Sellafield Stories by Hunter Davies

Author:Hunter Davies [Davies, Hunter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781780335131
Publisher: Constable Robinson
Published: 2012-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

ERIC ROBSON

Eric Robson: well-known broadcaster, maker of many television programmes attacking Sellafield, chairman of Gardener’s Question Time on BBC Radio 4. Chairman of Cumbria Tourism. Lives in Wasdale, does some sheep farming.

‘I had a sneaking admiration for people like Greenpeace. They had balls, you know. I liked the fact that they would go out there and dress up as skulls and skeletons. For a lot of them it’s good fun.’

I was born on New Year’s Eve, 1946, in Newcastleton in Roxburghshire, a little village twenty-five miles north of Carlisle, just over the Scottish border, where my grandfather had been the station master on the Waverley railway. He had the distinction of being the only station master with a station in both countries. He was the station master of Newcastleton in Scotland and four miles south, Kershope Foot in England.

We then moved to Carlisle, into a brand-new council house in Dean Crescent in St Anne’s Hill. They used to have a key-worker’s house, using both halves of a semi, putting firemen into both of them, making sure they were on different shifts. The wife, who had to stay at home when he was on night shift, always had another fireman’s family next door.

Then on to the grammar school in Carlisle. I had all my education there, carried on at the grammar school, and then a minor disagreement with my parents. I wanted to be an actor and they wanted me to do something sensible.

And so I didn’t go to university. I had a place at drama college, but I didn’t take that up either. As a sort of teenage idea of compromise, I went to work for Pickford’s the furniture remover. Which I thoroughly enjoyed, I’ve gotta say, great job. It’s a bit like being an undertaker. You see people at their worst when you’re a furniture remover. I worked for them for about eighteen months or so.

I’ve no idea how many times my mother applied for jobs on my behalf without telling me. I think she thought, you know, all these years at grammar school and all this work on A-Levels were being wasted being a furniture remover. But she had to own up when eventually Border Television responded to an application and said they wanted me to go for an interview.

I was about twenty. And I went along and arrogance of youth, sort of said ‘Aagh’ at the job, which was to be assistant to the head of presentation. That was the title of the job, but basically it meant I was a seventeen-quid-a-week clerk. I just wasn’t interested in the job at all, and told them so.

‘Okay, well then,’ I said, ‘I’ll take it on one condition and that is I have a job in production of some sort in a couple of years.’

And they were as good as their word. I did that job for about two and a half years then applied for and got a job as a studio floor manager. At that stage I wanted to be a director rather than a presenter.

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