We had more jazz and comedy playing in the house, things like The Goon Show, Billy Connolly, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen and Miles Davis. That got me hooked on comedy writing and combined with a passion for music it landed me a job as a BBC studio manager when I was 18.When you were 15, what was the family newspaper and did you read it?A fine Wolverhampton-based publication called The Express and Star featured heavily, principally for the Aston Villa coverage.What were your favourite TV and radio programmes?Must-see were The Two Ronnies, The Goodies, Morecambe and Wise and Rising Damp The TV was strictly rationed. What inspired you to start a career in the media? I was given a Goon Show script book aged 12 - the proper old-fashioned sort that reprinted the original scripts with all the cast's notes and scribbles. He is married to the writer Imogen Edwards-Jones, and describes his latest show, 'Funland', as "the bastard son of 'The League of Gentlemen' and 'EastEnders' after a really heavy night on the town with 'Twin Peaks'". Aged 40, he's worked with Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton and Steve Coogan, and made the Bafta award-winning 'The Royle Family'. Despite growing up in a household where television was known as the "idiot box", Kenton Allen is now the BBC's creative head of talent and head of Comedy North. In practical terms there was nothing that Harry could do that could make me a brilliant picture cropper, but what he did teach me was the importance of getting the best out of creative people.Peter Stothard is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
He was a controversial figure, but he was inspirational in making you realise you had to keep an eye on what the world was becoming, not just what it had been.I couldn't claim to be an editor in the Harry Evans mould. But reliable? "This goes some way to explain the enduring popularity of Michael Owen and Alan Shearer," says Clifford Bloxham of sports marketing agency Octagon. "And why the jury is still out on Rooney."Thierry Henry, RenaultThe stylish Renault ads were made by an Arsenal-supporting creative team that put his appeal down to his "contemporary Frenchness and a kind of detached self-confidence" Henry's commercial appeal owes much to clever management. Newspapers were immensely hide-bound and traditional and they always thought the world was like it was yesterday.When I arrived he was already a man of great myth and legend because The Sunday Times had exposed Kim Philby and fought the battles over Thalidomide. One of his great arts was seeming to be in two places at once and he was famously impossible to be close to for any length of time.I only had a very short period as a writer and then Harry made me one of the group of people who he was bringing in to try to change The Times and I learnt a lot both from what went right and what went wrong.
I was 28 at the time and I hadn't had the provincial newspaper experience. I was the political correspondent in business news, which hadn't really existed before, and I was writing about the very radical changes that Thatcher was planning for the economy, industry and the civil service Harry was no Thatcherite but he was a great journalist. He had a love of the fresh and the new and he had a fantastic sense that journalism had to keep up with the times. It seems obvious now that what an editor should do is be sensitive to changes in government and society At that time that wasn't always the case. Look for Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff to be vying for this type of ad work soon..
