In the wolfish hunger for so-called reality TV after three mega-successful series of Big Brother, it wasn’t difficult to see where the Powers-that-BBC was coming from, in its Greg Dyke-driven quest for ratings.
The proposal was a simple one. Put forward, no doubt over a lunch at Groucho’s by a producer I’d never heard of, who had been twelve at the time of the original broadcast, and who now, at twenty-two, was inexperienced enough to embody the yoof audience BBC1 desperately wanted to attract. At that stage yours truly, the humble writer, of course, was not deemed necessary to consult, even though technically the concept was still legally my property, though the rights in the programme itself rested with the Beeb. Nevertheless at this meeting, otherwise known as a lunch, the produceress, in designer glasses way more trendy than Parky’s in his 1992 Specsavers commercials, evidently pitched a sequel: Ghostwatch 2, Return to Studio One. And they clapped till their hands bled. Or at least didn’t say no.
My own reaction to the proposal was predictable.
My body went into spasm.
I didn’t jump at the idea. I didn’t rise to the occasion, or the bait, in writing, by phone call, by e-mail. Pleading, moaning, cajoling, didn’t shift me one iota. I don’t know what did, in the end.
I think the fact that fear, real palpable terror bubbling up from inside -- a pure, physical, ectoplasmic surge in my gut -- said, Aha! I have you! And I wanted to prove it wrong. I wasn’t afraid. Not now.
Not ten years later, for God’s sake.