Ash Atalla, producer

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:51My cast away this week is the television producer Ash Atala. His first hit was The Office, starring Ricky Gervais. He followed it up with the IT crowd, People Just Do Nothing, Big Boys and Staff Let's Flats. His haul of awards from these programmes include six BAFTAs, four RTS awards, a Golden Globe and an Emmy. He started out in an office of his own as a stockbroker but found words more fun than numbers, so packed in that job and became an intern at the BBC. He eventually joined the comedy department where he began to pick, polish and push projects, almost crying with relief that he'd found his calling.

1:27His childhood wasn't without its challenges. He was born in Cairo in 1972 and contracted polio as a baby. The disease left him unable to walk and his parents made the decision to relocate to the UK in search of better opportunities for him. He says, I've always been worried about being invisible. It's GCSE psychology to say the guy in the wheelchair wants to make sure he's noisy enough that people take notice. Working in comedy is one way of making sure you're invited to the party. Ashutala, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thanks for having me. So there are a lot of different elements to your job.

2:02You know, you can be actually working on a script. You could be trying to get something commissioned and get it on air. But obviously, you've also got to wade through a pile of scripts to find the next big thing. What are you actually looking for? And how do you know when you found it? This is a cliche, but you don't know what you're looking for. But what I do know is when I found it, I'm quite instinctive. Yeah, I think when I know, I know. I can be like maniacally sure about a show. But that must be absolutely critical to what you do, because you've often got to go in and have the argument with a broadcaster, for example, who doesn't want to commission the show.

2:35Yeah, that's exactly the right way of putting it. And the thing that exhausts me about my job is it is endlessly competitive. I feel like I'm in just different levels of 3D chess fights. What I find difficult is trying to persuade somebody when I'm sure. I'm not always sure, and you can't be sure all the time. But when I feel it, I feel it. and I can't believe somebody else can't see it and that's where I have to take a breath and go, this isn't an argument, this is a process of persuasion and trying to make that feel safe in their hands as well. And eventually they will agree that I'm right. Lauren, they must.

3:12So how do you get on watching comedy made by other people then? I can't watch comedy. Not at all? No, I can't watch it. I can't relax watching it. If I watch comedy that's good, I'm annoyed. if I haven't made it. And if I watch comedy that's bad, I'm annoyed. It's even worse. That somebody else got to make it and it's bad. And so it never gives me peace. It's a proper busman's holiday. Production's interesting, isn't it? Because it's somewhat of a hidden role for people. It's a bit of a dark art. You know, people don't know how it works. How does it feel to you to be in the spotlight as you are today?

3:48I'd be lying if I said to you I was shy. and in my job I have to work with a lot of egos and in a sense one way that I've learned to fight that or deal with it shall we say is to have an ego of my own in a manner yeah and I think otherwise you get crushed by people and I think sometimes if people don't feel that you have a strength yourself they will be all over you and it's really important to me that I'm seen as an equal so you've got to go in there and be quite bullish quite tough yeah and not be overly subservient i think that's the key as well and sometimes people go you're a producer just order the biscuits and get me a cab and uh i'll do my thing they don't say that but there's a sense there can be that vibe so how do you how do you deal with that then well alex ferguson the man united manager famous man united manager said i'm as important as the most important player that I have.

4:47And I try to do that in my head. It doesn't always work, but I feel that you have to come to the table as an equal. And it means that sometimes you upset people. So much of our businesses sort of keep the talent happy, but I'm not sure that that's the right thing to do. Listen, I mentioned your awards. Some people are a bit cagey about all that business and play them down, but I know that you're pretty proud of your awards haul. look I could tell you that awards are meaningless that they're vain that they're arbitrary and all of that and I do think all of that but I can also tell you that they're important to me and they don't leave you when times get hard and I like their permanence they've brought me peace they brought me a calm in an industry that is quite up and down where you think god will I ever do anything good again you kind of look at the award shelf and you go they're my friend and where is the award shelf i have an office at home and um i've put them all on there sometimes if i'm having a bad zoom at home and somebody's being difficult i'll accidentally turn the camera around and they'll just get a glimpse of some baftas and i go oh sorry i don't know how to work this thing so yeah I'm I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't proud of them because I am it's time for your first disc Ash what have you chosen I've always loved Wham this is one of their less poppy songs and surprisingly visceral lyrics you'll hear a man who paints a vivid picture of being in a relationship where nothing is good enough and I don't have that specificity but I feel like I have quite a pressurized life and there's something about the breaking point at times that you feel that really speaks to me from this song so this is Wham!

6:40Everything She Wants.

6:59Now six months older Everything you want and everything you see Is out of reach, not good enough Wham! And everything she wants. Asha Tali, you were born in Cairo in June 1972. Your full name's Ashraf, you're the eldest of three and your parents, Albert and Adele, were both doctors. Your dad, a gynaecologist, an obstetrician. Your mum, a paediatrician. How did they meet? They met at medical school in Cairo. Mum was an uptown girl, came from a big family, relatively wealthy. Very glamorous. I've seen photos of your mum. She really does have movie star looks, doesn't she? She still does. Very much so.

7:42And my dad had a difficult childhood. He was orphaned and I think had to really fight his way to medical school. And I love that their past there was so different. and I can just sort of picture them in that kind of class. Dad's wildly charismatic, a joker. I owe my career to him. His words, not mine. And mum, a bit more relaxed, a bit more elegant and I just thought the two of them together, the chancer and the swan. So you were very little when you got polio, six months old, I think. What did your parents tell you about how they were told what happened? The story's insane and I've only got to fill in the detail of it in later life.

8:29They married, they had me. Dad was coming to England to finish his medical exams and so when he left I think I was about two months old and I was not ill and he hadn't been in England that long when I contracted polio. and I think I got polio pretty hard. I was in hospital and essentially expected to die. In fact, they sent me home to die with an oxygen tank, bit of a downer. And so mum brought me home. Dad was in England. And she couldn't call him or anything? She didn't call him. I mean, obviously communications were different then, but they chose to not tell him. which is something I only found out recently.

9:17Why do you think? She said she didn't want to disrupt his studies. I know that she would have made that decision for all the right reasons. She was also a doctor herself. She had four older brothers who were all doctors. And so I was having very good medical care. But I think the expectation was that I wasn't going to live. I mean, I said to mum, So what were you just going to tell dad that I had died? And I think that was her plan. And they didn't really tell him for a year until. A year. I know. So what happened was mum did eventually say to dad, bit of news for you, there's been a mishap with ash.

10:01Very bad polio. Now we'll be confined to a wheelchair. And in a sense, they didn't even know how strong or weak it had got into my lungs. and they just didn't know how once polio leaves you you get what you're given and i can't really even begin to understand what a shock it was to mum because it's such a record scratch to happen in your life it's so sudden and so brutal and just obviously not the life that they planned anyway dad dad then said let's bring you and him to britain which feels like a perhaps better place to bring up somebody who is in a wheelchair. Ash, it's time for your second piece of music.

10:43What are we going to hear next? This is a song called Inter Omri by Omar Khalfoum and she's a Frank Sinatra or the Nina Simone of Egypt, hugely well-known. And mum and dad used to play this a lot when I was a child and I used to hate it, actually. Why? It sounded a bit boring, it sounded very otherworldly and it wasn't Madonna or it wasn't anything that I'd heard of and it wasn't British. And it was almost embarrassing and it felt like this is your music, Mum and Dad. You play it on your time. And as I've got older, I've reconnected a bit with the Egyptian side of me. I feel very British, but there's this sort of DNA in me that understands the Arabic mentality.

11:27But I play this song for Mum and Dad and I play it to acknowledge their sacrifice.

11:37The beauty of the love and love And love from time and the heart And love for you

12:00Umm Khulthum and enter Omri, you are my life. Ashutala, as you mentioned, when you were about two years old, your parents left Egypt and your dad got a job in Belfast. So when you think back to that time, what comes to mind? Very happy times. Very, very good people. Funny people. People from Northern Ireland are really, they're a real laugh and the warmth. And I think there was a lot in common with like an Arab mentality, you know, feeding people, joking around. There was a real lightness. Dad was, I mean, he uses this phrase because he was a brown doctor. He wasn't going to get the pick of the jobs.

12:43And he answered an advert for a job in Belfast. He didn't know that there was a war on in Northern Ireland. I mean, he really didn't know. And him and mum were telling me that when the plane landed, they saw loads of military around the house. And dad said to mum, I wonder if we've made a mistake. week and I just said to dad did you not you know the Northern Ireland troubles he said we didn't really look into it and we didn't really have a choice. You've described your childhood as being full of love and laughter but you've also talked about the very real sense that your dad had to prepare you for the challenges that that life was going to involve for you.

13:26Tell me a bit more about that yeah I think when it became clear what what the extent of the disability was then really dad was very quick into preparing me for adult life you know even as a four or five year old you know my life was sort of a rocky montage of getting ready for being an adult and there was a strong sense from dad that nobody was gonna come and help me and that that had to be me helping myself and how was that for you? It was never arduous and it was never without love but I really understood it myself. I had a very strong sense that life was going to be difficult or could be difficult and I think a combination of dad's immigrant mentality plus my wheelchair equals must try harder.

14:20What a work ethic. What a work ethic. There's a lot there isn't there? Oh my God. A lot of keep going for a while. Yeah, it really was. And so, yeah, it was like I was going to have to be work harder. You know, you didn't, I only realise it now, but what a sacrifice they made. You know, they didn't even speak great English. And I thought if that's what they've done for me, then there's a lot that I need to do for myself. Like make my life a happy one so that they didn't feel that they had put me in a bad position. And I suspect that's a bit of where the drive has come from. so I wanted to make everything okay for all of us, myself of course, but also for them.

15:00You were sent to a school for kids with disabilities in South Belfast. How did you get on there? I needed physiotherapy when I was younger and they had all that infrastructure there and I had this tiny little red wheelchair and curly hair and an Irish accent. Oh, you sound adorable. I think I looked like a toy. And I was fine with it. I didn't really have an awareness that that school was any different. And so those initial years in Belfast were very happy ones. So your parents went on to have two more children, your sister Angela and your brother Andrew. So everyone in your family has a name beginning with A.

15:41Yeah, I told you my dad was funny and he thinks this was he he's really proud of of the fact that we're all AAs. I said, well, other letters are available, Dad. What kind of brother were you? I was the eldest and so there was quite a big gap. I think mum and dad had a lot to work through with me, if that makes sense. And so I think the age gap is eight years to my sister and then another four to my brother. When I look back, I wonder or slightly worry if I sort of suck the oxygen a little bit out of the family. In what way? Because you needed extra looking after? Yeah, I think my mum and dad maybe bent the whole family around to what worked well for me.

16:24And so I think I wonder if my brother and sister sort of felt that marginalised a little bit. Have you ever talked to them about it? Why would I do that, Lauren? Why would I ever have... Let's do it here. Let's have the conversation here. Only on the radio. Why would I have a meaningful, deep conversation? A little bit with my brother. I think he bore the brunt of it. And the two of you are still pretty close. Yeah we are we are I think he was always encouraged to move to be near me to finish university in Manchester and quickly move to London to be near me so I think he probably got it a little bit.

17:00Does he still live near you now? Do you know what we live in the same building my god it continues to this day I think that was his choice I don't ask him for physical help anymore but there is something really lovely about living in the same postcode as a family member we've got to make room for some more music I think so disc number three what are we going to hear shakedown and the song's called at night I love going out too much I'm not a man who knows when the last drink is I'm not a man who likes to leave a room if there's fun to be had and so When I started going out, I loved the glamour, the late nights, the velvet ropes and all of that.

17:43And this song, I could have chosen lots of going out tunes, but this song reminds me of my good friends. It reminds me of Ibiza. It reminds me of all the fun stuff that happens after midnight. It seems I can't deny Some days just don't feel right I think I feel, I think I feel much better at night.

18:13Seems I can't deny. Some days just don't feel right. I think I feel, I think I feel much better at night. At night, shakedown. Ashutala. When you were ten, the family relocated to Hampshire and there your dad got a job with the Royal Army Medical Corps. You were sent aboard at Lord Mayor Trillor College, which was a school for kids with disabilities and that was a less happy experience for you, I think. Tell me what happened. Yeah, huge amount of physiotherapy, all the backup and the infrastructure that you needed but the more I was there, the less I wanted that paraphernalia around me. The school had a specialist haemophilia centre on site and many of the pupils who were receiving treatment there ended up being affected by the contaminated blood scandal and have subsequently died.

19:10Were those boys your friends? yeah listen it was the beginning of the AIDS pandemic and a guy Chris who I shared a bedroom with died of it and by the time I was about 13 or 14 I think I'd been to like seven or eight funerals of kids that were at my school um so that was um tough and that school's very much in the in the headlines at the moment in a more general way I decided that that school was a poor preparation for real life. I think there was a turning point on a school trip. Yeah, it was Phantom of the Opera. The school arranged for us all to come to the west end of London and the coach came from the boarding school up to Shaftesbury Avenue and I think there were about 25 of us in wheelchairs on the coach and there was one lift at the back and it took about two hours.

20:05Up and down the lift went And I remember when we went into the theatre, it felt we were very conspicuous. I felt really self-conscious that we had come en masse and you could see other people looking at us going, what has descended upon us? And I just thought, this is real life and going around with an army of other disabled people doesn't make it all right for any of us. and so I started to resent what the school was doing for me. There was another angle to it which was girls. I really worried that I'd never have a girlfriend. I used to think most people aren't in wheelchairs so why would any girl choose somebody who was?

20:55And next to the school was another school and it was a normal school and I'm using that word normal. You do now quotes with your fingers we should say for our listeners. I'm using the word deliberately because that was the language of the time. And it's really important that people know that. And I know it's not progressive, but we were special and disabled and they were normal. And the kids from the local 6-1 college used to come and volunteer to help our school. There was a girl called Karen who I got on with really well. I think I've sort of clumsily when I was about 14 or 13 asked her if she'd be my girlfriend.

21:31I remember that she laughed not a cruel laugh but a laugh of like obviously not oh crushing for you it might not have been the wheelchair it might have been you know we do have my personality to consider here but I remember thinking yeah that makes sense actually why would she and I remember feeling sorry that's alright to any time I just remember thinking I've got to get out of here. I go back to dad's psychology in that moment. This isn't helping. In a sense, I need to feel not closeted. I need to see how it's going to be difficult so I can figure out how to fix it. And how did your parents react when you told them how you were feeling?

22:18Incredibly. I never blamed them for it because it was a decision taken with heart at the time. But yeah, dad was like, sure, let's call up the local 6-1 college. and I went to a place called Farm to Sixth One College and if there's anyone there listening and you're wondering why there's so many ramps around, they were all put in for me. Because were you the first disabled kid to go there? The first. The first ever person in the world to go to Farm to Sixth One College. It was the first time I'd ever been around non-disabled kids. And how was it? I loved it. People were good to me. They helped me when I needed help and they didn't patronise me and I got on with it.

22:55But other than I couldn't get a girlfriend, it was a great experience. Ash, I think we should have some more music at this point. Number four, what's it going to be and why are you taking this one to the island with you? Well, speaking of no girlfriends, I've got a real sense of drama in me and a bit of, if something goes wrong love-life-wise, I'm a bit long dark coat on a windy beach, rain, walks in the park alone. And so this is a brilliant love song by Phil Collins. I thought, can I choose Phil Collins and wham? And I think we're about to hear the answer to that. What self-pity. What a tune.

23:32Phil Collins against all odds. How can I just let you walk away? Just let you leave without a trace When I stand here taking every breath with you Ooh, you're the only one who really knew me at all

23:59How can you just walk away from me When all I can do is watch you leave Against all odds, Phil Collins Ashtella, you studied business administration at the University of Bath and then you got a job as a stockbroker for an investment bank. Why did you want a job in finance? To make the wheelchair disappear, really, to make life more palatable, to be more comfortable. All I wanted to do was to sort of, take the pain away is too dramatic, but what I've told you, I'm dramatic. You know, with resource, I'm able to make myself feel less disabled and following that career as a stockbroker was all about that.

24:43And it looked glamorous on TV, mostly men. on telephones shouting. I bet you were good at that bit. I can shout and I'm sitting down and I could really see myself doing it but when I finally got a job as a stockbroker I had forgotten one really important thing which is I'm not very good at maths. I'm really not. How bad? How bad are we talking? What happened? I mean I'm below average. The time that I made the bank the most amount of money and this is true was when I had got a trade the wrong way round but by accident it ended up going well. What was it? Well, I had to buy dollars and sell pounds, but I bought pounds and sold dollars.

25:21I just got, or have I got it the wrong way around? I can't even say it correctly. And so they said to me, you did the opposite of the instruction for the trade that we gave you. However, you did make us money. However, however, we are going to have to let you go. In a way, I think I resigned first. Yeah, how did you feel about it? I knew that it was the right thing. I think telling my family was a real moment because we had put in so much work into that career. And I didn't really have a plan B at that point. And I sort of felt a midlife crisis coming at 24. How did your family react? Dad was worried.

26:04Mum and dad were worried. Do you remember waking up the next day and thinking, OK, what now? Yeah, I really do. I really do. I was living in Hammersmith at the time. It was in rented accommodation and all my friends' careers were, you know, starting to move. And I felt that I'd come to this shuddering full stop quite early. And I didn't know what to do. I started writing letters to the BBC. I didn't really know who to write to. Somebody gave me somebody's number, a guy called Mark Thompson, who ended up being the DG. But yeah, I used to write to the BBC. The director general, Ron in the place.

26:40He ended up running the place. I used to write to him and just introduce myself. And I used to say, I'd love to come and work in television, but I didn't really know what the jobs were. I didn't quite know where that had come from. But when I started to feel it, I became convinced that that was the thing. It's time for the music, disc number five. What's it going to be and why? when I was at school at my disabled school Lord Metro Law College somebody from the school lived on the same street as Paul Weller one day in assembly the headmaster said to us next month the style council are going to be coming to play a gig at our school and I used to love the style council and Paul Weller he came for lunch in the canteen and he actually sat at my table we had gammon it was always gammon and eggs at the school and what made it even weirder is that it was an afternoon gig.

27:37It wasn't even the evening. And at 2pm, the Style Council, our school hall was full with, I don't know, like 250 people in wheelchairs, everyone on crutches, callipers, false limbs, the whole lot. And out onto the stage came the Style Council and I remember it and I'll never forget it. And this is my ever-changing mood, which is my favourite song of theirs. I'm just imagining them playing a gig full of gammon and eggs. They were full of gammon and eggs. What a pre-show rider. What an incongruous scene. It was all so unlikely. But do you know when some people say, oh, it seemed fine at the time?