Aneesah Iqbal, 27, had spent a decade applying for jobs in the TV industry, but struggled to get her big break being based outside the capital.
She said: “We don’t get many TV opportunities in Birmingham so I’ve never really had the chance previously. But this show has finally been my first foot in the door.”
She is one of 26 local trainees working on Joe Lycett’s new Channel 4 Friday night chatshow, Late Night Lycett, recorded live in his home city of Birmingham every week. The show had initially planned to take on four trainees, but after receiving more than 1,000 applications, the scheme was extended.
Spence Hackett, 25, another trainee, said: “The fact so many people applied for it shows there are people out there who want to work in TV and want to do it in Birmingham, and I’m sure it would be the case in lots of other parts of the country. We don’t all want to go to London to do it, we want to make things happen where we are.”
The show is crammed full of references to the city where it is made. It is also filmed in front of a local crowd in Digbeth every week, and Lycett regularly invites Brummie stars (Alison Hammond, David Harewood, his aunties) to appear, asks a celebrity to run his local corner shop, and showcases the work of local artists in the set and props.
Lycett said: “I don’t think it’s possible to do this show in London. I love the capital but it has so much TV that audiences and productions can get desensitised to the excitement of it. Any given night you could probably go to a dozen or so TV records in London.”
Emily Hudd, the managing director of Rumpus Media, the production company behind Late Night Lycett, said the chatshow had “always been Joe’s dream” and it would have been a “dealbreaker” if it had not been made in Birmingham.
She said: “Shows should have a regional identity. Not everyone in the country is the same. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to focus on local details, and we can only do that if people working on the shows are from the place.
“It had to be from Birmingham, but more than just geographically. It had to capture the essence of Birmingham.”
Lycett said it was an “expensive addition to do an outside broadcast not in London”, but Channel 4 was ultimately happy it had stuck to its guns on the location. “I’d like to see more stuff made in Birmingham and the creativity and talent championed here,” he said. “But I don’t think we’d like it to become a city of media tossers.”
Iqbal said “nothing has made her feel prouder to be a Brummie” than being chosen to be part of the show. “Because Birmingham doesn’t often get opportunities like this. And I wish we had more of it. Because there’s so many talented people from so many different cultures here,” she said.
Many of the trainees hope Late Night Lycett is just the start of a budding TV industry in the city, after the news that construction has begun on a multimillion-pound TV and film studio in Digbeth, which will be the new home of MasterChef, Silent Witness and Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders movie.
For Lycett, creating the show in Birmingham has been part of a much more personal goal. “When I was a teenager I got a small pot of funding to make a film and used a bunch of my mates and local people to put it together.
“That tiny opportunity was actually massive for me, to see how stuff works, to experiment and to work to a deadline,” he said.
“It made me believe it is possible to make good things in this city, with the people of this city, which can be popular outside the city. It’s been truly beautiful to see this show come together in the way it has. I can die happy.”
