Liz Kershaw, The Guardian

Monday, November 05, 2007

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'My reputation was in tatters': The 6Music presenter speaks out for the first time about how she became embroiled in the BBC fakery scandal, was taken off air and then reinstated. By James Silver

There is a strand on Liz Kershaw's Radio Coventry and Warwickshire breakfast show called Liz'll Fix It.

Each year, the popular Rochdale-born jock dons a chunky medallion, chomps on a plastic cigar and, in what she concedes is a distinctly iffy impersonation of Jimmy Savile, stalks the region's shopping centres where she endeavours (shoestring budget permitting) to make listeners' dreams come true. Given the hot water Kershaw found herself in five months ago, after her 6Music show became embroiled in the fakery row which engulfed the BBC, Liz'll Fix It may need a new title next year.

Agreeing to speak about the episode for the first time, the presenter, who has just celebrated her 20th year on the BBC airwaves, sounds uncharacteristically nervous as she describes how she learned she was in trouble. "I was lounging on the sofa at home watching News 24 and perhaps having a little snooze, when the phone rang," she recalls.

"They said: 'Your show is going to be one of the ones flagged up by the director-general and the BBC Trust to the media in 40 minutes'. I was completely in shock. It had to be explained to me. They said the director general has had a trawl, asking for examples of things which may contravene BBC guidelines [in the wake of revelations regarding faked documentary footage featuring the Queen] and your show has been offered up. That was it. No prior warning, nothing."

Kershaw's Saturday morning show on the digital music station was revealed to have faked the results of competitions, with production staff posing as prize-winners on a handful of pre-recorded programmes in 2005 and 2006. So why did it happen? "If you can't be there 'live', you pre-record shows sometimes," she explains. "So when it came to the competitions [when the show was not going out live], the production staff would organise someone to come on the phone as the winner. I didn't know who they were, but I knew they weren't real listeners. We were simply reproducing a show that was really popular and our motive was that our audience would get exactly what they would get normally if the shows had been live."

Kershaw was forced to issue an on-air apology for "leading [her] audience through a charade" and listeners who sent texts to take part in the fake competition were offered refunds. Her bosses then told her to take her summer holiday as planned. But when she got back home, they delivered a bombshell. "I was told I'd been taken off air," she says simply. "I accept what I did was wrong and I'd never do it again. I felt like a child who had been brought up in a certain way and suddenly my parents were shopping me to the police. I felt totally confused and bewildered." Did she worry that she may not return to her presenter's chair at 6Music? "No, because I implicitly trusted [BBC radio and music chief] Jenny Abramsky. She's known me a long time. I'd have gone mad if it hadn't been for her."

(Abramsky is clearly a Kershaw supporter. She gave the presenter a bear-hug as she dashed past us before this interview.)

A three-month period of uncertainty followed, during which she continued with her local radio show - "which was very hard as I was door-stepped by the press every day". But under strict instructions not to utter a word, Kershaw, who one imagines struggles with enforced silence, was obliged to shrug off their questions. "Everything I'd worked for for 20 years, my reputation was in tatters," she says. "Suddenly I was in all the tabloids, as a charlatan."

However, while Kershaw kept her job, and indeed has just returned to 6Music with a Saturday afternoon show, her producer Leona McCambridge was dismissed. McCambridge was described by her union, Bectu, as "a sacrificial lamb" and is awaiting the outcome of an appeal. Does Kershaw think it fair that her producer was forced to walk the plank, while she was - eventually - handed a new show?

"Me and Leona have spoken to each other on a daily basis. I think I'm a woman of principle and help people and support them in their hour of need. I wouldn't dump on somebody from a great height and say 'Well I'm alright, pal'. I'm heartbroken for Leona. She's the best music producer I've ever had. She neither initiated nor formulated any of this." So is she saying she should not have been sacked? "I daren't comment on that," she says pointedly. "I wish I could say more. But I'm a freelance presenter and I'm not going to bite the hand that feeds."

One of only five lone women to host a breakfast show in the country, music-obsessed Kershaw is a radio institution. Her career began in Radio Leeds, where she wangled a voice test from the station manager to whom she was trying to flog a new phone system on behalf of her then employers, BT. She was handed a show, Liz Kershaw on the Rocks, much to the bemusement of her brother Andy, who was then Billy Bragg's tour manager. When BT moved her to London, she compiled a demo-tape and landed her own show with Radio 1.

The station tried to match her with Mark Goodier on the weekend breakfast show, but they loathed one another. Instead, she was tried out alongside Bruno Brookes and the bickering pair, who worked well together, went on to become regulars in the red-tops' gossip columns. In 1992, she was ditched by Radio 1, with her baby on her knee, three days before Christmas. She went on to host a phone-in on the "old" Radio 5 and was part of the original presenter line-up on 5 Live, but she found her niche on 6Music. The digital station took a while to find an audience, but Kershaw quickly became one of its key voices.

Last summer's events were compounded by the turmoil which has plagued her brother. Andy found himself in a prison cell for six nights on the Isle of Man after breaching a restraining order which banned him from going near his ex-girlfriend. "What's made this year so difficult is that Andrew and I have always been there for each other and I've really missed his counsel and support," she says.

"But on the other hand one of the reasons I haven't had a nervous breakdown is because how can you feel sorry for yourself when your brother is in some stinking Manx prison with one blanket and the light on all night? Every call I got from Jenny Abramsky began with her asking how Andy was." She laughs: "And that just shows what a shit summer the Kershaws have had..."

(The Guardian, November 5th 2007)

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, November 05, 2007

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