IT'LL BE ALL WHITE ON THE NIGHT...

Between The Lines On TV

Not long before his death earlier this year, veteran broadcaster John
Walters recalled the 'glory days' of Radio 1's Seventies roadshows around
Britain. 'They'd all be up until three at the hotel bar, and then they'd be
letting sheep into each other's rooms and doing apple-pie beds.'

For BBC executives this weekend it must all sound touchingly uncomplicated
in comparison with the now widely publicised private life of Angus Deayton.
The cocaine-using Have I Got News For You presenter seems set for relative
penury after seeing his UKP 1 million-a-year contract first halved and now
suspended.

In the same week GMTV finally sacked John Leslie, the presenter accused in
the press of the date rape of fellow celebrity Ulrika Jonsson. The last
straw for Leslie was being photographed by the News of the World appearing
to snort cocaine. And Michael Barrymore, the ITV star whose admitted
addictions have included not just alcohol but cocaine too, appeared to have
finally admitted that his performing career is over.

The use of drugs in showbusiness circles is widespread. 'Cocaine use is
almost endemic in broadcasting,' says one former Radio 1 DJ. 'Almost
everyone I worked with closely at the BBC used it at some point. If you
didn't, you weren't part of the inner circle, so you wouldn't be in the loop.

'Whenever the team came in with a new idea, or details of the next quiz, or
some on-air joke, it would be after going out the night before at one of
the clubs everyone knows of. You knew they'd taken coke. It's just like
going to the boozer was in the old days.'

Yet the drug's much wider presence in broadcasting today is still disguised
by an unwillingness to acknowledge its use. BBC1 controller Lorraine
Heggessey, the woman who had to take the final decision to sack Deayton
last week, addressed a group of City analysts last month. Her address
reportedly included the rare aside: 'At least you don't have to deal with
people who have white powder coming out of their noses.'

Although some newspapers may claim deep concern about drug use, audiences
appear to be less censorious. Radio 2's Johnnie Walker was convicted of
cocaine possession in the summer of 2000. Weeks later he was allowed to
return to work after thousands of supportive letters from his
'pipe-and-slipper' listeners indicated that, while they disapproved of his
actions, they forgave him.

The one exception to the relative tolerance of drug use in the broadcasting
world remains children's television. It was Heggessey, as controller of BBC
Children's TV, who went on air in 1998 to apologise to Blue Peter viewers
after presenter Richard Bacon admitted using cocaine.

However, the sea has clearly already reached the other side of that line.
Another senior BBC executive observed: 'Last Thursday there was a newspaper
report that, during the 1960s, an admiral discovered that 50 per cent of
the navy had once had homosexual experiences. Consequently it would have
been impossible to discharge them all and, in any case, many of them were
very good.

'That's exactly where British broadcasters are with cocaine. You can
deplore it all you like. You can encourage people to seek treatment, if you
ever find out. You can do your best to hold the line. That's all. We're not
the Church of England.'