Interview

The following is an extract taken from an interview with Andy Crane for the Off The Telly website. It has been reproduced here with the kind permission of the interviewer Graham Kibble-White. The full (unabridged) transcript can be read on the Off The Telly website [external link].

Thanks go to Andy Crane and Matthew Rudd.

How did Bad Influence! come about?

Andy: I was approached by Patrick Titley because he thought I was the sort of bloke who might be interested in that sort of thing [computers] - and he was right. He'd seen me do my items on the telly and he thought I was interesting and capable, and asked if I would like to come and do a programme about computer-games. I was aware that we were riding the crest of the wave with the show at that time. It was just when - what was it? - the Megadrive and the SNES, were absolutely huge. Bad Influence! was the number one Children's ITV show for at least three series. Every time we were on it was number one that week. It wouldn't be now. There are so many computer game shows everywhere, but ours was the first of its kind.

So you were interested enough in computers ...

I was interested enough. I was not a massive game-player, and never really made a pretence of that. I didn't claim to be an expert or an enthusiast. I was employed as a presenter so I was given the information and communicated it. Violet Berlin was hugely into her games, and still is. She was the one who was the expert.

We also did computer-based items. I remember going to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and interviewing the guy who built the Pepsi Max roller coaster. It was all operated by computer, so we showed how they make it work. Really, I was just doing TV items in the same way I had on Motormouth.

That ended round about 1996, which is also when What's Up Doc? stopped.

What's Up Doc? had a final series when it was moved to Scotland, but it wasn't the same show at all. All the characters disappeared, the whole thing changed.

So you went up to Glasgow?

Yeah, the programme went up to Glasgow for its demise. I didn't mind flying up there at the weekend. It was a nice hotel, a lovely studio complex, but the show wasn't the same. It was me, Pat Sharp, Jenny Powell, and none of the characters. It became a very standard Saturday morning magazine programme.

What was your next move after that?

That's a very good question. I think I did a series of live Sunday morning religious programmes with Gloria Hunniford, which included an outside broadcast from the VE Day celebrations, or VJ Day - God knows. I'm not very good on my history. I remember being in Hyde Park with a load of people doing a live OB on a Sunday morning. I think I then went back to Maidstone to work for Nigel again, who by that point was running something called the Family Channel. That then metamorphosed into Challenge TV, which I launched for him. I think it was ahead of its time. We were playing games on the phone, interacting, and offering up prizes. It was doing all right, but not with phenomenally huge audiences because the penetration for satellite and cable wasn't what it is now. Yeah, that was live telly, three hours a night, 5pm till 8pm, or something.

You did a game show too.

I did a game show for Challenge, yeah, called Say the Word, which I enjoyed. I was doing lots of other pieces too. I got back into radio and then I was invited by Central television to be a consultant and oversee their pitch for continuity links for CITV, because the channel had put it out to tender. So I wore a suit for a while, wrote pitch documents and coordinated events to woo Nigel and make him give the links back to Central.

How did you do?

We got it.

You did a stint on Shop! too.

I did. That wasn't very long, because they went and closed the bloody channel. I enjoyed that as well. It was another stint of live television where I had to use all the skills I'd gained on Saturday morning. I wasn't embarrassed by it. It was a channel that was owned by Granada and run by Granada Facilities. It was proper high quality TV, and all the items on it were brand names. I was selling Dyson vacuum cleaners and Sony tellies. It wasn't fantastic, but I wasn't flogging "wonder knives" from a warehouse in Milton Keynes.

After that finished I was back on the radio. I'd been doing the Century FM breakfast show and the Jazz FM breakfast show .. and what happened after that? Do we get to Channel M at that point? I can't remember.

Don't you read the news on Channel M?

I do at the moment, yes. I'm now a newsreader. I've completely grown-up and I now wear a suit every day at 5pm. I read the bloody news!

Do you prefer TV or radio, because a lot of the stuff you do nowadays is radio?

I still love the immediacy of the radio. The best telly I've done, in terms of its immediacy and spontaneity was the Broom Cupboard. It was the nearest thing to being on the radio you'll find on TV. That was why I liked it, because it was just you and the camera, live. Radio is like that. With telly, you've got to book a crew, get a filming permit, go out, spend a day shooting, get 15 different angles, get it lit, then bring it back, edit it and dub it. By the time it's gone out, the idea is flat. It does take a long time, sometimes.

It's plain your association with children's TV isn't something you want to live down.

Live down? God, I've been trading on it for the past 15 years. I am, for a generation, what Noel Edmonds was to me. I'm hugely proud of that. I'm privileged to have been such an integral part of the childhood of a good part of the nation. Children's telly is something you watch, and you feel it's yours and it's a club. What's adult telly? Everyone watches it. There's nothing gang-y or cliquey about it. If you were watching me, it was also John Leslie, Caron Keating (God bless her), Yvette Fielding and Mark Curry on Blue Peter, and Phillip on Saturday mornings. For a generation, that's about three years of their life mapped out.

Is there anything you're still itching to do now in your career?

I'd like to be the voice of an animated character. It's the one thing I've never done. I'd like to be in a cartoon. But, that's just because I quite fancy the idea.