Barbara Maxwell, the founding producer of the BBC television debate programme Question Time, who has died aged 81, was an engaging, flamboyant figure whose work necessarily obliged her to traverse the worlds of politics and broadcasting, an undertaking she successfully embraced with effortless charm and to the mutual benefit of both.
She had an instinctive understanding of the chemistry offered by individual guests that could contribute to riveting television and she skilfully spotted potential broadcasting “talent” in someone’s public career, before perhaps even that person might be aware of it. She was smart and sassy, at least as clever as anyone else in the business, and became one of the seminal behind-the-scenes characters in broadcasting throughout the 1980s.
Having joined the BBC as a secretary in the mid-60s, Maxwell had a sparky ebullience that led to her swift promotion in the go-ahead atmosphere of the corporation’s renowned Lime Grove studios in west London. She had been a political activist at Queen’s University Belfast, where she read English literature, and would retain a lifelong passion for politics.
While she was a junior member of the production team attending the 1968 US Democratic convention in Chicago, her angry personal reaction to the mayor Richard Daley’s heavy-handed policing tactics against the anti-Vietnam war demonstrators drew the attention of the star reporters of the day, including Charles Wheeler, and soon after she became a current affairs producer. She worked for a “special projects” section, covering issues such as the first moon landing in 1969, then for the precursors to Newsnight – the programmes 24 Hours, which ran until 1972, and its successor Tonight, from 1975 to 1979. In 1974 she produced The Frost Interview, featuring David Frost.
The guests on the first Question Time, aired in 1979, were Michael Foot, soon to be Labour leader, the Conservative MP Teddy Taylor, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, and the novelist Edna O’Brien. It had been conceived as a stop-gap idea to use the fabled talents of the political journalist Robin Day in the chair and its lively format proved a runaway success – somewhat to the surprise of the suits in management. A distinguishing factor was its unprecedented all-female production team, about which the BBC would later boast as a measure of its forward-thinking feminism, but which was, in reality, “pure accident” according to insiders.
Although Maxwell’s imaginative guest lists, Day’s inquisitorial skills and their mutual professionalism all helped make the programme the “must-see” it became, the two did not always get on and were often at loggerheads. One recurring issue was that Maxwell insisted on having at least one female guest on the programme, which was sometimes difficult to achieve at a time when there were fewer women in public life. Day would argue, meanwhile, that his high-minded chums from the Garrick Club were better equipped to discuss the important matters of the day than what he described as “inadequate, inexperienced panellists … such as B Maxwell’s ‘discoveries’”.
Day fell out of favour with the BBC and left the programme in 1989, largely as a result of complaints by Maxwell. The bitterness was revealed after Day’s death by his successor in the QT chair, Peter Sissons, whose memoirs included a private note from Day – “strictly between us and not to be mentioned to she who thinks she should be obeyed” – telling him not to stand for her instructions during the programme recording. “If she rabbits on, take the earpiece out. I did frequently,” he wrote.
Maxwell had mounted a spirited defence, but she was not consulted about the appointment of Sissons (she had wanted Brian Redhead from the Radio 4 Today programme) and her days were numbered after John Birt took over as deputy and then as director general of the BBC. Everything about Maxwell’s individual style screamed incompatibility with Birt’s renowned control of management and in 1990 she was moved to run political conference coverage, a post she retained until retirement in 1993.
Barbara was born in Gloucester, the only child of two doctors, Brian Maxwell and Anne (nee Robertson), and brought up in Norwich. She was from Irish stock with a flaming head of hair and a determination to go with it. She went to Norwich high school for girls and then to the progressive co-educational boarding school, Millfield, in Somerset, from which she was expelled for bad behaviour after reputedly being found in a boy’s room. She then attended Sherborne school, Dorset. She worked for the British Council after graduating before applying to the BBC.
She had a large family – her father who moved to the UK from Ireland was the youngest of 10 children – and revelled in the summers spent in the family home in Donegal. She was renaissance woman: she loved art and literature and theatre and Norwich City FC (of which she was a season ticketholder) and wild swimming and people – as well as dogs. She met Brian Ash at the BBC, where he was a reporter and presenter on Nationwide. They married in 1971 and she later became the family breadwinner when he studied to become a lawyer (he is now a KC).
Maxwell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 15 years ago and died from complications of the illness.
She is survived by Brian and their children, Cavan, Kitty and Michael, and two grandchildren.
• Barbara Anne Maxwell Ash, journalist, born 13 June 1943; died 3 January 2025
