The Bully Proofing Coach

I worked for the BBC for 28 years, the first 18 for BBC Drama where I did everything, from running to location managing - on such dramas as 'House of Card' series 2 'To Play the King' and 'Between the Lines' series 3 to directing on 'Casualty'. I was then diagnosed in 1995 with Multiple Sclerosis - there ended my career in TV! I'm not BBC bashing here back in 1995, with another employer, I could have lost my job. However back then, with no reasonable adjustments made to protect me from relapse, whist I tried to retrain in script development, I was trapped in barely above entry level jobs. After 10 years I'd had enough and so got myself a new career as a full-time lay-official for my trade union BECTU (Now BECTU sector of the trade union Prospect) in which I was protected from relapse by having union officials to mentor me. The BBC pays members of staff to be full time union officials so that there is always someone available to attend national level negotiations on pay, terms and condition etc and to attend individuals'' redundancy consultations, grievances and disciplinaries - fulfilling the legal right of individuals' to be accompanied to such formal meetings. About 20% of my workload was around bullying - cases and including rewriting BBC's Bullying and Harassment policy post Savile - Judge Rose was sent into the BBC to find out why no members of staff had exposed Jimmy Savile for child abuse. She found this was because the BBC had a culture of bullying and harassment (and incidentally because no one had any evidence.)

So the BBC gave me a new career (and largest personal development I ever had) working for a trade union in the real world, leading to what I'm doing now - which I hope will do a lot more good than my career in TV could!