At 81 years old, just one year younger than the BBC itself, Wheeler has been at the forefront of world news reporting for over 50 years. Time Shift looks at the decisive moments of the latter 20th Century through the eyes of one of journalism's most dedicated yet modest professionals.
Director Interview
BBC Four: Why did you decide to focus on Charles Wheeler?
Gerry Dawson: I'd made Time Shifts on Malcolm Muggeridge and James Cameron and when you come to different types of iconic journalist Charles Wheeler pops out. He was there when BBC television news reporting first started, and he's still working which is extraordinary.
BBC Four: What would you say are his main attributes as a journalist?
GD: Integrity and dogged determination.
BBC Four: Where would you say he has particularly distinguished himself?
GD: He's a particular type of journalist who doesn't believe the reporter should get between the viewer and the story. Jeremy Paxman says that Charles' presence, and the trust he inspires in the people that he talks to, gives him a rare quality. He seems to draw the best out of people, he doesn't push himself into a story, he takes that one step back and that's why I decided to call the programme Edge of Frame. You see him in a lot of pieces either right on the side of the picture or actually moving out of it.
BBC Four: He's hugely respected in journalistic circles, but do you think he's fallen off the radar a bit with the younger generation, perhaps because of this very self-effacing style?
GD: It's certainly not the modern celebrity style, you can characterise it as old-fashioned but I think that would be unfair. I think it's a consciously simple style, deceptively simple, because when you look at Charles' reporting of the story, as a viewer it's very easy to understand the story. With some of the flashier reporters you remember them long after you remember what the story was about, with Charles it's the other way round.
I personally think it's a tremendous virtue and I can see why a lot of journalists admire him, I just wish a few more would imitate him. If you replay one of his interviews you can see that you're being given an interpretation and the tools to form your own view about something. He doesn't emote, he doesn't sentimentalise, he takes you into the story. For what is now quite an old chap he shows remarkable courage. There he is, round about 70, when he barges into that Kuwaiti hospital filled with armed guards. That must have taken a fair bit of bottle, because even when you watch it now there's a feeling of menace about the whole place.
BBC Four: You mention this aversion for being the centre of attention. How did he respond to the making of this film?
GD: He wasn't very keen on the idea at first, my pitch was that as a viewer I would find it surprising if he wasn't there to give his interpretation of the events we discussed within the programme, and in the end he agreed. But he was very cautious about the programme to start with, I guess that's his style, he takes the time to form his opinion. I think he wanted to see what the programme would be like, because a documentary about a person's life can be sensationalist. What I've tried to do is just get him, and people who have worked with him, on the screen and get them to tell their story. Nobody pretends that he's an easy guy to get along with, and he accepts that himself, but I think that the character of being "his own man", to use Jeremy Paxman's words, that's what gives him that Wheeler quality.
BBC Four: Had you encountered Wheeler before in your personal or professional life?
GD: I'd interviewed him for the James Cameron documentary, and so we had met once before. He had enormous respect, and I think affection, for Cameron, who was clearly a very different sort of journalist. A journalist who was happy talking about himself on camera, who came from a very political background and was a campaigning journalist.
Now Charles isn't a campaigning journalist and I thought the interesting part of my conversation with him was about where his instincts came from. I didn't know that the answer was going to be the background in Nazi Germany and what he'd witnessed there. That took me by surprise because when I tried to talk about his very distinguished war record I couldn't get him to open up on that at all. He's a very guarded man, he's not quick to tell you about all his trials and tribulations. So when he talked about taking bread into the woods for Jews who were hiding there when he was a teenager, that did take me completely by surprise. But it did make sense, when you listen to his reports, a basic sense of justice seems to run through everything.
BBC Four: One fascinating piece of footage you have on the programme is from a bootleg tape of an exchange Wheeler had with John Birt in a BBC meeting, was it difficult to get hold of?
GD: It was and I'd like to thank my researcher Matthew Pelly for tracking that down, we did a Holmes and Watson, and I think he was more of the Holmes. There was a programme Nick Fraser had made about John Birt and it featured in there and I think it's a wonderful piece of theatre. I'd love to have Desmond Morris or some expert on human body language analyse it, because if you look at the whole panel virtually every person has their hand by their mouth.
BBC Four: Were you at all worried about using the clip given the rumours that he may return in the wake of Greg Dyke's departure?
GD: I thought that was the most compelling reason to use it.
BBC Four: One last thing, I didn't realise that Boris Johnson is Charles Wheeler's son-in-law, are you going to add this fact on the captions?
GD: It's quite a surprise, isn't it? Originally the caption was going to read "Editor of the Spectator and son-in-law", but we've changed it for the very reason you've observed, the astonishing thing isn't that he's editor of the Spectator, but that he's Charles' son-in-law. On the final day's filming we had Boris in the morning and Jeremy Paxman in the afternoon. I must say that day was one hell of a lot of fun. We've only been able to put a little bit of it in the programme but you could watch both interviews at length and they'd be programmes in themselves. When Charles gets his Media Society Award next month, he knows he's getting it so I can mention it, Boris will present it. Unfortunately I couldn't get them in the same room at the same time because that really would have been heaven, with their great shocks of hair!
