I'll eat my words to cut the deal

ROGER from Chicago, the resourceful young sub-editor who puts the jokes in here, is a bit browned off. He complained on Monday that my criticisms last week of the new ITV set-up and of its supremo, Marcus Plantin, had seriously jeopardised the chances of a new Root series.

'It was professional suicide,' he said.

'That's my funeral,' I said.

'More seriously, it is mine, too,' he said. Apparently he had seen the series as his opportunity to enter showbusiness and he had, accordingly, been truffling around in his collection of Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello scripts in search of adaptable routines.

He was concerning himself unduly, I said. ITV would hardly have appointed, at goodness knows how much a year and with golden handcuffs and so forth, a man who couldn't take creative criticism from the rank and file.

Roger from Chicago grumbled a bit, and then admitted that I might be right - not least when I argued by analogy that the Independent was run as an ongoing cultural revolution, with even the lowliest of personnel encouraged to lampoon the management by means of subversive whispering in corridors and crude cartoons pinned to the central noticeboard. Doing so had never been professional suicide, I said, and he should post a lampoon now.

'Thank you,' he said. 'I think I will.'

In fact, I was less confident than I seemed. I had indeed had second thoughts about last week's piece. I propose, therefore, to withdraw my criticisms of the new ITV set-up - at least until after 20 April, when the new Root series is to be pitched at Plantin's office.

It makes sense, after all, that young writers such as myself and Roger from Chicago, keen to have their stuff on television, are no longer obliged to submit it to the impeccable taste of competing men in offices (should it be Yorkshire or Central, LWT or Carlton?) but to the impeccable taste of just one man in an office.

The system is so sensible that the Publishers Association has decided to adopt it. Respected houses such as Faber & Faber, Methuen and Chatto are to be shorn of their creative function and will be invited henceforth to submit short book proposals (half a paragraph at most) to a central publisher - appointed by W H Smith - which will decide what's put before the public.

The advantages are obvious. Authors with a book in the pipeline will no longer be wracked by indecision, wondering whether it would sit more happily on the boastfully literary list of an old-time bookman such as Anthony Cheetham, or with a red-blooded opportunist such as Geoffrey Strachan, ever on the alert for a shopping novel or TV tie-in. If it's not to the taste of the central publisher, they'll know they've had it.

The system will benefit the public, too. On entering a bookshop, customers will no longer be bewildered by choice, but will see just one book, sitting unexceptionably alongside the novelty items on sale.

That's as may be. More to the point is the fact that once-proud broadcasters - Central, Granada, Anglia, etc - have been reduced to the status of smart-talking independents. They are now obliged to compete with me and my local postman in the race to Plantin's office - a race, I may say, which the postman and I, having identified an exploitable soft spot in the schedules, are bound to win.

Discussing the possibility of axing programmes such as World in Action, a new ITV bigwig - not Plantin, I think - recently pointed out that it is not the job of television producers to get innocent men out of prison. It is their job, however, to put them there, which is why the postman and I have set ourselves up as documentary watchdogs - our purpose being to get others into trouble.

Nor will we be handicapped, I think, by the fact that previous operators in this field - the police on the one hand, and, on the other, the News of the World and Private Eye - are working at a disadvantage, the former constrained by the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, the latter by the libel laws, which require it to produce some proof of wrongdoing before holding up perpetrators to national ridicule.

Television watchdogs, happily, are empowered to film wrongdoing while it's taking place, better still, before it happens. The postman and I will shortly have stuff in the can to make Plantin's eyes start like organ stops.

That said, and having filed the above, I rang Roger from Chicago to check, as usual, whether he had any jokes to add, only to be told by Alice, his immediate superior, that he'd just been fired.

'One crude cartoon too many on the noticeboard?' I said.

'I'm afraid so,' she said. 'Still - spilt milk and all that. They come and they go.'

They do indeed. It's as well, however, that I had the foresight to withdraw all criticisms of Mr Plantin and the system.