Have I Got News For You became news itself last week after former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson reversed out of hosting an episode of the long-running comedy quiz show. Although he had signed the contract a while ago, when it came to it he felt the time was “not right” to appear, according to HIGNFY’s executive producer Richard Wilson.
“He just decided that the time’s not right. People pull out of the show quite frequently. We do get people who are booked but can’t do it. He’s pulled out in the past because of filming commitments but he just doesn’t feel the time’s right to do it.”
After North Yorkshire police confirmed last Tuesday that they were not going to pursue any action against Clarkson over the fracas with producer Oisin Tymon that led to the BBC not renewing the Top Gear host’s contract for 48 hours it looked as though he was going to do Have I Got News For You.
“I think there was a big flurry of press about him doing it because the billings went out to listings. I don’t know if there was an official announcement saying he was doing it,” explains Wilson. “But we just have to move on. We’ll have him back when he’s ready.”
Clarkson has appeared on the show before and as Wilson says, “I really like him. He’s a great booking…he comes from a different angle.”
The team had not yet thought about how they would handle references to Oisin Tymon’s injuries and Clarkson’s subsequent exit from Top Gear. “It’s difficult to surprise a host with an Odd One Out or anything like that as they know what’s coming from the script,” says Wilson, “but Paul [Merton] and Ian [Hislop] would have dealt with the ‘fracas’ in their own way.”
If Clarkson had taken part on 24 April, “the BBC were absolutely fine about it. There was a very tough line for them to tread [but] we made it clear to them we’d booked him before it all kicked off, it wasn’t like us sticking two fingers up.” They could see that just allowing it to happen is a sign of strength. Whenever the BBC has a story that puts itself in the news, like when Peter Fincham got unfairly kicked out of the BBC we did a lot about it. The BBC were aware enough to know they have to let it happen.”
He says that Hat Trick co-founder Jimmy Mulville often says about HIGNFY and the BBC, “the show should bite the hand that feeds it and they should allow it to do that because it’s a sign of strength, not weakness”. There is no replacement for Clarkson yet but the unflappable Wilson, who knows about replacing hosts having been on the show when Angus Deayton departed in 2002, says: “These things happen. We’ll just have a think about it. It might give us the opportunity to get someone topical in. We’ve got to try and concentrate on the shows we’re putting out.”
Those began last Friday with Daniel Radcliffe as host. This series is number 49 and the penultimate one before HIGNFY turns 25 in the autumn.
During that time, the format has changed little, although the set has had three new carpets and this series’ serious investment comes in the form of some new underlay. The quiz makes a joke of not changing with the times. “With the TV show, as Paul says, it’s like someone’s filming radio, everything’s made of cardboard – the comic persona of the show is that we’ve not got much truck with digital media. Paul and Ian are certainly not remotely bothered about Twitter.”
Though something of a comedy institution it is still subversive. Wilson explains that when putting together presenters’ scripts the writers try to stay true to the spirit of its original producer, the late Harry Thompson, “and Angus to a certain extent … what you’re trying to maintain is … the principle of what would people not like us to do”.
Wilson began producing HIGNFY in 1996 when it had been going five years, so he “was a bit hesitant, I thought it can’t last much longer”. But it has endured and been a springboard for comedians and writers such as John O’Farrell. A lot of people have remained on it as “it’s a great show to work on, the output is quality – not to be conceited about it – so people don’t want to move on.”
HIGNFY is doing an election day special, recorded the following morning but there are no plans for anything to celebrate its 25th anniversary. “It’s not in the show’s nature to blow its own trumpet really,” says Wilson, much like himself.
He says he feels bringing back Deyton is “what everyone would expect”, adding: “It’s not for us to say ‘aren’t we great’ so not planning to do anything.”
Jeremy Paxman remains the guest host Wilson would most like to land but he continues to elude the team. “Paxman had sort of told us he would do it when he’d given up Newsnight, and then we asked him again when he left but he said he’d changed his mind or direction or something. [Now he is presenting] Channel 4’s election show, I think we’re going to see him go in a new direction. He would’ve been brilliant. He’s the person we’d like to have.”
Others who have been asked but turned the host chair down (politicians “are so wary these days” says Wilson) include Rebekah Brooks and David Miliband. William Shatner’s episode is Wilson’s favourite: “I’d rather not say what the worst was, I’d have to point my finger at a person and I don’t want to do it!”
One of the oddest was when Jimmy Savile appeared: “It’s very hard to talk about it now because everyone thinks you should have known - nobody knew but it was odd. In hospitality afterwards no one was talking to him, he was sat in a chair on his own, it was quite weird.”
Alexander Armstrong has guest hosted the show the most times, around 22, but Wilson says members of the public have also applied, including one who sent in a giant four foot blown up photo of themselves.
“It’s quite a difficult job. There’s quite a lot of stationery involved, handling stationery is quite a large part of the job. It’s a mixture of newsreader and Question Time,” Wilson explains.
Last year there was a lot of debate about diversity, and in particular the gender and ethnicity of the guests on panel shows. Wilson thinks things have moved on for women but not for other groups, particularly “the great swaths of working class and state-educated people that aren’t represented on the air or in the industry”.
He says Hat Trick – where he is head of comedy entertainment – tries to help bring in people “not from the predictable backgrounds”, explaining that one runner worked at the weekends in a bakery in their hometown of Stoke in order to help pay for their accommodation during the week on the outskirts of London.
“If you’re working in television and you don’t know someone who lives in London it’s impossible. That’s a problem and the industry needs to address that.”
He moved from advertising to comedy over 20 years ago after answering an advert in the Guardian for trainee radio producers: “I loved the brainy part of advertising but as an ‘account man’, the higher up you go, the more time you have to spend with clients, some of whom you really don’t like. I wasn’t very good at hiding this so I took the chance on getting into radio comedy. I got lucky.”
His credits include Room 101 and the Bafta award-winning BBC3 show The Revolution Will Be Televised. Will there be more with BBC3 set to become online-only? “They [Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein] are working on something else with us at Hat Trick,” Wilson says. “They’ve been asked as individuals to do all sorts of different things. We’ll see a lot of them in the future.”
Originally from Yorkshire, now living in south London, Wilson does not have much spare time but outside television is the author of three books, the “Arsed trilogy” he calls them. The humorous takes on some of the absurdities of modern life such as How Not to Talk Like An Arse have sold well. He is contemplating another, an antidote to the Fear of Missing Out called The Joy Of Missing Out - though he points out the business model for publishing has changed due to Kindles so it’s more difficult to make money.
Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival regulars will recognise Wilson as one of the original line-up of ITV director of television Fincham’s band The Overnights. They won the TV’s Got Talent session in 2009 but he got dropped after one gig. “Tim Hincks used the opportunity to have close contact with Peter Fincham by co-opting him into the Endemol band who already had a drummer so I got dropped.”
He reminds Fincham whenever he sees him but jokes that “like quite a lot of sad middle-aged men there’s a band I still play in occasionally that’s been going 33 years, we play once a year. We used to play weddings, now it’s fiftieths and it’ll probably be funerals in about 10 years!”
Curriculum vitae
Age 53
Education: St Wilfrid’s Catholic Comprehensive, Featherstone, West Yorks, Exeter College, Oxford
Career 1984 account manager, Publicis Advertising Agency, Yellowhammer Advertising Agency 1991 producer, BBC Radio Comedy 1996 freelance TV producer, HIGNFY, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Room 101 2006 head of comedy entertainment, Hat Trick Productions
