From licking stamps to signing the Stones

Although not quite a ‘rags-to-riches’ story, Leslie Hill’s ascent to the top of ITV and EMI, two of Britain’s most famous institutions, had humble beginnings. Leaving school at fifteen, he worked at an accountancy firm “making tea, licking stamps and running errands”, before moving to London and taking a job with the Hamlyn Group publishing company. When the Group was sold to EMI, Leslie found himself being shipped out to “do a company doctor job” on EMI’s New Zealand subsidiary division. He then went on to become Managing Director of EMI UK and Europe, a post he held throughout the 1970s.
From the 1950s to 1970s, EMI was indisputably the most successful record label in the world, responsible for acts including Frank Sinatra, Cliff Richard, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Leslie speaks highly of the “courteous and polite” Mick Jagger, and is equally fond of Paul McCartney, whom he signed to EMI as a single artist. The behaviour of one ‘artist’, however, failed to impress him.
“When people say to me, ‘How did you get on with all these famous rock stars?’ I say very well. The rudest ‘artist’ I ever dealt with was the then Prime Minister Ted Heath, leader of the Conservative Party”. Heath’s interest in classical music is well documented; he conducted orchestras in famous concert halls the world over. Leslie explains, “Because he was a big politician, we [EMI] put out a record of his conducting choirs”. Following one of the Prime Minister’s performances, he and Leslie were introduced. “Just to make conversation I said, ‘Mr Heath, I do hope that you’re quite happy with the way we’re looking after the record for you’, at which point he looked me straight in the face and said, ‘Well, apart from the fact you can’t buy the record in the shops and there’s no promotion for it, it’s perfectly alright’. Then he turned around and walked away”.
Perhaps more rock-and-roll than his dealings with a petulant Prime Minister is his recollection of Freddie Mercury’s 26th birthday party. “It was my first experience of real decadence”, he tells me. He recounts the scene of revelling members of the contemporary music scene’s glitterati, as “an attractive girl came in and stripped, and then a few famous rock stars squirted bottles of champagne all over her”. He pauses, before adding, “I’d never seen anything like it before”.
In 1975, the Sex Pistols burst onto the music scene, establishing the punk rock movement in the UK. The following year, EMI signed the band to a two-year contract. In December of 1976, the Today programme issued a fateful invitation to the Sex Pistols to appear as guests, after their fellow EMI band Queen had dropped out. The show’s host, Bill Grundy, was evidently not the band’s greatest fan. At the end of the programme, Grundy publicly goaded guitarist Steve Jones about their reputation:
Grundy: Go on, chief. Say something outrageous.
Jones: You dirty bastard.
Grundy: Go on, again.
Jones: You dirty f***er.
To say that these antics did not go down well with the British public would be an understatement. The programme was a live broadcast during the early evening at a time when swear words had been uttered on television only three times before in history – with serious consequences. Jones’ language created a storm of publicity furious enough to end Grundy’s television career. “All hell let loose”, Leslie recalls. The tabloid newspapers were occupied for days: the Daily Mirror famously ran the front-page headline “The Filth and the Fury!”, while the Daily Telegraph chose “4-Letter Words Rock TV”. As Managing Director of EMI, the buck stopped at Leslie. True to form, the Daily Mail pursued him, denouncing him as “a punk” and – rather hilariously – tracking down his neighbours to ask them about their experiences of living next door to “a punk”. He chuckles at the memory of taking part in a very serious meeting that Christmas Eve with various elderly, senior figures of EMI, in which they discussed the ins and outs of the word ‘f***’: “When I suggested that these days it was very likely that their grandchildren were already aware of and perhaps using the word, they really were very upset”.
Leslie left EMI in 1980 and spent the next six years working in industrial services. He describes this move as “very strange and quite backward, career-wise”, but one that ultimately enabled him to prioritise his family. “Quite a bit of the time I was home in time for bedtime stories”. In 1987, he approached Central Television – one of the fifteen companies then owned by ITV – about the role of Managing Director. It was not the most auspicious of starts; he faced a frosty reception from the Chairman, who “took one look at my CV, saw all this stuff about office services and flatly refused to see me”. After failing to find anyone from within ITV and “banging the table and insisting he wouldn’t”, the Chairman was finally persuaded to interview Leslie. “The oddest thing was that after about forty-five minutes he couldn’t wait to employ me. We just got on very well”. Three years later, Leslie became Chief Executive of Central Television. Following the merging of ITV’s two largest companies, Central and Carlton, he was ultimately appointed ITV Chairman in 1994. He held this position for eight years, making him ITV’s longest-serving Chairman.
When Leslie talks about his time at ITV, there is a clear sense of how deeply embroiled contemporary politics was in the workings of the corporation. Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of the 1990 Broadcasting Act, for example, precipitated a seismic shift in the world of television, and one that Leslie had been advocating for years. “The Act forced all ITV companies to bid for their licences in what was effectively an auction process”, he explains. Before that, ITV had operated as a monopoly. “In some ways monopolies are easier to run because you have no competition, but on the other hand that makes companies flat and lazy”. Thatcher’s reform overhauled a system in which “the working practices were appalling: the money rolled in and the money rolled out”. He continues, “Our studios were losing something like £25-30 million pounds per year. The new system forced people to do something about it”.
Leslie began adapting the corporation to the new broadcasting climate by examining the individual accounts of its different parts, and discerning which were the most lucrative. “I turned the whole thing into profit sectors and made people accountable for profit. They began to be more concerned about the costs of running their activities”, he says. His rigorous process led to a great increase in ITV’s strength: “We made ourselves so strong in that Midlands region that when these licences were put out for tender nobody bid against us. We knew no one would. So we were expected to bid something like £25-30 million per year, but actually bid just £2000. This was over a ten year period, which meant that ITV saved something like £250-300 million”. Alongside signing the Rolling Stones, he describes this achievement as the high point of his career.
Leslie’s career taught him the vital necessity of quick thinking. When informed that the Sex Pistols had shouted onstage “F*** the Queen!”, Leslie avoided having EMI lambasted in the press by instantly retorting, “No, they said ‘F*** Queen’ – as in, the rock band”. Another incident that required fancy footwork occurred whilst at Central. “We had made a programme about the Queen Mother’s horses; it was an unusual thing for her to get involved in”. She was due to attend a preview of the broadcast at the BAFTA cinema in Piccadilly. “At the last minute, the Queen agreed to come. And I was asked to look after them”. His task was clear: greet the Queen and Queen Mother outside the cinema, accompany them into the lift, and then show them out of the lift to their seats. Unfortunately for Leslie, the lift was both small and made of metalwork. The former meant that he was unable to fit into the lift with the royal pair. The latter meant that as he frantically charged up the stairs next to the lift in order to be ready and waiting for them at the other end, both the Queen and Queen Mother could observe him with perfect clarity from their slowly ascending vantage point. “When I greeted them I was very out of breath. It was a very curious occasion”.
Leslie’s resolution to “work harder than everyone else” meant that success was inevitable. He advises graduates to “Take any job. Some graduates seem to expect a good job right away. Don’t. If you work hard and go the extra mile, you’ll get on”.
Finally, was there anything he would have done differently? “I managed to avoid getting caught up in the world of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll”, he says. “Actually, looking back maybe that’s my biggest regret!”