When the BBC decided two years ago to move the Great British Bake Off from BBC2 to BBC1, the programme’s co-creator was not, initially, very keen. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Richard McKerrow told the Guardian at the time, “so my first instinct was – why do we have to move?”
Transferring to BBC1 did not, self-evidently, break Bake Off, which instead rose perfectly to become the most beloved programme on British television. But the announcement this week that Love Productions, of which McKerrow is creative director, will move the show again, this time to Channel 4, has left many fearing that the delicate Bake Off souffle may finally be about to collapse.
McKerrow and Anna Beattie, who co-founded the firm and with whom he has three children, have been savaged on social media for selling out a beloved institution to the highest bidder, for a deal worth £25m a year to Love Productions. But rather worryingly it is not clear if its stars are coming too. On Tuesday, the presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, swiftly announced that they would not transfer to Channel 4, in a statement that very pointedly said: “We are not going with the dough.”
The BBC has been clear about why it thinks Love opted for the commercial broadcaster: “Everyone understands why the production company made the choice they made,” one insider said.
To McKerrow and Beattie’s defenders, however, the suggestion that the deal was struck out of greed is unjust. While negotiations have been ongoing with the BBC over a new contract for more than a year, the relationship between the corporation and the production company has been strained for some years, following a dispute over a BBC production called Hair in 2014, a contest to find the nation’s best amateur hairdresser.
Love accused the corporation of copying the Bake Off format and threatened to sue; the BBC swiftly conceded before proceedings were even issued and paid a settlement to the producer.
A year later, Love accused the broadcaster of doing the same with The Big Painting Challenge, and specialist mediators had to be appointed to resolve the dispute.
“It doesn’t help to establish trust when this is happening to you,” a source close to Love said on Wednesday, referring to “three years of bad blood”, which culminated in a catastrophic relationship breakdown. Insiders insisted McKerrow and Beattie wanted to keep Bake Off at the BBC and fully expected to make the deal work. “They are very upright and very ethical,” said the source. “What they are used to is fantastic audiences and adulation and I think they are finding this very difficult.”
It is not the first brush with controversy for McKerrow and Beattie, who set up Love Productions in 2004. After building a documentary and “structured reality” roster that included Britain’s Youngest Grannies, Famous, Rich and Homeless and Tower Block of Commons, the company sparked a furore in January 2014 with Benefits Street, which portrayed life on a street where 90% of residents claimed benefits, but which was condemned by some as “poverty porn”.
A subsequent series, Immigration Street, was cut to one episode after Love’s crew were confronted by protesters during filming.
McKerrow told the Guardian at the time: “I don’t want to say I am actively looking to be controversial because I’m not but I slightly think if you are not doing something that gets attention, then why do it?”
“Richard and Love have been one of the UK’s most dynamic factual entertainment producers for well over a decade now,” said John McVay, chief executive of Pact, the trade body representing independent TV production companies. “I think he has a real feel for getting under the skin of quite important topics, that engage and entertain. And if you look at Bake Off on the face of it is a cookery show but, like all television, it’s about people.”
The couple met in 1999 while both were Channel 4 executives working on the first episode of Grand Designs. “I looked at it and said this is a piece of crap,” McKerrow has said. “She said ‘it’s not very good at the moment, but it could be brilliant’.”
McKerrow, 53, is a former print journalist who also worked for the Nation in New York and Yorkshire Television. Beattie, five years younger, started her career as a runner with LWT and worked on Location, Location, Location and Ten Years Younger before co-founding Love, where, according to her biography, she has “particular responsibility for ideas”.
The Great British Bake Off, inspired, they have said, by the generosity of bakers at village fetes, was far from a hit at first, taking four years of persuasion (it was reportedly initially offered to Channel 4) before BBC2 finally took a bite. But the spectacular growth of the programme, particularly since its promotion to BBC1 in 2014, has vastly boosted the couple’s fortunes.
Later that year, BSkyB bought a 70% stake in the firm for a sum thought to be around £25m. The couple still each own a 13.59% stake in the company, earning dividends of more than £466,000 each in the year to 2015, according to the company’s accounts. An “earn-out” clause in the Sky deal is likely to yield significant payout in 2019, greatly enhanced by a multimillion-pound deal with Channel 4.
McVay, who advised Love in the negotiations, said that independents often had no choice but to ask for greatly inflated fees from broadcasters, thanks to the spiralling cost of talent in a successful show – after successive pay rises, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are reportedly paid £600,000 each. “People say it’s all about a producer looking to make shitloads of money, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. They were probably looking to cover some of their massively increased costs, and also to make a bit of a margin, and why not? They are a business not a charity.”