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up. I worked at least sixty hours a week and I loved every minute – I was young enough not to suffer physically. I couldn’t do it now! Grange Hill was a first rate show, and many of the creative staff went on to become famous names, even Oscar winners. I think they’d all agree that we learned our craft there, honing our skills on the strop of the relentless weekly schedule… our young audience demanded that we reflect their lives truthfully, and we spared no effort to achieve that.
    Around the same time Maggie, whom I was soon to meet and befriend, was growing weary of touring feminist socialist plays and had begun to see the appeal of a mortgage and a home to call her own.
    Maggie didn’t see television as a sell-out, as some of her comrades insisted. She saw it as an opportunity to reach a much wider audience. A six-month tour with a successful new play was likely to attract a total audience of six thousand people at the most, whereas a single episode of EastEnders could reach up to twenty million.
    She approached her career change with typical thoroughness, studying as much television drama as she could whilst working most evenings (few people possessed a video recorder then) and keeping a scrapbook of cuttings from the Radio Times in order to learn who were the producers and directors she most admired. She was looking for a guru, someone she could admire unreservedly. She would be happy to take a lowly post at the BBC provided she had access to a brilliant producer who would teach her how to make world-shattering, award-winning contemporary drama. Anything less wasn’t worth bothering with. She was confident that she had the talent to succeed, she was willing to give her all in the cause of art, and knew she could climb to the top of the meritocracy.
    She had narrowed her list of potential gurus down to two, but had yet to meet either of them. They were Basil Richardson and Stewart Walker, both of whom had been at the BBC for years, and who had between them produced nearly all Maggie’s favourite dramas: work which had caught the spirit of the age, given voice to the underdog, and pushed back the boundaries of television. She felt they saw the world from her own point of view, despite being men at least twenty years older than her, because she recognised in their work her own sense of outrage against exploitation and oppression.
    She wrote to each man asking if they needed a script editor or reader, but received politely negative responses. Undaunted, she continued to assault the drama department until she was eventually offered a three-month contract as a trainee script editor. She would have to read unsolicited scripts every day, but there was the potential to work her way up to producing. It wasn’t exactly the start she had hoped for, but it was a foot in the door, and she intended to make the most of it.
    As her letter of employment had given a starting date but not a time, she had thought it wise to arrive at Television Centre at nine o’clock. Finding nothing but locked doors on the fifth floor, she had wandered aimlessly round the circular corridor, reading the names on the doors and the deeply uninteresting health and safety notice boards. At nine thirty she found the Head of Drama’s outer office open and a stern but maternal-looking middle-aged woman sitting behind a pile of the day’s papers, looking through a huge appointments diary.
    “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Fenella Proctor-Ball. I’m the new trainee.”
    “Isn’t she in her office? Better come in and sit down then. She’s usually here about ten o’clock. I’m Vera, Peter’s PA. The tea bar will open soon if you want to get a coffee. I’ll keep trying Fenella’s office for you.”
    “Thanks very much.”
    Maggie sat on a saggy, grubby sofa by a coffee table laden with broadcasting periodicals for most of the morning, listening to the distant battering of pneumatic tools. She tried not to feel annoyed as she