John Pidgeon says the station was too willing to say ‘no’ to new ideas, turning down the Mighty Boosh, Paul Merton, Tommy Tiernan and Flight of the Conchords – as well as being resistant to Little Britain, Chris Addison and Dave Gorman.
Writing in the Guardian, Pidgeon says he did manage to bring great comedy to radio in the six years he was in the job – but despite the corporation’s bureaucracy, not encouraged by it.
Writing in the Guardian, he said that whenever he pitched new talent, ‘the default response [was] a feebly justified negative, and there was hardly a series I cared about that I didn't have to bat for’.
He pitched the Boosh to the station after seeing their show at the 1999 Fringe, when he was a Perrier judge, but was told they ‘are a million miles from Radio 4’.
Instead he concocted a regional talent ‘initiative’, then diverted most of the budget to BBC London so that they could make the show. Radio 4 later picked up the series as a repeat.
He added that the network ‘turned its nose up’ at Little Britain (but was convinced after Pidgeon’s department paid for a pilot) and cancelled Ross Noble Goes Global after two series, because a third would have been ‘more of the same’ – ‘a shortcoming that has kept Just A Minute on air for more than 40 years,’ Pidgeon notes.
He said Radio 4 ‘resisted’ Chris Addison's The Ape That Got Lucky, and that station controller Mark Damazer missed the point of Dave Gorman’s Genius: ‘Unconvinced by the sound of an audience rolling in the aisles, the Spurs supporter earnestly declared football featuring three teams on a triangular pitch to be unworkable,’ he wrote.
Pidgeon stepped down from his BBC job in 2005 to return to programme making.
