By Samantha Brick
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Anyone who seeks out an on-screen career is setting themselves up for a fall. They are laying themselves open to endless â€" and, in my opinion, entirely justified â€" appraisal of their looks.
For nearly 20 years I have worked behind the camera in the world’s most visual medium, so I know better than most that a TV presenter’s looks dictate how many viewers watch them.
TV critics, viewers and broadcasting executives are all perfectly within their rights to have a say in how the on-screen talent looks, not least because physical appearance translates into all-important viewing figures â€" and these figures translate into whether the channel can justify its place in an increasingly crowded market.
When the acid-tongued TV critic A.A. Gill wrote a highly uncomplimentary review recently suggesting TV presenter Mary Beard should be kept away from the cameras because of the way she looks, I can’t say I was entirely surprised.
TV exec Samantha Brick, left, argues that people are within their rights to judge how television personalities look on-screen after presenter of BBC2's Meet The Romans Mary Beard, right, was dubbed 'too ugly for TV'
Acid-tongued: A.A. Gill, pictured at the Hay Festival, wrote that Mary Beard should be kept away from cameras because of her looks
nd when Ms Beard, presenter of BBC2’s Meet The Romans, wrote a retaliation in this newspaper last week â€" ‘Too Ugly for TV? No, I’m too brainy for men who fear clever women’ â€" I have to admit I had mixed feelings about the whole furore.
While there is no denying that Ms Beard is a supremely intelligent and fiercely ambitious woman, there is absolutely no chance of her becoming a successful broadcaster in prime-time slots on flagship TV channels. The plain truth is that Ms Beard is too ugly for TV.
If I were Ms Beard’s executive producer, I would congratulate her on the publicity this rumpus has created.
Controversial: Samantha caused controversy after writing in the Daily Mail that women don't like her because she is beautiful
Then I would do what her bosses should have done when she signed her BBC contract: sit her down and discuss a make-over.
Ms Beard will have had on-camera training at great expense to the BBC in preparation for her series, so why was this advice not extended to her wardrobe, make-up and grooming, as it is with most other presenters?
The greatest tragedy isn’t Ms Beard’s wild hair, ungainly posture or make-up free face: it’s the fact that the BBC didn’t offer her guidance on her appearance in the first place.
This incident reminded me of a meeting about a potential daytime TV series eight years ago.
My team and I had spent months developing a talk show with an intelligent and engaging female presenter. Working-class and in her late 40s, she was blonde, a size 18 and someone to whom a day-time TV audience could relate. She was already being talked about as the British Oprah.
The only potential snag was that a new controller had taken over while the pilot was in production. He cut to the chase.
‘I’m sorry, Sam. This is a strong format with lots of potential, but the presenter is a problem.’
His stinging justification remains with me. ‘I have enough blonde, overweight women of a certain age on my channel right now. I can’t risk another.’
Cruel? I thought so, but on reflection I realised this man was actually one of very few TV executives with the moral fibre to tell the truth.
Mary Beard - pictured in Herculaneum presenting Pompeii: Life And Death In A Roman Town - hit back at the article by TV critic A.A. Gill, stating she was too brainy for men who fear clever women
Samantha Brick believes 'saavy' presenters, who realise their looks are a visual impediment to their careers, go and fix it with makeovers or even cosmetic surgery
As for the other ‘blonde, overweight’ presenters he referred to, they went on to lose weight, have subtle cosmetic surgery and tackle exhausting work-outs in an attempt to retain their figures â€" and their place in TV.
In fairness, most of the presenters I have worked with â€" on serious documentaries and specialist factual programmes such as the one Ms Beard presents â€" have been savvy enough to realise that if there is a visual impediment to their career, they fix it.
These are university-educated individuals who have discreetly undergone nose jobs and eyelifts â€" recognising that to invest in their face is to invest in their future.
It’s a given that these ‘experts’, which is how TV executives view the likes of Ms Beard, also maintain their weight, visit the gym and undergo regular tanning and beauty maintenance.
Predictably, the broadcaster Miriam O’Reilly, who won an industrial tribunal in January 2011 against the BBC for age discrimination, has sprung to the defence of Ms Beard, insisting that women on TV should be free to look exactly as they want to.
She also claims Meet The Romans opened with ‘a very healthy 1.9 million viewers in its Tuesday night slot’.Â
Presenter Clare Balding - who was infamously described a 'a dyke on a bike' by A.A. Gill - has come to Mary Beard's defence
But according to the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, BBC2 programmes such as The Hairy Bikers’ Bakeation and The 70s won audiences of 3.22 million viewers and 2.93 million viewers respectively that same week in similar prime-time slots. Not such ‘healthy’ viewing figures for Meet
The Romans when you put them in context. In fact, I’d suggest executives may be looking at ways to refresh the format if the series is to continue.
Support: Broadcaster Miriam O'Reilly, who won an industrial tribunal against the BBC for age discrimination, has also defended Mary Beard
Ms O’Reilly has clearly failed to grasp how viewers watch TV and why. She has also claimed: ‘A recent poll by the Cultural Diversity Network revealed TV viewers want to watch older women not as figures of fun, as some have been portrayed on Strictly Come Dancing, but as role models to whom they can aspire.’
The problem with this research is that an increasingly savvy audience is happy to tell pollsters what they think they ought to want to see on TV â€" but it’s not what they end up watching.
I know Ms O’Reilly is laughably wide of the mark, because I was head of entertainment and factual programmes at Sky One for two years and had an eye-opening education into viewer research.
All channels have access to data that charts, second by second, audience viewing habits. To my astonishment, how people watch TV can be reduced to this: attractive woman on screen equals viewers stay viewing; woman exits screen, viewers switch channel.
Access to such information allowed my colleagues and I to see which presenters resonated with an audience and which didn’t. The TV careers of beauties such as Tess Daly and Kirsty Gallacher were shaped accordingly.
I do have some sympathy with Ms Beard. I was recently the subject of worldwide condemnation for daring to express the view that I regard myself as an attractive woman. The hate mail and public ridicule I experienced is something I will never forget.
Yet, in my early 20s, I was urged by one of my bosses in TV to consider a career in front of the camera.
Even though I was as confident in my looks then as I am now, I declined, convinced that I would struggle to deal with the criticism of my figure and the constant assessment of my looks by beady-eyed TV executives.
Television is a medium where you must be prepared to do anything to get on, and it is a given that you pay meticulous attention to your phys ical appearance first and foremost.
I think that’s something Mary Beard should have thought about rather longer and harder than she did. After all, she is a very clever woman.
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very sad that in 2012 we are still concerned with looks so much.I want someone on a history program to be engaging and knowlegable,and looks do not enter into it.Unless you are presenting a program about beauty ect,looks are not important.Incidentally how long can Samantha eke out her few moments of fame.?
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Oh for goodness sake! Those of us who tune into BBC2/4 to watch programmes such as The Romans couldn't care less if the presenter wore a bin bag! As long as they know their stuff and are interesting and engaging which Mary Beard is. I would question Brick's suggestion that she's had much money spent on her presenting skills - she's a history professor and as such, she is well versed in making her lectures engaging and interesting to an audience. David Attenborough never got such stick for being an intelligent, knowledgeable presenter, I don't see why intelligent, female professors - turned presenters should. I think there is a little of the green-eyed monster coming out. Not only are men scared of intelligent women (as Mary Beard suggests) but dumb bimbos are also jealous of females outranking them in the IQ department and will resort to tearing another woman apart based on her looks - how intelligent! And I personally think Mary Beard has a pleasant ( non botoxed, non tanned) face!
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Where I Iive Samantha Brick would not get on television.Not with those teeth and that nose.I honestly prefer someone that knows what they are talking about over some bimbo that got ahead because of looks.
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Yeah im pretty sure shes doing this for attention now.. she is clearly not being serious at all *yawn* please go away now.
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It's wonderful seeing someone like Mary Beard on tv. Do we really think that women are 'nothing' and shouldn't be seen, after they finish child rearing age ? It's such a horrible and odd thing, that we think ourselves so advanced, with women's rights and such, and yet there's still this misogyny that runs through everything. I wonder if the BBC et al have looked at it this way : they say they need to steer public opiion in the 'correct way', when it comes to things like race relations, ie. they insist on not representing what British people are worried about and want to talk about. But when it comes to something like representing women of all ages - something their lefty ideology would naturally be promoting - they ban them. Their ideology only gets wheeled out when they think it's good for THEM. HYPOCRITES. It's ok to get older as a woman. I'd much rather watch someone like Mary Beard, who might actually KNOW what she's talking about than someone who looks like a 20 year old model.
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Is she still here?
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WHY are we still reading what Samantha Brick thinks. Let her stick to 'comments' Next she will be trying to enter Miss Universe.
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I'm a big Mary Beard fan and think she looks just about perfect, and I wouldn't want her to look any different than she does. Come to think of it, Kenneth Clark (Civilisation) and Jacob Bronowski (Ascent of Man) didn't look like the typical television presenter either and they looked just about perfect as well. It probably hasn't occurred to this deeply ignorant woman that most of the goodlooking men and women we see on television are incapable of doing much more than be goodlooking.
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To clarify, Ms. Brick, you were not the subject of condemnation "for daring to express the view that [you] regard [yourself] as an attractive woman." You were lambasted for making one-dimensial and assumptive blanket statements about how women regard you based on a mere handful of encounters and assigning it the title of universal norm. Now you are guilty of the reverse - you are assuming people won't respond well to Ms. Beard because she isn't attractive enough. Considering the subject matter of her program, I am actually far more likely to be receptive to her out of respect for her intellectual background and what she can offer to supplement the show rather than her aesthetic. You don't need to look like a WAG to be engaging, and it's insulting to our intelligence to assume it's required. I really don't mind if a professor on a Roman history program is wearing enough fake tan. Ms. Beard seems lovely and knowledgeable. That's all I need.
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What a disgusting horrible article.Go away you stupid sad woman.
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