A Very Private Celebrity (16 page)

A month later, Freeman recorded a discussion for religious broadcasting entitled ‘The Intrusion of the Press into Private Grief'. That Easter he took Lizi to Paris:

Lizi was sixteen when Mima died, after which Freeman formally adopted her.

Freeman's first
Panorama
had been broadcast on 8 July 1957 and his second on 7 November, the subject of the latter being ‘brainwashing' – a topic of contemporary controversy because of the allegation (and refutation) that US and British prisoners of war had been brainwashed in the Korean War. In both programmes, Freeman's role was as discussion chairman. Suddenly he was in demand and
Panorama
was paying him 40 guineas per programme, plus another 10 guineas
to cover interviews and commentary dubbing. A review of his TV schedule for the first half of 1958 shows how busy he was, bearing in mind he was also deputy editor of the
New Statesman
magazine.

At the time of Mima's death, Freeman and Christopher Burstall had been trying to set up an item on freemasonry, using Freeman's father's former clerk in Lincoln's Inn as the contact. ‘The approach', wrote Christopher Burstall to Michael Peacock, ‘is one of hard curiosity, a refusal to take things on trust. John Freeman is very interested and I'm sure he will fit the bill.' This was one
Panorama
project that did not come off, because the Grand Lodge would not cooperate. That same spring, 1958, Freeman was in Cyprus and France sending back film reports on civil wars for
Panorama
, while also filming in Dr Barnardo's village for an item on adoption.

In the midst of this he presented a hard-hitting programme on ‘family tensions' for
Meeting Point
, ‘cutting across the sentimentality of the day'. The producer, the Reverend Oliver Hunkin of the religious affairs department, had written persuasively to Freeman to book him:

This was a shrewd invitation that may have reminded Freeman of his time living in the Hubback household ten years before. That
Meeting Point
episode was broadcast on 16 March 1958, and Hunkin was delighted: ‘My dear John, to have someone so practised and perceptive in the chair certainly eases a producer's tensions!'
16

The same month Freeman agreed to script and present a schools TV film on Algeria for its
Spotlight
series. He was working overtime, recycling material for different audiences and finding new storylines. The producers were delighted until even Freeman's meticulous planning went wrong. He wrote to Ivan Gilman of the schools TV unit on 25 April: ‘I owe you an apology. I mistook a film viewing on Monday afternoon for
Panorama
when it should have been with you. I am very sorry.'

By mid-summer, Grace Wyndham Goldie was fending off producers wanting to use Freeman.

As overworked freelance reporters are bound to do with the BBC, Freeman fell out with the television bookings department over expenses. Sometimes he could not produce all his receipts – ‘Dear Miss Knight, you must be beginning to think I'm mad as well as incompetent: I'm sure I had 11.5 francs on 19 May!' – and on one occasion he claimed for hardship outside the line of duty:

From: Jeremy Murray-Brown, television talks

To: Miss D. E. Knight, television bookings

 

2 June 1958

 

In view of the fact that John Freeman has, in fact, put in rather more work on the French story than was originally intended (and also met with temporary imprisonment in Paris) I should be grateful if he could be paid an additional fee of 15 guineas.

To: Jeremy Murray-Brown, television talks

From: Miss D. E. Knight, television bookings

We feel he has already received a very adequate fee. The temporary imprisonment is one of the risks of the job for which he would surely not expect monetary compensation.
17

Had Miss D. E. Knight been aware of the circumstances she might have been more sympathetic. That last weekend in May, with the French people expecting an army coup in Algeria and a consequent civil war in France, Charles de Gaulle was invested as President. In Paris there was pandemonium:

Presumably it was while filming this ‘pandemonium' that Freeman and his crew were arrested and imprisoned for between four and five hours that Sunday (1 June). They knew that if they did not get the film back to London the same evening, they could not have it developed, the negative would not get cut and the positive would not get printed in time for
Panorama
the following evening. Technical limitations in those days added to the stresses of the TV reporter's job.

And so it went on for the next two years. In February 1960, with ITV also after his services, the BBC programme contracts department took Freeman out for a smart lunch at A l'Ecu de France and offered him an exclusive contract of £3,750 per year, to which TV talks, light entertainment, schools, the Home Service etc. all offered to contribute.

Catherine Dove had joined the film department after attracting BBC attention to her acting at Oxford University in the early 1950s.
She soon met Grace Wyndham Goldie, who was on the prowl among the dingy Victorian terraced houses of Lime Grove (where the TV talks department was based), looking for new talent.

Grace recruited Catherine to work on the general election programme of 1955 and then appointed her
Panorama
's first producer-director. She was responsible for some remarkable programmes – two in particular found their way into
Panorama
history.

One, on natural childbirth, aimed to be the first film on television to show a baby being born, although by the time BBC managers had taken fright and heavily edited the film, all the viewer saw was the baby's head – then it was in its mother's arms.

The other was a live interview with the Irish playwright Brendan Behan, who, Catherine remembers, stumbled into the studio ‘virtually comatose'. ‘Millions see drunk man on TV show' splashed the
Daily Sketch
the next morning.

Catherine also managed to lure the poet T. S. Eliot into the Lime Grove studio, and was very proud to have done so. Her
Panorama
colleagues were less enthusiastic because, as she admitted, his performance was disappointingly wooden.

On the
Panorama
team was Charles Wheeler, an ex-marine who had become a newspaper reporter in Germany after the war. Initially colleagues, they became lovers and lived together at his mews flat in Primrose Hill, north London, travelling to work in his MG and motoring around Europe on holiday. He was keen on the idea of getting married, but Catherine didn't think it would work: ‘I felt that he was too nice and too young to be good for me and that probably I needed an older man. I was a bit of a handful in those days.'

At work, Catherine was beginning to press the department for a magazine programme dedicated to the arts. And so, eventually,
Monitor
was born. Grace appointed Catherine as its editor, but
proposed Huw Wheldon, a senior producer, as a back-up: ‘You're very young, Katie, and Huw will be able to help you.' Catherine takes up the story:

After this little demonstration of powerplay by Wheldon, and in the absence of Catherine (who, with terrible timing, was nursing a broken knee in hospital),
Monitor
went on air in February 1958. Wheldon became editor and presenter and moulded the show in his own image for over 100 editions, until he had ‘interviewed everybody I wanted to interview'. He handed over to Jonathan Miller in 1965.

Wheeler, meanwhile, had transferred to the news department. His departure from
Panorama
had displeased Grace; she called him ‘a traitor' for leaving. He visited Catherine in hospital and once again tried to persuade her into marriage:

At a low ebb in hospital, depressed about losing
Monitor
and considering leaving the BBC, Catherine gave in, against her better judgement. They were married in the Church of our Lady of the Assumption (she was a Catholic) on Warwick Street in May that year. Wheeler left immediately for India as the BBC correspondent there and Catherine intended to join him in Delhi in October when the weather was cooler. Left on her own, she recognised that the marriage had indeed been a mistake. She spent a wretched summer feeling guilty, ashamed and confused because, as a Catholic, she didn't want to consider divorce. Finally, she resolved to go out to India, explain to Wheeler how she felt, and arrange a separation. She booked her passage on the P&O liner
Chusan
.

That September, Freeman was the ‘leading panel member' in three editions of
Press Conference
, produced by Catherine. This was the first time they had worked together and, as far as Freeman was concerned, it was love at first sight. He told her later that he decided to marry her as soon as he set eyes on her in the studio. At the time she lived near Kensington Church Street in west London, where a neighbour – the journalist Peregrine Worsthorne – knew them both: ‘She was, of course, very beautiful, extremely attractive and mischievous. I was an admirer of John, though he was a mystery figure who was very hard to know. It was the sight of him that was really splendid. He was formidable; his appearance, his charm, his high principles.'
20

The last programme of the three was a
Press Conference
with Bertrand Russell. After the production meeting, which in those days was always held in the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho, Freeman told Catherine how sorry he was that she was leaving: ‘I've never enjoyed working with anybody so much.' She told him how miserable she felt about her marriage and that she was going to end it. That evening her phone rang: ‘John asked, “Are you too busy packing or would
you come over for a drink?” I did, and that was that. I realised with amazement that this was the man I'd been waiting to meet. It was not difficult to promise to come back as soon as possible.'

When she went on board the
Chusan
, she found her cabin filled with red roses.

Wheeler met her off the boat in Bombay. He was appalled when she immediately confessed – ‘I thought Freeman was a gentleman' – but he asked her to stay with him in Delhi over Christmas, partly to save face and partly because he thought it possible that she would change her mind. But at New Year, when Wheeler discovered letters Freeman had sent to Catherine, he was generous enough to accept the situation. In May he saw her off at the airport and Freeman met her the other end.