Writing Home by Alan Bennett

price to pay. And besides he loved a studio and, though he enjoyed a production jaunt, he was never happier than when he was in the gallery at TC3 or on the stage at Ealing, where we were this last summer, Innes sitting beside the camera with his stick between his knees still with all his fun and zest, surveying the gallery at Buckingham Palace.
    He was of course by this time desperately ill, but, just as he never passed on his worries about the production, so he would not burden you with problems he did not think were yours, dismissing his operation after Christmas as ‘just a spot of plumbing. Nothing to worry about.’ When Coral Browne had been ill during An Englishman Abroad she too had been very brave without, as must often be the temptation, letting you know she was being ‘brave’ about it. And so it was with Innes – no indication in his talk or his demeanour of the burden he was carrying, and no hint that there was anything else he would rather be doing at this moment in his life than the film. He even wondered about future projects, one on the Orgreave Riots with Don Shaw, and he asked me whether I thought there was a film to be made of A. J. P. Taylor’s letters to his Hungarian wife. ‘A lot of it takes place in Budapest,’said Innes, ‘so at least we might get to Aberdeen.’
    Some odd thoughts about him:
    In all the years we worked together he never once told me what my viewing figures were or even mentioned them; to have done so would have been a concession to a view of television for which he had no time.
    Though conservative by temperament, he hated Mrs Thatcher, ‘Do you see what she’s done now?’ the initial topic at many a production meeting. That apart, his strongest condemnation of anyone was ‘Bloody man’ or ‘Frightful person’.
    Unstinting in his appreciation of others, he was pleased if you liked one of his productions but rarely complained if it had been badly received – just got on with the next job in hand.
    For many years he shared a suite of offices on the fifth floor with a producer of a more radical stamp, Kenith Trodd. It was an unlikely pairing, and Trodd’s doings often filled Innes with childlike amazement, but for all their disparity they were closer to each other than they were to many of their colleagues. ‘He’s all right is old Trodd,’ Innes would say, one enthusiast recognizing another. And because he was laconic and unassuming – laid-back would be the current phrase – it wasn’t immediately obvious that an enthusiast was what Innes was – and, though cast in a different mould, as much an enthusiast as that other BBC Welshman, Huw Wheldon.
    He always had his priorities right. When things went wrong he was more concerned that no one should be hurt or treated unfairly than that his own reputation should be kept intact. On one film of mine, through no fault of his own, the director lost his nerve. We got behind, deadlines began to loom and the production to fall apart. In all this Innes’s first concern was that this young man should recover his nerve and suffer no damage, and, though eventually another director had to take over, Innes straightaway made plans that once the opportunity arose theyoung man would get another production in less exacting circumstances.
    Innes pretended to be an amateur while in truth being the supreme professional. It’s a very English approach, and his preferences were very English. But he went his own way, and there are many writers besides myself who count themselves lucky that that way coincided with theirs – Don Shaw, Reg Gadney, Roger Milner, Andrew Davies, Richard Gordon, Robin Chapman, Michael Palin all have cause to be grateful to him. The greatest compliment he paid you was that he trusted you. He let you go your own way even though that might be well off the beaten track. I can’t believe that Proust was quite his cup of tea, and it is surely only in remembering this lovely man that you would ever find Kafka even