to tell you how I feel about it too.
I’m very comfortable here in the UK, it’s what I know, even if some people try to other me, even if people who look like me were nowhere in the cultural landscape when I was growing up. Not films, TV, music, magazines. Thankfully I was able to see the universal in everything I consumed (I had no choice), even if it wasn’t telling my specific story. (I hope you can do the same with this book.) It also means I internalised that white is the norm in every situation, which is severely problematic and detrimental to your mental health and self-esteem. I wished I was white for a long time as a young un, I just felt it would make life much easier. Nobody seemed to get what we were about or care to understand. We were just different, did things in a funny way, if we were thought of at all. I didn’t realise that it was important to see myself reflected in popular culture, I just accepted that I wasn’t. We all just accepted that we were on the periphery. The world in the telly belonged to someone else.
