Bill takes Latest TV to the House of Commons and gets Sir David Frost on board

“The Brighton Lights they make me feel so free I’m driving down the London Road to where I want to be Brighton UK.”

Lord Michael Grade and Sir David Frost are smiling three feet away from me across the table. 50 other peers and MPs are tucking into their breakfast as I serenade them at the House of Commons breakfast room. Later one told me: “No-one’s ever sung before here in a speech – and you were good!” Maybe he was the heckler in my speech, during a boring bit about how much money we could make from advertising, who piped up: “Give us a song!”.

“Let’s build a film, TV and digital industry here in Brighton”

I was there to deliver the case for city-based TV and for the new Channel 8 which Latest TV will start to deliver later this year. My soundbites: “Local TV equals local democracy”, and “When we switch on our local news in Brighton and Hove we see Southampton or Maidstone” – both went well. Brighton is the natural capital of the south coast, a famous face said! Then Michael Grade told us all that, when as controller of BBC1, he was starting the new regional news service for London and the south which was not popular with Londoners, a suggested title by a viewer for the new area was ‘Sod Off Kent!’

As well as having a ready wit, Mr Grade showed what an astute business head he has as he advised us to look for a low cost national/local advertising model to enable companies to get into TV advertising. There are great companies all over the UK who would love to be on television across the UK but at the moment there are only a few channels and the price is prohibitive – that was the gist of his remarks. I told him that www.latesthomes.co.uk was exactly that. We would love to be one of those companies and compete with Right Move and Zoopla on an equal basis.

The key thing though is that all the MPs and Lords recognised that TV and the new digital world are huge industries for this country and should be supported. If you want to be a nurse or a surgeon you can easily work in Brighton or near Brighton. If you want to be a vision mixer or a TV presenter you probably have to work in London. Well done, Zoe! Well done, Steve! Let’s build on Zoe and Steve’s and our other stars’ success. Let’s build a film, TV and digital industry here. Let’s build HOLLYWOOD in HOLLINGBURY. I might need some help with the sign this weekend (we won’t be using Sod Off London). The council need to look seriously at providing film studios in
the city.

We need the big Brighton-based stars to help us get this amazing new TV channel rocking. Remember (some of you) how great Channel4 was when it started with Jonathon Ross’ Last Resort and Chris Evans’ breakfast show? We also need real London based A-list. And I’ve got good news: I asked Sir David Frost to do a show with us and he said yes. YESSSSSSSSSS!