Feature Interview: Tony Hall CBE

Tony Hall: “I think it began when I was a kid – a pile of 78s that my grandfather owned. He would spend his money, he worked in Cameleers’ in Birkenhead, and would spend his money on old-fashioned gramophone records, so I listened to little bits of opera in three-minute bursts. And that began my love of music and I think that’s where I suddenly thought the arts generally, but music in particular, and then opera and then theatre were the things that I was really going to develop a passion for.

“I was very restless. I am restless. So I kept looking for new things to go and do. I started off working in Belfast. I wanted to go and work in other different places. I went and worked in radio, I then wanted to go and work in television and on occasions I actually went and took the opposite of promotions. I actually took demotions to go and find out new things and to learn new things. And I think that’s actually quite important, that sort of sense of ‘try new things’. Keep trying new things all the time. And then I was quite lucky, I had a mentor, someone who was an absolutely great television producer. He and I plotted things together, we plotted new things that we’d do. And then there was an enormous revolution at the BBC when John Birt arrived and I ended up running the whole of news and current affairs.

“The help I had was a few people who, two or three people, who I was lucky to have, who I could go and talk to and discuss what we were doing and say ‘I have this big issue. What do I do with it? How do I plan this?’ Listen to other people and the experiences they had because it can really fold back into your own experience and you can learn a huge amount from that. So what’s the lesson? For me it’s being restless, I suppose. Keep looking for new things but also keep trying to put yourself in places where you’re not quite sure you can do it.

“It’s all about teamwork. To put something on the stage over there each night requires an enormous amount of team activity. Not just by the people who appear on the stage and they get the applause at the end but by an orchestra, by everyone who’s working backstage, by people who were marketing the show – everybody. It’s all about working as a team.

“If someone comes to me and says ‘I’m not too sure about going to university, or going off and doing something else’ I’d have said get that qualification because I think it’s absolutely vital. On the other hand what really matters are the ideas and the drive and the energy and the spark. You can’t say one course is the only course because there are people with an amazing amount to give who might not have been to university.

“Look for as much experience as you can get in a variety of organisations. Be skilled. Get yourself skills that might help you when this recession comes to an end, as it will, and think very much of the future. It’s the advice I’m giving to my own children at the moment because my daughter’s just finished university and is finding the job market extremely difficult. Get skills. It’s very, very important. Recessions don’t last forever and be ready for the upturn when it comes, as indeed it will come.

“I think a downturn is a chance to look to the future and say what sort of economy do you want to have? Financial services are still going to be very key to the British economy but maybe not in the way that they’ve been up til now. Manufacturing is a lot bigger and a lot more important than I think people have realised and that’s important too. But the creative and cultural economy is absolutely something which, on past trends, is really going to grow in the future and is going to be key to our long term economic future. And I think the third thing is now is the time as the government have said they will do to put money into apprentices so that businesses who are finding it hard to go through this downturn can at no cost to them have apprentices working with them, skilling people for their recovery.”