Don't Look at the Camera tells the extraordinary inside story of what it's like to spend a lifetime making television. Ian Fisher is an international award winning producer/director, who started his television career, as a news reporter and presenter. This first volume of his memoirs is an often hilarious, sometimes emotional journey through a series of adventures, regular occurrences in his working day.
As a reporter, he impersonated a cabinet minister to secure an interview with the Home Secretary, tracked down Richard Branson's balloon at the end of his record-breaking trans-Atlantic flight, faced down a farmer who threatened to shoot him with a shotgun, and led the first television crew into Lockerbie after Pan Am Flight 103 crashed onto the town.
His program-making exploits have been no less interesting, leading to encounters with some of the world's top experts in their specialisms. He tells of the man who masterminded the US hydrogen bomb project, whose first encouraging words on meeting him at the end of a five thousand mile journey were, "You know I don't want to do this", and of the scientist, whose pipe set fire to his sports jacket half way through the interview.
Fisher says he's been lucky that the predominant sound in the crew vehicles and edit suites he's worked from has been laughter, and it finds its way into this book. But, it's not exclusively a light-hearted take on life.
His involvement in covering the funeral of an 11-year-old girl, murdered by a serial killer who the police took years to track down, is a heart-rending story. And, the description of events at Lockerbie on the night of the crash and over the subsequent days gives a unique insight into the pressures and dangers faced by journalists and crews reporting on world-level events.
Fisher has picked up a wide range of awards over the course of his career, including two medals from the prestigious New York Film & Television Festival, and his knowledge and experience are woven into the very fabric of this book. Don't Look at the Camera will have you laughing and weeping. But, you'll also marvel at how much one person can fit in to a single life.
