Art of Persia

Craig Hastings BBC/Craig Hastings

Programme Name: Art of Persia - TX: n/a - Episode: Art of Persia (No. n/a) - Picture Shows: in Yazd, Iran Samira Ahmed - (C) BBC - Photographer: Craig Hastings

Samira Ahmed fights for fairness

It’s not every day you get to interview an Oxford graduate, documentary maker, distinguished news reporter, writer, equal pay advocate and Celebrity Mastermind Champion of Champions.

Samira Ahmed – who famously wore an original Space 1999 costume for the latter  (to honour her specialist subject) – is all of the above and in the light of such brilliance, I was – I confess – a teensy weensy bit nervous ahead of our phone call. 

Fiercely intelligent, Samira can be found on the BBC’s Newswatch and Radio 4’s Front Row as well as in countless publications, such as The New Humanist and The New Statesman.

But reader, I needn’t have fretted; she is chatty and friendly as we mull over topics as diverse as rhubarb and lentils, the 90s, equal pay and the joys of living in South West London.

But first I must ask her about Art of Persia, a three-part BBC documentary series broadcast over lockdown where Samira takes us on a personal journey into the past and present of the mysterious Middle Eastern power.

“Iran is fascinating!” she enthuses. The culture is unique. There’s something very European about it. They sit out in cafés and the streets are like Paris. Iranians are a very modern people but they are proud of their heritage and with Art of Persia, I really embraced the opportunity to get underneath the headlines to understand Iran’s people and how they see themselves.

Yes, I met plenty of people who would quietly say how unhappy they were under their government but they are Iranians first, they’re proud of being Persian and they are not going to let westerners lecture them on who should rule them.

Although it took almost three years for the visas to be granted – Samira was first approached back in 2016 – and there was a lot of diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing behind the scenes with only a week’s notice before flying out to start filming, once there the team was given extraordinary access to both geographical sites, drone filming and precious artefacts.

The latter included a first-hand viewing of an ancient Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), an epic poem written by Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the 11th century, which defines Iranian history and culture and has helped preserve the Persian language.

They didn’t say ‘no’ to anything, explains Samira.

There was never a fight about the script or anyone having anything to do with what we were going to write. Academics in the UK told me that the fact we had been allowed to see the Shahnameh was a really significant gesture and the government was sending out a message: ‘we are not the way we are portrayed by America’.

I’m not in any way tempted to gloss over the terrible crimes of the regime but as a nation, they wanted to remind the world that they are a rich and proud culture.

The series (still available on iPlayer) is something with which Samira herself is justifiably delighted.

It was really enriching and a real joy to make. It’s a very BBC thing, I suppose: you’re educating, informing and entertaining. I’m really proud of it, she adds simply.

Samira grew up around Wimbledon with her parents Lalita and Athar, older brother Salim and younger sister Saira.

Her dad ran a catering supply company while her mum was a regular on the BBC’s Asian network, an early TV chef and presenter at Pebble Mill.

Samira’s parents had arrived from India and Pakistan in the early 1960s and their children enjoyed a diverse and multicultural upbringing.

I was just a south London kid. We went back to India and Pakistan to visit family every other year but London was always home. There were great restaurants, lots of wonderful Indian shops in Tooting… I had the best of both worlds really and I still like that about south London. I studied in Oxford, lived in LA and Berlin and central London, but the south has always been my side!

Although day-to-day life in the Ahmed household wasn’t particularly starry, a visit to Pebble Mill to see her mum film an episode of Gharbar, an Asian women’s chat show where they would discuss really wide-ranging stuff, from cooking to domestic violence – like an Asian women’s Oprah proved to be an important moment.

“Once my mum took me with her and I got to sit in the gallery and watch the whole recording. It was a really seminal experience, not just because of the mechanics of television, but also just the welcome.

The crew was overwhelmingly white and most of the crew was English speaking, but it didn’t matter what language the programme was being made in, there was just this great sense of camaraderie and professionalism.

I remember the studio director asking me about myself and that had an impact on me, I felt like the BBC was a place where people like me could work.

My earliest passion was watching Newsround. I had a letter read out on it which was very exciting and I got a Newsround news hound badge from John Craven and Lucy Mathen. I also loved Blue Peter summer expeditions and that sense of going off to amazing parts of the world that you never knew about. I remember the expedition to Brazil, I used to write stories like I was a reporter on the Brasilia Times – I’ve still never been to Brazil, she laughs.

Struck by what the BBC represented to the nation, her burning desire was to be a journalist.

After A-Levels at Wimbledon High School, she read English at Oxford where she met her husband Brian Millar and following a year at City University, joined the BBC trainee scheme as a news reporter.

I worked on the Today programme and I was a reporter on Newsnight, very hard news and I loved it but there was always a fascination with the bigger stories one could tell and the connection between news and culture is something I’ve spent the last 15 or 20 years really enjoying.

My journalism is always rooted in what’s going on. For example, what are we watching on television and what does it say about the national psyche? Why are we all watching Downton Abbey when austerity hits? Things are tougher now than they were in the 1980s and by getting older you realize the comparisons so I enjoy making programmes exploring relatively recent history because I have a living memory of it.

Last year, Samira found herself on the other side of the news headlines as she took the BBC to tribunal over equal pay.

The crux of the matter had been the difference between her pay for an episode of Newswatch (£440) compared to Jeremy Vine’s salary for an episode of Points of View (£3000) when the two presenters were essentially doing the same job. I wonder how she feels about being an equal pay champion.

“I was in a union and the union-backed me. They funded my case and without them, I could never have brought it. Yes, I was willing to put myself on the line but they carried the financial risk.

I just focused on the case and the facts and I treated it like an investigative journalism issue. What’s the story here? What’s the truth? I had lots of support from colleagues… women obviously, but also the men at the BBC, who I had to ask ‘will you tell me what you’re on?’. And they all did and I’m incredibly grateful.

I always tell people: ‘this is not about women demanding, being greedy. It’s about fairness, it’s about equality.”

Despite the publicity and the fact that it was brought against her employer, Samira is a staunch advocate of the BBC and her case was very much about doing the right thing, rather than attacking corporations or individuals.

The best thing about the whole experience of my tribunal was the people who stopped me at Waterloo Station and in the street; men, women, students, pensioners, construction workers… every ethnicity, every background, all faiths, saying ‘good on you’. It’s not a class thing, it’s not a male versus women thing. Equal pay is equal pay and people understand fairness.

We go on to discuss the plus points of lockdown, cooking, the fabulous multiculturalism of South West London and future plans as following her daughter’s A-Levels this summer, both her offspring will be away at university.

Now an honorary research fellow at her old Oxford College, St Edmund Hall, Samira has research papers to uncover at the Bodleian Library as well as the return of Newswatch to our screens.

I think it’s needed. There’s such anxiety about news reporting and the ways the government has been handling certain aspects of Covid. I feel very keen to get back into that part of my job, which is a bit of a viewers’ champion. It’s a very privileged position, an interesting position – I’m both a BBC journalist at work, but also very consciously a conduit for public opinion. It’s exciting!

Art of Persia is available on BBC iPlayer.

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