Stephen ready for teatime challenge

Published on Thursday 24 January 2008 09:54

The former Evening News columnist is set to take on Richard and Judy with live STV show

COOL, calm and unflappable – even when a circus contortionist is revealing his bare backside to a nation of breakfast television viewers while squeezing, bizarrely, though the frame of a tennis racket – Stephen Jardine is rather pleased to be busy reporting on his latest venture.

It's a story that has been eight years in the making, or 20 years if you take into account his first foray into broadcasting.

And it's also one that the Edinburgh-based face of Scottish Television's latest current affairs magazine show hopes will run and run, despite opposition from the most formidable TV couple around.

"It kind of feels like this is the show I came back here to do," he says, referring to next Monday's launch episode of The Five Thirty Show, an easy-going sideways look at Scottish news, real life, entertainment and sport, that will go head to head with that national institution of broadcasting, The Richard and Judy Show.

"It's live, it's what I specialise in," he says.

"Reading from an autocue is fine, but when you're live and anything can happen – and it often does – well, it's what I enjoy."

Such as that rather risque episode from his days as GMTV's roving Scottish correspondent, when he hit on the idea of illustrating the marvels of the Edinburgh Festival with a little support from one of the strangest acts in town, pictured below right.

"The idea was to showcase the best bits of the Festival.

"Jim Rose and his circus was in town and it seemed a good idea at the time to get this guy, some kind of incredible rubber man who could do amazing things with his body, to finish off the piece by squeezing his whole body through a tennis racket.

"He was busy dislocating his shoulders and I could hear people back in the studio groaning yet it was fascinating. He got through most, until the racket got to the top of his cycle shorts.

"It was ten past eight in the morning, the nation is watching this guy losing his cycle shorts with only Jim Rose's top hat strategically placed to spare everyone's blushes. I learned that day never work with contortionists or rubber men ever again."

It's flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants presenting – in that case, literally – but it's the kind of broadcasting job he revels in, and from next week it will be the Dumfries-born newsman's bread and butter.

It will mean a daily commute between his sprawling Victorian villa in Trinity, where he lives with wife Sheila, a jewellery designer and their 11-year-old son, Jack, and Queen Street station.

So, once again, First ScotRail will be at the mercy of their chief critic's daily commuting crises, many episodes of which found their way into a string of his Evening News columns.

Yet he's clearly looking forward to swapping the newsbeat for a comfy sofa and a more laid back format, on the surface at least.

It's exactly the kind of role that enticed him to quit the glamour of GMTV in favour of regional television news, some eight years ago.

"I came back to STV in 2000 specifically to present a current affairs magazine like this but it didn't happen," he explains. "Instead, ITV changed the schedules and I ended up doing Room at the Top, an afternoon magazine show, for a year, and then heading off to do news after that.

Along with co-presenter Debi Edward, he'll be up against the husband and wife team of Richard and Judy on Channel 4, yet it's the deeper rivalries between independent television and its old foe, the BBC, that is more likely to raise his hackles.

"It's not a level playing field out there," he argues. "The BBC is funded by licence fee payers and everyone else is trying to make a commercial success without that comfort. I believe we get very good value for money from our licence fee but it's inevitable in years to come that the issue of licence fees will be looked at again.

"The thing is though," he says with a grin, "Scottish Television beats the BBC consistently in terms of ratings and stories."

Now 44, he's come a long way since he used to visit his father's newspaper offices in Dumfries, savouring the sights, noise and smells of the news industry and finding himself hooked.

"My father was general manager at the Dumfries and Galloway Standard – and that's what got me interested in journalism," he says. "I went to his office with him in the days when they were just starting to phase out hot metal. I've strong memories of the print room, watching the paper being put together, the smell of the ink and the heat of the hot metal.

"It all made a very big impression on me."

He chose to ignore the advice of a well-intentioned careers officer who suggested he avoid journalism because there was no money in it and consider accountancy instead, opting to notch up a degree in English and History at Edinburgh University, and following it up with a postgraduate journalism diploma at Cardiff.

The course involved trips to London to see some of the nation's biggest news operators in full swing.

Faced with choosing between the glamorous world of the BBC and ITN's TV news operations and the union-bashing chaos unfolding at Rupert Murdoch's Wapping plant, he decided broadcasting might just be a safer bet.

He first cut his teeth at Radio Tay, then Scottish Television, joining the Cowcaddens based operation exactly 20 years ago.

He decamped south to GMTV in 1993, landing on the breakfast sofa just one month after arriving in London, and following up with a two-year stint in Paris as European correspondent.

The nature of the job, the glamorous guests and the relentless search for an exclusive meant it was never dull: from the time he was chased by an angry local with a pick axe handle who took exception to the noise his crew were making outside Balmoral Castle at 5.30am, to what has been dubbed one of the shortest interviews in history, when he h told diva Diana Ross that she was "looking good for a woman her age". Cut!

These days, he's firmly based in Scotland, and is acutely aware of the Edinburgh/east coast view of the Glasgow-based broadcasters.

"As someone who lives in Edinburgh, I'm very aware of the perception that STV is Glasgow TV. It's something that we've all been working for hard to change. Certainly, we'll be making sure that we'll be out of Glasgow, presenting from Edinburgh, Aberdeen – right across Scotland.

"And, of course," he adds with glee, "it's all live."

&#149 The Five Thirty Show is on weeknights, STV at 5.30pm

AS SEEN ON SCREEN

STEPHEN JARDINE'S face is familiar to a generation of television viewers – from his early days on the STV news, to the famous GMTV breakfast sofa.

Up until the end of the year he presented Scotland Today's East news opt-out, a five – minutes local news section within the main news programme. But his broadcasting experiences cover everything from breakfast television and breaking news, to Sunday morning political programmes, to motoring shows such as Drivetime for STV.

He presented his own show on Talk 107 until last February and was an Evening News columnist for four years, producing more than 150 often controversial columns.