Lesley Riddoch: Just a question of time for Scotland

Published on Sunday 20 February 2011 19:15

David Dimbleby may not fancy Glasgow but the nation is quite capable of hosting its own show

SHOULD David Dimbleby be made to come to Glasgow? It's a delicious prospect - the grumpy old patriarch forced to join the Greggs queue instead of his well-heeled colleagues in the cream of London's eateries.

Of course, that's not how the 72-year-old presenter has explained his point-blank refusal to follow the Question Time production team north - part of a laudable BBC plan to shift 50 per cent of TV production out of London by 2016.

Being forced to work from Glasgow, he says, would be like making a Scot cover Holyrood from London. Unfortunately the BBC's remedy - a weekly air trip by a Glasgow-based producer to brief Dimbleby in London - hardly qualifies for carbon-footprint of the year award. Thus - thunders the Economist - the relocation plan should be scrapped.

Strangely, no-one in London seems to think Skype, conference calls, video or virtual conferencing (being pioneered in Dundee) might form part of the solution.

In these straitened, climate-change-challenged times, responsible employers should encourage staff to use technology, not air miles, for important conversations. The preference for expensive, time-wasting, face-to-face meetings speaks volumes about Auntie's enduring conservatism and centralising tendencies.

Mr Dimbleby will not come to Glasgow so the mountain will go to Mohammed. Frankly, though, what difference does it make?

Without a rethink of programme content, it hardly matters where it's produced - there's so little concession to "local" opinion, issues, arguments or sensitivities.

In the land of Question Time, a "locality" is just a differently coloured backdrop, not a unique component of Britain's diverse mix. There's no attempt to explore. No mission to explain.

If Question Time came from Scotland this week it would doubtless overlook the latest dramatic opinion poll results, ignore Wendy Alexander's unexpected resignation and steer clear of "complicated" issues like the Scottish budget, the call to scrap the Crown Estate Commission in Scotland or to reform Ofgem pricing policy so Scotland's renewable industry can join the grid without paying an arm and a leg.

If Question Time is simply designed to be a barometer of Westminster policy and opinion it might as well stay in London - though of course Scotland will be grateful for the production jobs.

After all, Scots - including myself - have long proved willing to move south for a career with Britain's "national" broadcasting company. Eddie Mair, Jim Naughtie, Sheena MacDonald, Kirsty Wark, Kirsty Young - the broadcasting brain-drain has at least supplied network programmes with talented Scots.But dare we ask why they left? Could it have anything to do with a lack of ambition amongst Scottish broadcasters ? Is that why BBC Scotland does not produce a Question Time programme of its own?

It's a question I asked many times during my 20-odd years at Queen Margaret Drive to be told repeatedly that BBC Scotland could not afford more current affairs programming because that would cause a drop in audience share against the network average and that would in turn reduce BBC Scotland funding.

It never made much sense as an argument - if it was ever the real reason - and now it's downright anti-democratic. Scotland has embarked on a new chapter in its story without feeling sufficiently muscular to haul its great and good before the public every week to face a mixture of witty banter and ritual grilling. Why not?

If we really think experienced TV presenters like Glen Campbell, Sally Magnusson or Iain MacWhirter aren't up to the job, why have they all been employed on London-based network programmes? If we haven't enough important issues or articulate panellists amongst Scottish politicians, writers, observers, activists and academics, then why have we bothered to fight for a Scottish Parliament in the first place?

And there's no need to be confined to Holyrood. Who wouldn't wait up for a clash of personalities like George Galloway v Alistair Campbell, Charlie Kennedy v Michael Gove or Helen Liddell v Margo MacDonald? What does JK Rowling make of language degree course closures, how does Armando rate Obama, will the poet laureate pen a poem about the Scottish elections (since she won't be busy with royal weddings) and what did Annie Lennox and her daughter make of Malawi?

Scotland is also endowed with an articulate awkward squad of activists like land reform campaigner Andy Wightman, Glasgow housing activist Phil Welsh, sustainable-living guru Mike Small, anti-nuclear campaigner Isobel Lindsay and Edinburgh community activist Carol Munro, to name but a very few, - all articulate people who could tear vast strips off badly briefed politicians given half the chance. It's a spectacle I suspect we will never witness.

BBC Scotland controller Ken MacQuarrie said once that Scots experience Scottishness in a myriad of ways - not just through politics, news and current affairs.

He is, of course, right. The episode of Still Game where a neighbour transforms the bleak tower blocks for a few blissful days with supplies of free electricity (until he short-circuits the whole of Glasgow) is a more powerful indictment of fuel poverty than any documentary. Gary Tank Commander's fabulous Dalgety Bay accent has single handedly redressed the BBC's own west coast comedy bias.

But since 1999 Scottish viewers haven't just been trying to explore Scottishness. They've been trying to hold governments in London and Holyrood to account as well.Trying to analyse current government policy through the prism of an award-winning comedy - or even the excellent Scotland's History - is simply impossible. We need a weekly focus like Question Time.

I have no idea why that's impossible. Before devolution Scotland supposedly had no politics worthy of the name. And yet, current affairs production talent and confidence was enormous - including award-winning producers like the former presiding officer George Reid. Now those capable, questioning voices are unheard and apparently unwanted - right across the BBC network.

Do Scottish viewers want a Scottish TV Question Time? Do the makers of the UK version have a monopoly on the concept? Perhaps the forthright Mr Dimbleby could let us know.