Wendy uproots herself

May 15 2008 by David Whetstone, The Journal

The garden awaits when Wendy Pilmer steps down tomorrow. David Whetstone asks the BBC boss about her dramatic career change.

THE phrase “gardening leave” has come to cover a multitude of sins in business and politics. But BBC boss Wendy Pilmer insists there’s nothing sinister about her decision to spend more time with plants.

She will say farewell tomorrow as she leaves not only her job as head of the BBC in the North East and Cumbria, but the corporation itself.

At the age of 41, and with a successful broadcasting career behind her, the job might have been viewed as a stepping stone to even greater things by an ambitious BBC executive.

But Wendy views the world differently. In what amounts to a partial – though no less dramatic – career change, she plans to establish herself as a garden designer.

If this is a cover story to gloss over some unknown misdemeanour, there is no hint of it in the BBC’s pink Barrack Road headquarters. Neither is there in Wendy’s direct gaze and downright happy mood.

She agrees: “It is an unusual decision to make, but I still love my job as much as I did when I first went to work for the BBC. I’ve been with them for 21 years and I’ll still be working for the BBC.”

There are, she says, a couple of reasons for her decision to go.

“The first is that I always said I wanted to do the job for about five years and I’ve been here five-and-a-half. I told my boss last March.

“I think it takes about five years to do the big things you want to do, but I think it’s really hard to keep reinventing yourself year after year. I’m not saying that some people can’t do it, but it takes a real talent. You have to be the person bringing in new ideas and influences all the time and it gets harder to do that.

“Now I’ve got a fantastic successor (Phil Roberts, formerly acting managing editor of BBC Radio Merseyside) and he will be bringing in new influences and taking things in a new direction.”

Wendy points out that her BBC career, including a spell as executive producer at Radio 1 and deputy to the controller of Radio 4, has been a little unorthodox. “I’ve only ever wanted to do jobs that really interest me,” she says.

Reason number two for her dramatic departure is related to lifestyle. “There are three things that I’m passionate about. One is radio, the second is gardening and the third is travel. I’ve spent a lot of time going to countries to climb mountains and walk and I thought it would be nice to try and combine all these things.”

So it is that Wendy Pilmer Ltd, a sort of gardening, travelling, radio troubleshooter (for whom there must be an as-yet-unwritten BBC drama series to accommodate) enters the reckoning. Wendy plans to work in a consultative role for the BBC and also for radio stations overseas, sharing the benefits of her experience.

But she also intends to design gardens for people.

“It’s something I’ve done for friends for a long time,” she says, recalling the time she got stuck into the garden of her opposite number in Manchester, getting her hands dirty before changing into suitably executive attire for a high powered BBC meeting later in the day.

She says her first garden, in London, was “a pocket handkerchief”.

When she returned to her native North East – Wendy is Newcastle-born and an ardent Newcastle United supporter – she moved to a house in a Northumberland coastal village with the kind of plot which tends to get the Gardeners’ Question Time panel going.

She says it’s 120ft long on sloping ground and with very sandy soil.

When she moved in, it was very overgrown with nettles and suchlike. But it had previously belonged to an old man who was a keen gardener and beneath the weeds she would come across beautiful roses.

Gardening is probably the richest source of metaphors there is, and it’s hard not to see Wendy’s future life as a designer of beautiful gardens in the context of the life she is about to put behind her. “You have to be very organised and be able to step back and see the bigger picture and reflect on things,” she says of gardening.

And presumably, when necessary, you have to be prepared to get out the secateurs and engage in some pretty ruthless pruning?

Wendy smiles. “In your garden you have to have an idea of the long term effect you are looking for and in radio you have to decide what your target audience is and then be consistent.”

Among BBC accomplishments achieved on her watch she includes the success of programmes such as North of Westminster and Close Up North and further innovations in new technology.

She mentions something called “slice and dice”, a bit of new media-speak which might make more sense when applied to taking cuttings off treasured shrubs.

Wendy says her partner Derek Ivens, who is producer of the Stephen Nolan show on BBC Five Live, is supportive of her move. In any case, the mind is made up, the die is cast and the weeds must quiver.

A final gardening tip from Wendy: Don’t plunge straight in and buy the brightest blooms at the garden centre. They might, like a BBC executive too long in the job, be past their best.

You have to be very organised and able to step back and see the bigger picture and reflect on things