Cambridge-based TV producer/director Ed Booth: ‘People like Peter Snow and Jeremy Clarkson really go that extra mile’
From helping James May to get his break in television, to exploring science with Jeremy Clarkson and going back in time with Vic Reeves, Cambridge-based TV producer/director Ed Booth has certainly had an interesting career.
His impressive CV includes well-known television programmes such as the science vehicle Bang Goes the Theory – “the BBC’s kind of revamp of Tomorrow’s World” – and lesser-known series such as StageStruck, for Sky Arts.
“It was a national competition for amateur dramatics groups,” says Ed of the latter, “so the idea was that we had to basically whittle down to a shortlist of 20 groups who go through a series of acting challenges.
“Four groups a week – two would go through to the next round, two would be knocked out – and ultimately the winners were allowed to put their own play on in the West End, admittedly for one night only, but it was good fun!
“It was won by a very small group of farmers from Galloway in South West Scotland, and they put on Molière’s The Hypochondriac to an audience of about 1,500, I think.”
Unfortunately, a programme on which Ed has recently been working, called Gold Rush: White Water, was cancelled a few weeks ago.
“It was following a group of miners who dive for alluvial gold, that’s gold that’s washed down creeks in Alaska, so it’s diving in extremely white water, in extreme cold,” he explains.
“And the mining camp is remote; it’s about a 20-minute helicopter ride from the nearest road, and about another 30 miles into town – so about as remote as you can get.
“But sadly, we all thought we were going into series nine and it suddenly got cancelled.
“It cost too much, but that’s the way of television these days, unfortunately, and I think unemployment is lurking at around 70 per cent at the moment…”
On how he first got into making TV programmes, Ed, who also has a real passion for science, says: “I was at university, I was studying international relations, I think I wanted to be a diplomat.
“I was at the University of Sussex, it had a kind of apartheid system – the arts were on one side of the campus, the sciences on the other – and there was a woman who I used to see wandering around campus, who was a chemist, I believe.
“I really fancied her and the only intelligence I could get was she was a member of the video makers society, so I thought I’d join it.
“I never met her there but, without knowing it, she gave me a career. I often wonder who she was…
“But more seriously, after university I went and did a year at art school, studying filmmaking, and then through a series of odd breaks started producing pop promos.
“I worked with Fish, the singer of Marillion. He had his own record label in Scotland; it was freelance but it was a kind of in-house promo-making thing with him.
“And that just led from one thing to another. I gradually made my way across into broadcast and I’ve been doing that ever since, until it all dried up last year.”
Ed, who was born in London and grew up in Scotland, notes: “It’s a very hard thing to say exactly what a series producer does… I’m like the centre of a web on a production, I suppose.
“To give you a rough idea, if it’s a standard Channel 4 or BBC or whatever series that I’m working on, I usually come in when it’s been commissioned.
“So I get given an A4 sheet of promises that they’ve made to the channel. It usually starts with ‘groundbreaking’… and it’s for me to turn that A4 sheet of words and promises into something that’s actually a programme at the end.
“And of course the great problem is that the budget is never quite enough to do what the piece of paper says it’s going to do!”
Ed subsequently hires most of the production team – “everybody in TV, particularly on the production side, is freelance” – to make the programme and says that the first week is normally spent “getting the team in place”.
He then oversees the project right the way through to completion. “Sometimes I direct one or two episodes myself, or cut episodes in the edit suite,” he observes.
Ed, who moved to Cambridge around 31 years ago to be with his then-girlfriend, who is now his wife, reveals that he has worked with a “huge range” of presenters.
“On Bang Goes the Theory, it was Liz Bonnin, Dallas Campbell, and Jem Stansfield,” he says, “and then I did a series called Speed with Jeremy Clarkson… Peter Snow I’ve worked with a lot – I’ve done about four series with him.
“I did a lovely series with Vic Reeves, Rogues Gallery, which I’m still very proud of actually.
“Chris Tarrant, I’ve worked with him on great railway history series. So quite a few A-listers.”
Ed says that out of all of the presenters he’s worked with, “Jeremy Clarkson was the one I enjoyed working with the best – because he really cares about making good television”.
He adds: “We had a great time together – screamed and shouted at each other a lot, but more like two brothers who get on well, rather than enemies. I really liked working with Jeremy.”
Speaking of Jeremy Clarkson, Ed reveals how he gave James May his first job in television: “Channel 4 did a series called Driven, which was their version of Top Gear.
“And James, I knew him and thought he’d be great. He was a print journalist in those days, and Channel 4 were never sure about him…
“We did four screen tests with James and after the fourth screen test, I phoned him up and said, ‘Could you do another one?’
“He just told me to go away. I said, ‘You do it, I’m sure you’ll get the job’ and very reluctantly he did it and he got the job.
“And then he was dropped after the first series because they thought he was too like Jeremy Clarkson. Anyway, that’s another tale…”
Ed states: “There’s two sorts of presenters; there are some presenters who are like puppets – I write the scripts for them, they stand up and they say the words and that’s it.
“They’re not interested in what they’re doing really, it’s all about just being on telly.
“And then there are people like Peter Snow, Jeremy Clarkson, Robbie Coltrane, Vic Reeves, and Liz Bonnin who will give it their all and will really go that extra mile.”
Away from TV, Ed works as a punt tour guide in Cambridge and is also studying to be a city Green Badge Guide.
“The lovely thing about being a tour guide is it’s actually not as different from the day job – apart from the pay – as you’d expect,” he notes, “because basically I’m telling a story to an audience.
“That’s all I am – I’m a storyteller.”
To see what other programmes Ed has worked on, visit his IMDb page.
