The years with Ross
Next week sees the launch of the second Richard & Judy Book Club. Liz
Thomson meets Amanda Ross, Joint MD of Cactus Television, and the power
behind the show
THIS TIME LAST year there was only scepticism - from the book trade, from
Channel 4 executives, even from the team at Cactus, the production company
behind Richard & Judy. "I'd been told by Channel 4: on my own head be it,"
recalls Amanda Ross, co-founder and Joint Managing Director of Cactus
Television. "They thought we were taking a big risk... Because our audience is
very interested in books, I thought a book club would work. But not everyone on
the team thought so, and certainly not everyone at Channel 4."
Amid the pre-Christmas mayhem, Ross can allow herself a few moments of selfcongratulation. When the 10 titles for the second Richard & Judy Book Club were
announced last month, publishers and booksellers moved swiftly to remake their
plans in anticipation of "the Richard & Judy effect" without which, everyone
agrees, Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Seawould not have notched up sales of half a
million. "That was probably Richard and Judy's favourite book from last year's list,
but Judy in particular said she'd never have picked it up were it not for the Book
Club because the cover is so 'boysie'. Then you flick through it, and it's written in
lots of different styles, and the type's quite small... She said it completely brought
home to her the point of the Book Club - that you're encouraged to read things you
wouldn't normally read. And she loved it."
Ross is chatting in her office in the unprepossessing Cactus studios in Kennington
Park where R&J is filmed, going out live every day from five through six, until
recently considered a graveyard slot. Everything is silver and green - a half-dozen
assorted but pricey silver cars are parked in the front yard and there are silver
brollies in the stand by the door. Several varieties of cactus adorn the desk and
tables in reception, and the Perspex folding chairs feature images of the prickly
plants, as if to suggest that you linger too long in them at your peril. The MD
laughingly denies that she is in any way prickly, saying simply that the name was
chosen because "it's visual and doesn't mean anything". In her own office, Poppett
and Bella, Ross's two year-old Tibetan terriers, rule the roost.
More so than last year, there's all to play for with this year's book club. With the
obvious exception of Robbie Williams, none of this year's 10 authors is a
household name, even if Justin Cartright and David Mitchell were both contenders
for the Man Booker. Carlos Ruiz Zafón is already enjoying word-of-mouth
success, and Jodi Picoult is an author with the potential to capture the Anita
Shreeve market. All stand to benefit from the exposure the Book Club will bring
and one of them will win the award for Best Read of the Year at next April's
Nibbies, which will once again be hosted by Richard and Judy and broadcast on
Channel 4.
"The impact took everyone by surprise last year, especially me," Ross concedes.
"One of the most satisfying things about the Book Clubs we've done so far is the
way it got people reading who would not otherwise have picked up a book. With
the Summer Read, we gave groups of people books to read. With the Jennifer
Donnelly book [Gathering Light], we gave it to a group of old age pensioners
going on a coach trip to Switzerland. There was one man who said he hadn't read a
book for forty years and if he hadn't had to, he wouldn't have read this one. But he
said it had opened up a whole new world for him and changed his life. Yes! That's
what it's about. I'd never have got my Mum to read Brick Lane before but she did
read it because she wanted to be part of the discussion."
What's happened, of course, is that Richard and Judy, with whom viewers clearly
identify, have brought books to an audience that almost certainly would not sit
down to watch one of the dedicated books programmes that come and go on BBC2
and Channel 4. True, they might stayed tuned for Late Review - after all, it follows
Newsnight and also covers theatre, film, art and music - but they would not have
switched on to see the Man Booker discussion, with all those oh-so-clever
commentators. Richard and Judy and their guests, none of them intellectually
intimidating literary boffins, are like us. They are, if you will, Everyreader. We can
relate.
"People do judge books by their cover and bookshops can be incredibly daunting,"
Ross continues. "There's so much product to choose from - how do you pick the
book that's for you? We're helping them with the selection, and we're not going to
put a book on the list unless it's something for everybody. For example, Robbie
Williams' Feel: you don't have to like Robbie Williams - in fact, if you do like
Robbie Williams you may end up not liking him after you've read the book. But
there's something for everybody in it, in that you learn a lot about the psyche of
pop stars, the lifestyle, the paranoia... As a test, we gave it to one of our staff's dads
to read, asking if he thought there was something in it for men over 55. And he was
completely gripped. The people who wouldn't necessarily pick up that book are the
right people to review it in a way."
Deciding on the 10 titles for the Book Club was tough this year. "I thought it was
going to be easier than last year because we'd decided the kind of list that it should
be, something for everyone. But you can't just emulate last year's list, you can't just
look for the next Star of the Sea or the next Brick Lane," Ross reflects. "We had
more submissions this year, and the quality of the submissions was much better.
Everyone had put so much thought into it, and to the quality of the back-up synopses, supporting reviews and so on. The publishers themselves have learned a
lot from what worked last year and they really championed their causes.
"Not everyone put in six books; some just submitted one or two, which is good
because it means they'd thought about it. They didn't know if there was a niche to
target and we just kept telling them to put in their best reads of the year. We
received well over 300 submissions and we whittled those down to a hundred, and
then to 48. After that, it took a lot longer. There were five of us and we all read
everything, a few chapters from each book. If anyone had missed a meeting, they
would have been chucked out - I wouldn't allow anyone an opinion who hadn't
done the whole journey." Four people, a man and three women, made the final
selection, with Ross having the casting vote when it came to disagreements, though
those were about the mix rather than an individual book. "I'd have been proud to
have included any 10 from the 48." The presenters themselves had no say.
"Richard and Judy understand that, unless they read all 300 books, they can't have
a balanced opinion. For example, I know Shadow of the Windis very much to their
taste, but if they'd read that and not all the other historical thrillers submitted how
could they possibly have said this is the one?"
Ross herself was always a voracious reader. The eldest of three children, the only
girl and - naturally - the boss, she grew up in Essex. Her father worked in the local
oil refining business and her mother was a secretary. "It wasn't a particularly
bookish family but my mum taught me to read when I was really young - I could
read before I went to school and I was put two classes ahead." Her family always
bought her books as presents and, when she was seven, she joined her first book
club. "When the books arrived it was so exciting. Books to me have always been
exotic, exciting things." As to favourites, she'd have "crushes" on writers, reading
all of Jane Austen and all of Thomas Hardy.
At Birmingham University, she read Drama and Theatre Arts, an academicallyoriented degree in which she shared courses with the English department. There
was also a good deal of acting, though that was never Ross's forte. "All I ever
wanted to do was work in television, and Birmingham had a TV unit, though
television wasn't part of the course." Thinking ahead, she decided her final year
thesis would be on children's television, and she sent out questionnaires to a
thousand kids, asking what they thought of British television. "I concluded that
programme-makers weren't in touch with children, so I contacted all these
producers saying I had access to research showing what children wanted from
television. 'Tell me what you're trying to achieve, and I'll look at the disparity.'
And, of course, they all wanted to see me, because I'd done a great amount of
research, and at the end of every interview they'd always say 'and what do you
want to do when you leave university?' So I'd launch into my speech."
Thus, Ross's career began in the children's department at Central Television where,
at 21, she was the youngest in a team who'd come into TV from journalism. "It felt
tough, and I didn't enjoy it very much because of that." About a year in, she was
flicking through the Stage and saw an ad for a singer to work with a big band on an
eight-month tour of Germany. "It was my Jim'll Fix It dream. Singing was the one
other thing I might have done," she explains. "When I was 15, I was discovered in
a school play, so my Saturday job was as a backing singer, working with all sorts
of bands. I'd spend weekends going 'sha-la-la-la-la...'"
Having lived her dream, she came back to Britain and headed north to a research
job with Tyne Tees, where she worked on pretty much anything and everything.
From there she went to TVS. With her husband-to-be, Simon Ross, brother of
Jonathan, whom she'd met at Tyne Tees, she began to write ideas for other people
and, inevitably, in 1994, she and Simon, now married, decided to set up their own
production company. Chrysalis approached them for a joint venture deal and
Cactus ("all the pricks are on the outside, as Richard Madeley said") produced a
number of more cerebral game shows, among them In Cognito, travel shows and
inserts for Good Morning Anne and Nick, which aired opposite Richard & Judy in
the morning slot. (Cactus is now part of All Three Media.)
It was The British Soap Awards, a Ross invention, that brought Cactus into contact
with Madeley and Finnigan and, in the three years the couple presented them, Ross
got to know them well enough to discover that they weren't entirely happy at ITV.
"I was asked by Jo McGrath, a Channel 4 commissioning editor, what I'd do
between five and six and I said I'd do a magazine show with Richard and Judy. Jo
thought it was a great idea and it took Richard and Judy about two seconds to say
yes. But it was hard to convince the establishment at that time that you could take
ITV talent and put them on Channel 4, because nobody had done that before." The
show launched in November 2001 and took around six months to catch on, but
producers and presenters, and Channel 4, held their nerve. Now Richard & Judy is
regarded as a triumph and a place on its purple sofa is a target for PRs across the
land.
Having signed a new three-year contract for Richard & Judy, Ross has the luxury
of being able to forward plan. There's other projects on the go, of course, but this
one's the flagship and she remains highly involved in every aspect of it. These
days, she's left the studio gallery and watches it, with her dogs, in her office,
"seeing it as a real viewer sees it." She's also very involved with viewer enquiries.
"I'm very hands-on with the guests, and I meet everyone who comes in." So, too,
Poppett and Bella.
Home is in Clapham, though she and Simon spend insufficient time there and, even
though cooking is one of her great passions, she mostly sates her appetite by
reading cookery books - Cactus employs a chef, and the Rosses mostly eat in the
studio. "We arrive about nine and leave late." When time permits, they escape to
Italy, where they are renovating a 14th century Benedictine nunnery. "It will be
fantastic, but at the moment there's no roof and no running water. "It's a challenge
and complete escapism."
[07/Jan/2005]