Derek's golden silence cut through the waffle

Whoever wrote the obituaries of Derek Taylor, the late publicist for The Beatles, had a difficult job. How can you obituarise a publicist? Say that he did a good job? Got The Beatles very famous? Protected them from each other? Was good on the phone?

What was mentioned nowhere - and why should it be? - was that Derek Taylor was responsible for the most electrifying bit of television I have ever seen and I often think of the moment with affection and gratitude. I would be letting down his memory if I didn't record the way it happened, here and now; some details are a bit blurred now, but my memory still retains the correct flavour of the experience.

The occasion was something like the first anniversary of the start of BBC2, and BBC2 had decided to pay tribute to itself by - how else? - staging a long, live discussion programme about TV, the media, the public, the art of communication, etc. This was back in the 1960s, so they probably talked about Marshall McLuhan as well, and the global village. It was also the era of The Beatles, so although they couldn't lure a Beatle on to the programme, they had managed to get Derek Taylor on - "Yes! We've got Derek Taylor!" you can imagine the assistant producer shouting down the phone in triumph. "Who the hell is Derek Taylor?" you can imagine the producer saying. "Only The Beatles' right-hand man, that's who," says the assistant producer, as if he is being asked who John the Baptist is.

Nowadays I would have to be paid to watch such a programme but in those days I thought that theorising about communication was not a waste of time, so I switched on the two-hour live discussion programme - and by "live" they meant it was actually happening as it went out, whereas today by "live" they mean it was recorded in front of an audience months ago - and settled down to watch the assembled heavyweights hold forth. Thirty years on, I cannot remember any of them by name, but they were playing in the same league as names such as Hoggart and Williams and Miller and Steiner.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it was a dreary, semi-intellectual, posturing, jargon-ridden programme, with people gently fighting each other to get in with their theories, or, if they hadn't any theories, fighting to get in with their anecdotes. The only exception was Derek Taylor. He seemed to have nothing to contribute to the discussion at all. It wasn't quite clear whether he was out of his depth, or agreed with what everyone said, or was on drugs, or what, but for a whole hour he said nothing at all. To begin with, the others welcomed this lack of competition, as it gave them all more space to talk. But the chairman of the programme finally felt his nerve crack, and he turned to Derek Taylor and said:

"Derek, we have ranged far and wide over the subject of the media today, which is obviously something you are concerned with, but you haven't said anything at all yet in this first hour. Is there anything you want to add to the debate before we go into the second hour?"

To which Taylor finally stirred and made a speech along the following lines:

"Well, I would like to say just one thing. I have been listening to what you have all been saying for the last hour, and I have to say that although I have lived my life in the media, I haven't understood a single word of what you were talking about. I am not stupid but I just don't know what you are driving at. Now, I am sure there are lots of people out there who are listening to this conversation and who are having the same experience as me. They don't know what you're on about. They probably think it's their fault. They probably think they are odd because they can't understand what is being said. So I think that my most valuable role in this discussion is to sit here and be someone they can identify with, someone who is as baffled as they are. What they need on the screen is someone who they can see with their own two eyes is just as adrift as they are. That's all I want to say, really, and I don't intend to say anything more in the programme."

And although the programme went on for another 60 minutes he didn't say another thing. Not a thing! What a performance! He was worth every penny of whatever he was paid that night. How often since then, when people on TV have been discussing modern painting and rock music and politics and football and the Booker Prize and genetics and all the things that bring out the worst in pseudo-intellectuals and indeed real intellectuals, how often have I longed for an icon of Derek Taylor to appear in the corner of the screen, listening and shaking his head, as if to say: "Don't worry. It's not you. It's them. It is they who are talking through their hats."