Charlie Parsons: The Godfather of Reality TV on Creating The Word, The Big Breakfast, and Survivor

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, screenwraps.

And you may notice that I sound like I'm from Birmingham again.

Yes, I've got a bit of cold.

I went away with my family recently and my children.

One by one caught some kind of cold, which they finally gave to me, which doesn't normally happen.

I'm always the last to go down.

I'm not saying that in a braggy way.

It's just the way it goes.

But this time, it got me and it got me good.

But today, I have a hell of an episode.

Okay, so I guess the best way to say this is, I mean, I can't believe I get to speak to these people sometimes, you know?

I was sitting down in my bed set in 1992, September 28th to be exact, because I remember it, because I was looking forward to it.

And on the television came the first ever episode of, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, I shouldn't do it anymore.

I'll get done with the copyright.

The Big Breakfast.

Do you remember The Big Breakfast?

I loved The Big Breakfast.

It was my favorite thing ever.

It really felt like a monumental seismic shift in television, you know.

It was great.

And I loved everything about it.

And I even, I used to go and sort of hang around the white picket fence and try and sort of spot people going in and out because I lived near there.

And, you know, and as I mentioned on here, there was a point in time where I worked backstage on Grease in the West End.

And Robbie Williams was working on The Big Breakfast.

He was hosting after Take That did a stint on their own.

He took over on his own for a little while.

I guess he was, you know, one of the people they got in.

As was Andrew O'Connor, who was on last week's episode.

And yeah, and Robbie would turn up backstage at the theatre in the evening in the exact same shirt.

And I remember that.

It was like a thing.

And that's when Take That split up.

He was sort of hanging around with Shane Richey.

I don't know why.

It was just the way it was.

But every single episode, there was this name that came up.

And at the end, it said created by Charlie Parsons.

And Charlie Parsons has already created The Word at this point.

The Word with Terry Christian, who was on the pod last year.

And also after The Big Breakfast or during it, he came up with Survivor.

Unbelievable, right?

Survivor.

He created a production company with Bob Goldhoff called Planet 24.

You must have seen that at the end of TV shows in the 90s.

And when he sold it, he managed to keep the rights for Survivor, which was mentioned last week, yes, by Andrew O'Connor.

That's why I wanted to talk to Charlie, because I thought, well, I've talked to Andrew, he mentioned Charlie.

Can I get Charlie?

Can I get him on the pod?

Do you think he do podcasts?

A man who's in charge of like, was it 600 seasons of Survivor all over the world?

I mean, will he talk to me?

I reached out and he did and he came on the pod and he was lovely and it was so cool to talk to him.

And that's what I'm saying.

Like this guy sitting in his little bed sit, working in a tool shop in 1992.

I would never think that one day I get to chat to the person that basically created the thing that was giving me the entertainment that I loved so much.

I'd be late for work simply because, you know, I would wait for the last possible minute to leave, you know, because it was on from what, seven till nine.

So I had to leave the house.

Couldn't just sit around watching TV, but I did.

And I'd cycle to the place and I used to watch.

I also was a big fan of Chris Evans.

I listened to his radio show beforehand.

So I knew who he was and I saw him live when he used to do comedy, when he'd get naked to Queen songs and dance around with a rubber chicken.

It was all very strange.

So yeah, it was around that time that I used to go to all the comedy clubs and I'd see all these people and you know, they all became huge stars, huge stars.

And you know, The Big Breakfast of course, was this kind of zany crazy mischievous TV show that just popped up.

It felt like youth culture in the morning.

They said things you couldn't really say in the morning before.

Do you know what I mean?

It was very, very cheeky and I loved it.

I fucking loved it.

It was right up my street.

And so I'm really, really, really chuffed that I got to speak to Charlie because this is the man that came up with it.

It came from his brain.

So without further ado, let's get into the chat.

This is me talking to the creator of The Word, The Big Breakfast and millions, gazillions and quadrillion seasons of Survivor Worldwide in all different countries, all different languages.

Amazing, right?

Amazing.

This is me talking to the wonderful Charlie Parsons.

Can Charlie Parsons please make his way to the stage, please?

Thank you.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be, but it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

Hi Charlie, nice to meet you.

Hello.

How shall I start?

I'm so keen on talking about The Big Breakfast at the moment.

I don't know, I'm in a bit of a Big Breakfast mode again because I watched the first episode last week and I watched the last episode ever.

Well, actually the last Johnny Vaughan, the next one out on the episode, yesterday.

Yes.

And it was just like, it took me straight back, the music, the whole vibe of it.

And you sort of forget that it was pre-Bitpop at the start.

Yes.

It was just before like Parklife and that whole thing sort of happened musically.

I was so excited by it.

I lived in Hackney and I used to cycle past it to work.

So I would stop almost every day.

I'd watch about an hour or so of it.

And then I would cycle by and see who was coming through the gates.

And like the first time I got there, it was Frank Bruno.

That was like, well, this is weird.

And it was just such a fun thing because you could be sort of feel like you were part of it.

Do you know what I mean?

And I loved that.

It was a really fun thing to make.

It was so good.

It was one of those shows which was such fun to make.

Everybody loved making it.

It was a brilliant training ground.

It was great for Channel 4.

It gave it an identity.

But as always with these things, politics enters into it and personalities change.

And the people who loved it maybe disappeared and the people who didn't love it took over.

And it's one of those sad things.

But it was such a great show.

It's such a great show to do.

And we loved it.

We really did love it.

I don't think there's anybody on the show who worked on it, who didn't love it and who still talk about it.

I mean, we still bump into each other all the time, recounting what we can remember, because every single day was filled with about 25 things you wish you could remember.

But unfortunately, these days can't, because it's over 30 years now since it began.

It's like a fever dream.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's the funny thing.

I realized how much of it I must have missed, because I had to go to work unless I was off and I'd watch it avidly.

I remember being off sick once and it was the week that Take That took over.

And I watched it continue, like I watched every episode.

And I remember thinking, wow, that Robbie guy is quite something, isn't it?

He stood out.

Yes.

And then he co-hosted, or he hosted again on his own, didn't he, later on.

And at that point, I was working backstage on the musical Grease, which had Shane Richey, and him and Robbie became friends.

So Robbie would be on TV in a certain shirt with very short hair like mine.

And he would be on The Big Breakfast, and then he would come backstage in the evening wearing the same clothes.

And I think, well, he hasn't been to bed.

Well, there were a lot of people who hadn't been to bed.

I think it was probably quite bad for people's sleeping habits.

I mean, back in those days, we were big friends with Take That, because we actually did a search for word presenters using Take That.

We did this program between series called Word Search, where we had Take That, then a total unknown band.

And we had a variety of different people, possibly TV presenters, who would come in to interview Take That, basically, the whole of them, as they were then.

And so we spent a whole day with them.

So we kind of got to know them quite well.

I know you've mentioned, like, before in other interviews, that there was this really sort of stale kind of dual presenter, copied from America, for breakfast TV.

And you wanted to sort of turn that on its head and sort of make it almost like an anti-breakfast TV.

But how did you know it was going to work?

Like, because it's live, you can't, like, film it, rehearse it, edit it, make it good.

And it's outside, which is another complication.

And it's in a real house, which is another complication.

How did you know that that was going to work?

Because there was nothing like it before.

I mean, there's so many elements to get wrong and be a problem.

If you like.

Yeah, no, it's a good question.

Well, in fact, for that and Survivor, I guess I had done my TV training.

I'd worked on so many programs and it was instinct more than anything else.

I mean, we worked incredibly hard.

We did a lot of research on both that and Survivor.

And I just knew it.

It sounds so ludicrous to say it, but I just knew it.

But I guess I just knew it backed up by research.

So, for instance, when we were developing it, we were developing it as a kind of competition against other people.

Who were putting in their idea for a breakfast program.

I went to what was libraries in those days, pre-Google.

Got out all the research about people's daily habits, worked through this morning schedule that we knew we were going to have from 7 o'clock, every five minutes, what people were supposed to be doing, how many people were traveling, what people were doing, what was on the radio on other TV shows during those periods.

And did a bit of that and then did a bit of old instinct, what I like, obviously conferring with other people who helped me develop it, but it was a very well researched and discovered thing that we did.

I mean, and we obviously didn't know it was going to work, but we had an instinct that because we were thinking this is what I would like to watch.

Yeah.

Actually, in a similar way, I'm only just thinking of it as I speak to you, it was the same with Survivor.

We really, really worked on that project to the point where we worked out every single eventuality of what might happen if this happened or that happened or whatever.

So I guess we put in the groundwork.

What I'd realized by then is to have an amazing and slightly groundbreaking program, you need to put in the groundwork of what the backbone is and how it might work and what might go wrong.

Obviously, by the time the show went on air, we tried it a few times, we had Chris Evans, we got Gabby, so we kind of had a better idea.

But interestingly, people read those things and don't necessarily think it's going to work and therefore don't necessarily pitch the program automatically, but I kind of knew, and I was very arrogant at the time, I kind of knew both of those programs would absolutely work.

Wow.

I mean, I remember Chris Evans' Meteorite Rise because I used to listen to, he had a show on LBC called Chris and His Misses.

And I once went into the crowd on the Saturday morning in the posse and I saw how professional he worked.

He was very much like, eyes down.

He was amazing.

He just comes back to life every time.

And I saw him do his live gigs as well.

He would do these mad comedy things where he'd go naked and dance around with a chicken to a Queen song in Town and Country Club 2 or something.

And I thought, wow, who is this guy?

So when he turned up on there, I was like, this is going to be great.

I mean, he's such a super smart, intelligent person too, which made a difference.

So he instantly got it.

We weren't actually sure we were going to get him.

We really wanted him.

He was very hot in TV world at the time.

So we'd got all sorts of contingencies just in case we didn't get him.

But in the end, we ended up with him, which we were very pleased about, obviously.

And then Zig and Zag, I knew from Ireland because I grew up in Ireland a little bit.

And so like them turning up, it was just like, now I think back.

That's so weird.

It really, really worked.

Well, what's weird is that all your cultural things merging together.

That's what's quite interesting.

I mean, obviously, in those days, culture wasn't transatlantic and multinational.

You had your own national culture, basically.

So nobody in the UK really knew who Zig and Zag were.

But luckily, I don't think it was Bob Gelder, but somebody else who was in Ireland, Murray, Murray Boland, said, oh, you should look at Zig and Zag.

They're really funny.

So went over to Dublin, met them, persuaded them.

And yes, so yeah.

But it was a kind of potpourri of exciting and trivulant, fun pieces of comedy and news and journalism all put together.

That's what made it fun for us.

Yeah.

And also it's like an archive now.

There's a very famous bit of where they go back and Tom Hardy's on there as a sort of model when he's very young.

Yeah.

And he doesn't look anything like himself.

Nothing like himself.

So it's like this treasure trove of like, you know.

Oh, God, I wish I could remember it better.

You know, that's the awful truth is you live through this times and, you know, the times were full of stress.

And so you're not keeping a diary about the things that matter and you're not really remembering it.

The technology wasn't good enough for you to keep it.

So there's so many amazing people we had on.

You know, we had David Bailey on.

I mean, how amazing is that?

I know.

You know, that's crazy.

Crazy, absolutely crazy.

Were you there for a lot of it?

Well, I was at the beginning, more at the beginning than the end.

I was there for every episode I call episode.

That really is.

I was there every morning at five o'clock, every day for the first year, I'd say.

And then I started to delegate and just go in two or three times a week.

I mean, they were long days, especially if the Word was on, because the Word would be live at 11 o'clock, 11.10 at night.

So, my Friday was a horrific day basically, because I was in for the morning and out off the green room party after the Word.

So, they were very long days.

But yeah, I was most of them, but not enough.

I feel, you know, not enough.

When I look back at my life, you know, it's just sort of regret that I didn't, it's not tangible to me anymore.

Some of it, you know, even though I saw the shows and I may have even dropped in, but it's not tangible.

And the other thing is being the boss, you don't actually probably have the fun that everybody else does because, you know, you get rather caught up in the worry too, you know, when such and such hasn't turned up or the money isn't there or, you know, whatever.

But I was there for a lot of it, not all, but a lot.

And I loved it.

I was there for every episode of The Word, I should say, which is a different thing.

Really?

But that was more manageable because that was once a week.

I think it's really interesting, like what I sort of imagined in an alternative universe, if we had the technology we had now then, and you could like watch it on the way to work or you could record it and watch it later, or start the program 40 minutes in.

I mean, you had to just watch it and go after that.

Yeah, exactly.

What a waste, almost a waste.

I mean, there were Christmas repeats, but what a waste of all that energy putting into that.

It looks now, putting it into that and it not being seen.

And each one of those moments you can imagine as a TikTok moment, basically, you really can even now.

And so, yeah, it's just went into the ether.

Very sad, really.

When you watch an old episode, a random old episode, you can see some on YouTube, a random old episode, you think, oh my goodness, this contains so much stuff.

I know, it's wild.

And you know what I love about those old, whoever's put them up, I guess they VHS them right illegally, you get all the ads.

You get all the ads.

You get all the ads.

I love that.

I love seeing the ads.

No, it's great.

So, you're doing The Word on Friday, you're doing Big Breakfast.

Are you actually coming up with Survivor at the same time?

Yes, because I mean, and I, you know, caveat this, because I had a great development team that I worked with.

I was like the kind of creative driver of Planet 24.

You know, once you're on a role, you're on a bit of a role, which I felt I was.

And actually, I mean, the other thing I look back and think is The Big Breakfast was such a treasure-trest of ideas, which we never exploited.

Oh my God, we could have had so many, you know, modern-day Channel 5 series if we'd have thought about it.

But I was a little bit sort of hierarchical in my approach to ideas, which is the ones which I was really passionate about.

I seem to prioritize often at the expense of immediate funding, if you see what I mean, and immediate commissioning.

So, yes, Survivor actually came out of another show I did in the 80s, which was Network 7, which was a news magazine program aimed at young people just once a week on a Sunday, which I mean, I guess you could say this is the genesis of all these.

And I did this show, which was a show which included four castaways going off to a desert island and following them in a sort of documentary style.

You know, I knew that if I could make it into something commercial, i.e.

which had long term repeat factor, i.e.

you could make it into a format, that it might be good.

And it just sort of sat with me, I guess, until the early 90s, until probably after The Big Breakfast.

I can't quite place the dates, but that's when it became on the development list priorities.

So to turn that idea of sending castaways into a format, which is what we did.

And with the help of money, which America gave us, because we'd had such a success in The Big Breakfast.

So yes, they were all kind of all being generated all at the same time.

And at like the risk of repeating myself, how did you know that was going to work?

It was basically, I just, I don't know, you know, back in those days, I just hadn't, when we were living in our environment where there were just four or five channels, four channels actually, and you wanted to create what we now call watercooler moments.

I just had an instinct for what they were.

It started on Network 7 and then on The Word, and actually other programs I've worked on is it, I kind of always knew, you know, how to get people to talk about something is you have something kind of extraordinary and survive as it was then, as it was pitched for ages.

I just knew it was one of these shows which would attract attention.

You know, even when we did this very long document, I told you about how researched all these program ideas were, in this very long document which was the pitch for survive, it had in it sort of pictures of a mock Newsweek cover showing, you know, how the contestants would all be interviewed and so on, all of which came true because I had a sort of instinct, as I say, that this was going to be something radical and different, not precisely how it was going to be, but pretty close.

You know, detail in the research was what enabled me to do that.

Why did it get commissioned in Sweden first rather than America or the UK?

What was the reason for that?

Well, actually, the reason I couldn't get it commissioned in either the UK or America was because they couldn't quite see where it fitted in.

It's really hard to imagine, but the idea of reality TV hadn't really begun then, i.e.

using people's lives in a sort of almost like a produced game show way in a real situation.

It just didn't fit into any category.

So the departments we were pitching to were either sort of, you know, entertainment, which was shiny floors and Saturday night shows, or it was documentary, which this obviously wasn't, or it was drama, which obviously had real people.

So it didn't fit into any categories.

I pitched it in the UK.

People had liked the idea, but it hadn't got any traction.

There was a time at which ITV was very keen, but they wanted to try it as a special, which I didn't want to do because I thought that would kill it.

Yeah.

And then in America, exactly the same.

Even though one company had put up the money, it was exactly the same thing for ABC, who said, oh, we get friends, but we don't really get that.

A rather visionary producer in Sweden, called Anna Brackenheim, just got really enthusiastic and managed to persuade Swedish television to do it.

And we were selling it at a TV market when we hadn't sold it anywhere else.

That's how the third production was Expedition Robinson in Sweden.

I just read, I don't know if this is true, or if this might not even be up to date, it might even be more, over 40 countries and over 230 seasons of Survivor.

That sounds about right.

Yeah, sounds about right, easily.

Yeah.

I mean, there's 50 in the US alone.

You know, we've seen it's 50th season.

Yeah, I've seen that coming up.

Yeah.

And how do you feel about the sort of, I wouldn't say copycat shows, but shows that are clearly inspired by it, like Alone and things like Outlast, which is kind of lifted from your four words on the logo.

So it's an evolving reaction basically.

At the beginning, I basically took Endermol to court because I believed that Big Brother was entirely lifted from Survivor.

I still actually believe it.

At that stage, no show had been like it.

They licensed Survivor, got all our stuff, and never pitched Survivor for a couple of years.

However, the courts decided probably rightly, the Dutch courts because we had to take them to court in Holland, that actually they were different things because obviously Survivor is set on an island and Big Brother is set in a house.

So at that stage, I thought, God, anything like that is a thing.

Then later on, Channel 4 came up with something called, I can't remember what it's called, but basically Survivor without the game element because, in fact, the person who's running Channel 4 at the time said, can you do Survive but without the game element?

I said, no, that's crucial to it.

They did it without the game element for the first series, and then it actually introduced the game element.

So I was quite annoyed about that.

But now, obviously, with the benefit of hindsight and 20 years later, I think success has many children, failure is an orphan.

It's kind of a flattery in a way.

At the time, it was business, I was very focused, I didn't have any me time to contemplate.

And I just felt upset and angry that they should dare to take what I thought was my unique idea.

But I recognize now, ideas belong to lots of people.

But I also think, God, I was so lucky, because at that time, we were a tiny production company, really, and we managed to sell it on our own without it being absorbed into someone else's world, which is what would happen now.

It would be extremely difficult to have the success of this with the size we were nowadays.

Because unfortunately, the way it works is that the big companies have all the power.

Yeah.

It's interesting that it's kept going and it's still popular.

A lot of things have sort of died off, like Big Brother, for instance, as you mentioned, went away for a bit, came back.

I don't think people watch it anymore, I doubt it.

But also the speed at which things are spawned off now, like for instance, like Traitors, which I know you've mentioned on other things.

The amount of Traitors lookalike shows that have turned up within two years is wild.

It's like Destination X, which was on last night.

There's the Stephen Mangan one with the suitcases, there's the one with Sarah Fenowich, which is like Million Dollar Hotel or something.

And they're just all literally, this is just the Traitors guys.

Broadcasters are very reluctant to take risks because they can't afford to say, oh, we'd like something like that.

And that's the first thing.

So it's very hard to get something entirely new on.

And it's safer, isn't it?

And if they don't have their own Traitors, they want a copy of it.

And as I say, if we were doing it now, it would be extremely hard to have the success.

I was extremely lucky.

There were bad bits, like I say, the court cases, but in reality, I've been extremely lucky in that the idea that I had as a very, very junior TV production company back in the 80s, 90s, is still on TV and it still belongs to Castaway.

Not that that's my company anymore, but it still exists and it sounds right.

Do you consider, like people must consider you like some kind of godfather of reality TV, right?

Do you consider yourself in that realm?

Because I mean, you came up with it.

Well, I consider myself in that role, obviously.

But actually, I don't know if people do.

I mean, the majority of people have no idea of Survivor's incredible influence and success because for various reasons, it didn't work in the UK on two occasions.

So it's a slightly weird profit in their own country thing that people have no idea of my existence.

I mean, I remember when Survivor first began in America in 2001, I think it was.

And there was a report on the BBC News about this phenomenal TV show which had this huge success and they were having for the finale all these parties and things.

But there was absolutely no reference to the fact that it was generated here in the UK by a team of people working in the UK and sold to America.

It kind of just didn't even know that that was the case.

And I think that's been the story with its whole existence really is that nobody knows that except the TV aficionados that it actually is a British success.

And that was followed then by Nigel Lithgow, who is a British TV producer, saying, seeing the American survivor and thinking, oh, we should license that for the UK, little knowing that I'd actually already pitched it to ITV.

So, you know, so it's a weird thing.

Was he part of the...

I think he was in...

I don't know if he was in, but he was part of it.

Yes, yes, something like that.

Yes, something like that.

Before Pop Idol and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's kind of...

You know, like Succession is a bit like that, isn't it?

The TV show, people think it's an American TV show and everyone involved in it is British.

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But to go back to your actual question about reality TV, so it's a weird thing for me personally that I'm regarded as the sort of godfather of it.

Well, yes, some people, but not...

Not enough.

Or maybe I should...

Maybe it would be a bad thing to be that.

I don't know.

I've got a little favour to ask you.

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And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

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Obviously there were TV game shows like The Crystal Maze or Challenge Anika and things like that, but there wasn't that sort of cliffhanger, hyper real, like people just pulled out of their lives.

They were always in jumpsuits, weren't they?

And being sort of treated like they were on a quiz and oh, where'd you come from?

What do you do?

You know, all that sort of stuff.

Whereas this is just like, there's some people, put them in a situation, see what happens, and watch the sort of Lord of the Flies democracy kind of happen, right?

Exactly.

Interesting, which the Koreans are doing really well now.

They're very good.

Yeah, really good.

Brilliantly.

Yeah.

So have you got a fourth show up your sleeve?

No, actually I haven't.

I'm actually not really doing TV anymore.

I'm doing theatre now.

I sort of, I loved it.

I absolutely loved it and really still do.

You know, I've had all this amazing stuff and I don't have a bad experience producing a show in America, a chat show in America, which I didn't really want to do, but felt I ought to.

It was very, very hard for various reasons and it rather made me think, I'm not going to have the freedom that I used to have in the future, which I think is what has happened to TV producers.

So I thought, well, I'm going to pull out of that.

And so since, I guess, about 2000, well, I still do Survivor in America as an executive producer.

My real involvement now is more in theater.

So I'm doing a variety of great shows, which has been great actually, and has some of the elements of TV.

In October, we're doing The Hunger Games, which interesting as a bespoke venue, which is a sort of very, very like the TV things I used to do in the past in the sense that we decided to build our own venue in actually, amazingly, the Docklands, where I've liked Planet 24 was.

And The Hunger Games itself was actually inspired by Survivor.

So it's a sort of full circle thing in a very weird way that actually, you know, I mean, which I didn't know by the way, but only found out when we went to try and get the rights.

So it's a very big range of things we're doing.

So it's been really good fun, completely different.

But the great thing about it is you instantly see the reaction of your audiences and there isn't a filter, which is a sort of broadcaster filter before you get your ideas on.

Yeah, I worked in theatre for a very long time, 20 years.

Did you?

I mean, there's nothing better than being in an auditorium, pressing those buttons and watching the crowd.

It's just incredible.

Well, it's incredible.

And we're on The Word, you know, I used to go to the gym and listen to people talking about it the next day.

Now, you go to a show and it's a comedy and you can hear people laughing or laughing at the bit you expected them to laugh.

You know, it's a really instructive and amazing thing.

And you hover around in the foyer listening to people's comments.

And it's like an instant audience research thing.

It's great.

And as I say, there's no filter, you know.

Back in the day, there was very much an idea that, especially on Channel 4, that if an idea was good, you should get it on.

Now, there's a much bigger sort of fear factor, which is, you know, it's about marketing and so on.

And that makes it very hard on TV.

I mean, Michael Grayd, on The Big Breakfast, when we did our pilot, there were two live pilots completing, one made by us and one made by someone else.

And they were actually beamed live to the Channel 4 studios, one with one end of our show and one with the other end, the opposition.

And all of the Channel 4 people gravitated to our show.

But when we actually researched the program, people absolutely loathed it.

They loathed Tris Evans, they loathed the show.

They couldn't understand what was going on.

But to his credit, Michael Grayd said, I like this show, it's going to go on.

Now, that would be very hard to do now.

You know, there aren't many Michael Grays left.

The algorithm says no.

The algorithm says no, you put it through a certain amount of algorithm.

And that's the scary bit.

So, theatre hasn't got there yet.

So, long may it continue.

What are those rooms they have in America where when a show is developed and they play it to a bunch of audience and then they...

Yeah, well, they audience test it, don't they?

They literally test it.

Audience testing, yeah.

And then they come back and they change the end of a film or something.

And you're like, what are you doing?

Do you listen to them?

Yeah.

Well, you know, they should have input.

I think it's great to have input.

But I'm not, you know, making everything.

Honestly, Big Breakfast would not have happened if it hadn't been for Michael Grade stepping in and saying, this is going to happen, you know.

I mean, The Big Breakfast, we're going to keep going back to it.

I was looking at the map of it today.

Like, where was it exactly?

And then I saw that now the Olympic Stadium is right behind it, behind those cottages.

And I worked on the Olympics as well.

I had no idea that that was that close.

Like, I'm looking at it again.

Oh my God, it's just there.

That's wild.

But no, absolutely.

Who would have thought that little bit of London?

I mean, those little lockkeeper cottages, which were derelict practically when we got them, would suddenly become such an important sort of center in the heart of London.

I mean, you know, I remember driving to every single day.

And now, you know, the roads are completely different.

And it is part of the Olympic Park, effectively.

The houses actually went on the market about five years ago.

I looked, I looked, yeah.

Four million pounds.

Four million pounds.

But they've kind of done them, they've done them all up basically and made it rather a nice house.

Yeah.

Or be in a slightly strange area.

Yeah.

So how was it like being in the house?

It was quite small in there, right?

There must have been a lot of like people tripping over each other.

The sort of hecticness of filming that must have been quite...

Well, at the beginning, so at the beginning, we literally just had the houses and a little plot of land behind it.

And we'd rented from, I think we'd bought actually an old OB truck from the BBC, which we'd had to crane over just before we did our pilot.

So it was tiny and you're absolutely right, everybody tripped over each other.

But as we became successful and more important, we were able to take over a bit of an industrial park behind and build effectively Porter Cabin style studios, which basically meant it was easier.

It's still pretty small in the house.

But as that was always part of the plan, it made it easier.

I mean, I suspect you could probably do it even more easily now because cameras are so much smaller and so on.

But part of the fun was everything would be remote.

But part of the fun was actually obviously seeing all the people working on it.

But yeah, it was mayhem every day.

But by the end, we had a canteen at the back and it was great.

I love the idea of, so this is what I was just trying to look up because I just remembered it.

That one of special called Black to Front Day 2021, when it was bought back for a day with AJ Duda and Mo Gilligan.

Yeah, I remember watching that and thinking, I just think sometimes I just think, can we just have TFI Friday on every New Year?

Can we bring back The Big Breakfast?

That's what I want.

I don't want to watch Jules anymore.

I want something fun.

It should happen, right?

Why doesn't it happen?

I think the thing is, I mean, it wasn't very expensive, with The Big Breakfast, but they think they can do it better.

And I think the trouble is that slot, that time of day, we were replaced with Friends because they realized that running old editions of Friends was cheaper than doing The Big Breakfast.

But it was such a sort of identity point at the Channel 4.

What is Channel 4's identity?

Well, it's Channel 4 News.

What else?

Dispatches.

And it was then The Big Breakfast.

And then they had Big Brother.

Taskmaster, of course.

Taskmaster.

But that wasn't even originally Channel 4, was it?

No, that was Dave.

That was Dave.

You know, sir.

We've got this written down, I don't know if this is true.

The original title for The Word was Club X2, is that correct?

Well, it wasn't, that was always a working title.

It was never going to be called Club X2.

Club X was a show I worked on in 1989.

It was a program which didn't succeed, but I really liked, which was an arts program for young people.

But it came from the same budget at Channel 4.

So that's why it was provisionally called Club X2, but it was never going to be called Club X2.

Again, there's a great episode of The Word online with all the original adverts, which I love.

It's Bill Hicks, the Bill Hicks episode, which is chaos.

Okay, yeah.

That's a great one.

But obviously everyone's going to talk about, you know, drunken escapades and chabba ranks and things like that.

But what's your memory of like the Word?

You know, how do you feel about it now looking back?

Well, not just on YouTube.

What I think is rather amazing is on Instagram, there's this word fans on page, which basically has edited clips from the Word.

And every time it comes up on my feed, I think, oh my goodness, that's so great.

Because basically, there were some amazing moments.

What's my feeling about it now?

I think it was a moment in time, many of the things we couldn't do now, but it was kind of really extraordinary that we were able to do them then and to make it so entertaining.

And a lot of it is still entertaining now when you watch it.

It was the perfect thing to watch.

What day was it?

It was a Friday night.

Yeah, it was a Friday night, wasn't it?

Friday, Friday 11th, it sort of invented that slot.

There was nothing in that slot before.

Yeah, I remember Terry Christian told me originally it went out quite early.

Originally it went out at 6 and Michael Grade again, I keep going back to Michael Grade, but Michael Grade said, I think this should be 11 not 6, which was definitely the right decision because it enabled us to do things which we weren't able to do.

And he actually invented an audience which hadn't existed before.

I don't know if just anecdotally how many people as kids watched it, you know, sort of 15, 16, 17-year-olds, which was absolutely our target audience.

But I look back and think what a fabulous thing.

What a great window of opportunity as well.

Because, like you say, you wouldn't be able to do a lot of that now.

And it really, I don't think people said that Zeitgeist then, but you know, it definitely captured that moment in time.

And like I said before, before Britpop, after the 80s, the sort of, you know, what would you say, like that kind of, you know, yuppie era, fucking Tracy Chapman blasting out of, you know, cabbules or whatever.

And it was just this really perfect show for people.

I mean, and what's funny is a lot of people watched it who didn't like Terry Christian.

That's why I like, so they could sort of hate watch it as well.

Yes.

Because like when he was on this podcast, it's the most comments we've ever got.

Hate that guy.

He's a fucking wanker.

It's like, well, don't listen to it then.

It's fine.

But you know, he still generates this kind of, you know, love-hate-marmite sort of situation no matter what.

But the awkwardness of those early interviews and also the music, like it paved the way for TFI Friday, obviously, and shows like that.

And it was where new bands were showcased, right?

That is where Oasis did Supersonic and with Chris Evans later, he did the same thing, sort of copied it.

And that's where you got new music.

That's how I found new music, I think, is through those shows.

It was, as you say, it was like zeitgeisty.

And I remember the Deputy Director of Channel 4 saying, I know the word is successful because when I go to dinner party, people always complain about it.

And so that was kind of a tribute and it doesn't sound like it now in a way, but it was.

It actually got more and more extreme, but its objective was to be talked about in a good way at the beginning.

And it was of its time and very hard to make, to be honest, because as time went on, we had more and more battles with the powers that be about it and the lawyers and so on.

But still rewarding for that.

But out of that came a generation of amazingly talented producers and directors and researchers who all kind of ended up running TV.

I'm sort of wondering, like, if there were still some of those sort of 1940s, 1950s old suited guys wandering around going, what is this noise?

You know, like, in the background, they must have still been around some of them, watching The Word going, what the fuck is this?

Well, I think there probably was.

I mean, there probably was a bit, although I think by that time, they just about gone.

Actually, that happened more weirdly with The Big Breakfast.

You know, that there was a very strong lot of people at Channel 4 who were very old school news and felt that The Big Breakfast with its news bulletins didn't do justice.

And, you know, the ultimate two or three minute bulletin hadn't really begun on television at that time.

And, you know, you could ask, argue it's the race to the bottom.

But we, you know, we based on these bulletins on Radio 1 and made them very short and very snappy.

And they were the first short bulletins on the news.

And we had such a battle with the news department at Channel 4 to get those done.

And in the end, we took them in house effectively.

I mean, they were ITN, but we basically managed it.

It was the hugest battle you could possibly imagine.

There were a lot of battles with people who didn't really appreciate it.

I mean, you could say almost sadly that television being higher-minded, that battle has completely gone the other way now with very few arts programs and so on.

Well, I'm getting a little bit of patchy sound from you, so I'm going to end it here if that's okay.

But I really, really appreciate you coming on to Television Times.

It's an absolute joy to talk to you.

My pleasure and really nice to see you.

And anything else you need, just give me a call.

Yeah, we'll do.

All right, then.

Fantastic.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

Have a good day.

That was me talking to Charlie Parsons, creator of The Word, The Big Breakfast, and of course, Survivor.

I really feel like I've had to wheel back to back heavyweights.

Andrew O'Connor last week and Charlie Parsons this week.

I'm talking to some legends here on Television Times.

It's amazing.

Charlie doesn't really do social media, but there is a link at the bottom of this episode to his website for Charlie Parsons Creative.

Now to today's outro track.

Now, every week I put a different song on here, but today I am going to repeat myself because it's one of my greatest songs, greatest productions, I love the mix of it.

And you know, Charlie is a big name in television.

You never know who's going to hear this episode.

And this is a song I believe should be in TV or film.

It's called Screensaver.

It's from the album After the Fireworks, which came out in 2010.

And it's just one of my favorite songs I've ever done.

I played this once really, really loud in the Theater Royal in Nottingham and I blasted it.

And I've never heard one of my songs sound so good.

I'm so proud.

So here it is, this is the song Screensaver.

That was Screensaver from After the Fireworks in 2010.

I hope you liked that song, and I hope you liked my chat with Charlie.

Now, we're taking a short break, and I mean a short break, just for the rest of the summer holidays, so I can spend some time with my children.

But I'll be back in September.

So until then, thanks for listening.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell your friends about this podcast.