Monday 1 July 2013

Ivor Mills and the British Telecom Tower Logo

Ivor Mills, in his prime

I have been reading about the history of the British Telecom Tower, and this reminds me of one of my favourite anecdotes, of which I have a number, from my time working for British Telecom.  At the beginning of 1984 I joined the about-to-be privatised BT as a junior manager.  My first job was in the 150-strong Corporate Relations Department (CRD), which housed the press office, exhibitions, corporate hospitality and various in-house publications (including the unlovely Telecom Today, inevitably referred to generally as Telecom Toady).  I found myself in CRD Administration, and one of my tasks was to write the minutes for both the weekly departmental meeting of the senior managers, held every Tuesday, and the smaller press cuttings meetings which were held on the other weekdays.  This began before we were all crammed into the spanking new British Telecom Centre in Newgate Street, and I would walk across from our now-demolished office on the corner of Watling Street and New Change to where the nobs were ensconced in rather more comfy quarters in the also now-demolished 2-12 Gresham Street.

The Tuesday meetings were chaired by the Director of Corporate Relations, a rather bland man who was not often to be seen, but the press cuttings meetings were chaired by his deputy, Ivor Mills, a genial and well-regarded figure in the department.  Ivor, often just referred to as DDCR’, had been an ITN newsreader in the 1960s and 70s, and was always ready with an anecdote about his time there, which he clearly looked back on with nostalgia.  I quite enjoyed the press cuttings meetings because I heard a lot of gossip, much of it indiscreet, and it gave me a chance to sit in Ivor’s secretary’s office to write the minutes, which often took quite a time for some reason.

The press office was the hub of the department and was full of characters, a peculiar mixture of old hacks inherited from the Post Office (BT had only emerged as separate entity from the Post Office in 1981) and tired-looking graduates who always seemed fed up, as if they had come badly down in the world.  The former possessed a surfeit of self-esteem while the latter I always felt possessed a deficit, for which they compensated by looking down on anybody who didn’t work in the press office.  The Senior Broadcast Officer once found himself the subject of a story in Private Eye because he had taken a female journalist from a national paper to lunch where, by her account, he had got drunk, complimented her on her “outstanding attributes”, and ordered an extra bottle of wine on his expense account to take back to the office.  Long liquid lunches were frequent, and the press office, adhering to traditional Fleet Street ways, was often sparsely staffed well into the afternoon.

The senior press officers had extra lines installed at home to deal with urgent enquiries, and they could choose whichever telephone they liked.  The Senior Technical Press Officer said he wanted a hands-free instrument so that he could take calls while preparing vegetables, which raised the question how many journalists he expected to speak to with his hands in the sink.  In any case, there was a nice little flat nearby which was set aside for the use of a rota of night-time duty officers to take out-of-hours calls, which I’m sure came in very useful.  It was all a bit of a gravy train, soon to hit the buffers of privatisation.

So what is the link between ex-ITN’s Ivor Mills and the BT Tower?  For quite a long time a helicopter shot of the revolving section at the top of the tower featured in the opening credits of ITN‘s nightly News at Ten’ bulletins, which was excellent free publicity.  Then in 1985, after privatisation, the company decided to add a ‘British Telecom’ logo to the top of the building.  The matter of the suddenly out-of-date News at Ten footage was raised at a meeting and it was suggested that ITN should be asked to reshoot the tower, including the logo.  Ivor said he would get in touch with his contacts to expedite the matter.  There was no doubt among the senior BT executives present that this was a mere formality.  Ivor did his stuff, and ITN redid the opening credits – dropping the tower shot altogether.  So much for DDCR’s influence.  I sat there, as I often did, wondering how these hotshots could justify their salaries and generous share deals, yet be so ineffectual.

Later I moved from Admin to CRD’s corporate exhibitions unit, where the travel was fairly frequent and I was able to enjoy some decent meals on expenses myself, so I was no longer involved in press cuttings meetings.  BT Tower had been closed to the public for security reasons in 1980, following the 1971 bombing by either the IRA or the Angry Brigade – opinion is divided on which of them was responsible – but the restaurant section re-opened for corporate functions in the late 1980s, albeit with tight security, including metal detectors.  I went up to the revolving restaurant, renamed the Tower Suite, with my children in 1990, by which time I was working in BT’s International division.  We were given certificates to commemorate the building’s 25th anniversary, and I am indebted to Keith Ruffles for providing a scan of his copy, showing the tower sporting the classic dot-dash logo.

BT Tower Silver Anniversary Certificate

Ivor sadly died in 1996 at the early age of 66, and his obituary in the Independent was written by John Egan, another CRD senior manager who knew him well.  Egan acknowledged Ivor’s bonhomie, but paid him rather a backhanded compliment by starting with: “Ivor Mills in his prime was a good-looking fellow.”  And past his prime, John?  Ivor is buried in Highgate Cemetery, and his marker bears the appropriate, if slightly cryptic, inscription:

IVOR MILLS

Journalist, Broadcaster,
Musician
1929-1996

Happy memories
of lunch and laughter

Farewell Old Bush

Update 17 January 2021:

It’s 35 years since I had to deal with this motley crew so there seems little point withholding their names, and I present them here for the benefit of future generations of historians tracking the misfortunes of BT through the 1980s.  Supposedly all these people were journalists: they certainly occupied a large room referred to without irony as the press office, surveyed like a princeling from one end by Senior Press Officer Richard Czartoryski, but it would have been hard to imagine the bulk of them surviving the cut and thrust of the real world.

The editor of Telecom Today and the riveting BT Gazette (official notices and job adverts, a publication I scanned eagerly each week, and not for the notices) was the amiable Ted Dutton.  You just knew he had started as a cub reporter on a provincial paper 25 years before and this was his big break in the industry.

The Senior Technical Press Officer who thought up the stupid reason for having a hands-free telephone was the self-important Derek Willson (‘that’s with two lls’).  He seemed to know a lot less than did his deputy Andy Emmerson, a nice chap who actually liked the subject, and who, post-BT, went on to write books about telephones and other aspects of technology.

The role of the Senior Broadcast Officer wasn’t actually broadcasting but arranging interviews on TV and radio, and trying to make sure they said nice things about BT, one of those hope-over-experience things which made no difference whatsoever.  As the job title suggests, he had a deputy, and as with the technical side it was the deputy, Peter Clarke, who did most of the actual work, writing literate press releases.

The Senior Broadcast Officer who endeared himself to the female journalist so much she shopped him to Private Eye was Terry Doughty, a jowly man who always looked like he’d just rolled in after a heavy night on the town.  When his name was published in the Eye he, to employ a very apt phrase, didn’t have a leg to stand on, yet the fallout was probably at most a quiet chat with Ivor Mills and a request to be more careful in future.  Terry thought it was all rather funny, but then for these time-servers it was a bit of an old boys’ club and, based on the evidence, clubbability was prized more highly than talent.


Update 25 November 2023:

A full decade after sharing my memories of vintage BT Corporate Relations, I was contacted by someone who had also worked in CRD, after I left so we never met.  We did, however, know some of the same people.  He reminded me of another Doughty remark in the Private Eye article which I’d forgotten – he invited the journalist with the outstanding attributes to ‘sit on my face later.’  My informant added that Doughty was finally sacked after allegedly commenting on the size of Michael Grade’s secretary’s chest to her face.  Presumably having to deal with Grade’s ire (and Grade was influential, so it was a serious issue), and perhaps tired of his antics generally, the BT big guns decided enough was enough.  And who could blame them.

So what of his post-BT career?  Here I’m not sure if someone was pulling my correspondent’s leg, as he claimed Doughty went on to work first for the Salvation Army and then at a girls’ school.  It seems hard to believe that either would employ him, though I can imagine him enjoying being surrounded by nubile young ladies.  He would have had to keep his mouth shut, something I doubt would have been easy for him.  But the teetotal Salvation Army?  It seems highly unlikely, but it would be hilarious if he did.

Doughty was not alone in being indiscreet.  I was told another senior CRD manager, whom I’ll refrain from naming as he was one of the few I actually liked, was caught out by a tabloid, probably the Sunday People, meriting the headline ‘“Bollocks to BT”, says boozy phone chief.’  It seems we were in agreement holding that opinion, but one does detect a theme.  Were they all alcoholics?  I remember working late once and going into Ivor’s office where I found him and his heads of division sitting around chatting, glass in hand.  The room reeked of booze.  I expect what passes for BT’s corporate relations department these days is a more sober place with fewer ‘characters’, thank goodness.