HS2 could be comedy gold

Did you watch Twenty Twenty Six?

It was the much-belated successor to Twenty Twelve and W1A, two of my favourite programmes of all time.

Have you seen them?

If not, you’ve got to! They’re utterly brilliant. You can get DVDs.

Twenty Twelve was a satire of the Olympic Delivery Authority, broadcast in the run-up to the Olympics, in which Hugh Bonneville played the only competent manager in a team of idiots.

Anyone know a project working to a deadline?

After the Olympics, his character moved to a new job at the BBC. The joke in W1A was that no-one (including him) actually knew what his job was but, surrounded by sycophants and schemers, he was always the fall-guy for every crisis.

They were both utterly superb.

The third series, Twenty Twenty Six, didn’t work quite so well, and I understand why.

It put Hugh Bonneville into the organising team for the FIFA World Cup, based in Miami.

Like both the Olympics and the BBC, the World Cup is huge and famous… so why is there less of a naughty thrill to see the (invented) pratfalls behind the scenes?

It’s because we all know FIFA don’t give a sh*t.

Both London 2012 and the BBC were highly controversial public services staffed by people spooked out of their wits by the prospect of bad PR. Both the London Olympics and the BBC are magnificent achievements, but both organisations were still deeply paranoid.

And both organisations’ remits took them into constant contact with the public, which created a rich vein of humour to be mined.

As both were nationally important to the UK, there was a constant frisson that, actually, this has got to be OK somehow. Most of those of us who chose to watch didn’t want the BBC or London 2012 to fail.

But we Brits aren’t invested in the success of FIFA, and we all know that FIFA aren’t paranoid (as they know they’ll be just fine whatever goes wrong), so the joke is somewhat lost.

What should Hugh Bonneville’s third job have been?

To replicate the magic of the first two series, we’re looking for a nationally significant public service. One that is passionately convinced of its own righteousness but surrounded by enemies on all sides. One that faces endless crises and an oscillation between the highest of high politics, and ludicrous run-ins with individual citizens. One that allows its paranoia and fear of failure to cause it to endlessly flirt with failure.

The joy of PR stunts

Step forward HS2!

Does anyone have the scriptwriter’s phone number?

After the slight mis-hit of Twenty Twenty Six, consider this my pitch to them to make the fourth series, provisionally entitled Fast Track.

It had already occurred to me that HS2 would make a great successor to the BBC as the butt of the Twenty Twelve team’s jokes, but my only interaction with HS2 really brought home to me just how they were already playing the part.

As some of you will know, I have a podcast.

Back in 2021, I invited Victoria Lee (the eminent urbanist and placemaker) onto The Freewheeling Podcast as I thought it would be good for my audience to hear how great urban design and great transport can feed off each other. She was now working at HS2 so said she would need to check with the comms team. There then started an extraordinary saga utterly without parallel in the more-than-100 podcast episodes I’ve recorded.

First she said that the comms team wouldn’t agree without me speaking to them in person to talk through what I was planning on talking about.

I then had a conversation with the comms team, at the end of which they said that Victoria could do the podcast but only if a member of HS2’s comms team joined the recording. I agreed and we scheduled the date.

On the day, it turned out that they weren’t allowed to use the online recording system I use for my podcasts with HS2 email accounts. We then had a seriously comedic email exchange in which we tried to work out whether Victoria could do the podcast from her personal email account if she didn’t refer to HS2. I pitched the idea that maybe she could use her personal email account and refer to HS2 anyway. Just maybe? Given… that was… what the recording was… about? Ah - no. OK.

Finally, 45 minutes after the recording was due to start, the comms person asked to see the brief again, then said we wouldn’t be recording that day and that he was going to start again rereading the brief and come back to me with any questions.

I replied to say that most of my episodes take 45 minutes to record; HS2 had so far wasted two hours to not record a podcast. They already had weeks to read the brief and I wasn’t going to spend any more time discussing it but I would be delighted to interview Victoria Lee as per my original email.

90 minutes after dialling into the system to record the episode, I got an email from the comms person to say that they “would not be taking this forward.”

I’m a passionate supporter of HS2 and host a pro-public transport podcast in which I try to always highlight the positives.

HS2 is a male-dominated company, under constant attack. Here was an unashamedly optimistic and positive podcast offering to highlight the great work of one of their female managers.

It takes a rare communications genius to waste two hours of a supporter’s time and then reject an opportunity. If they could make their supporters this pissed off, how on earth did they treat their enemies? I had wondered how on earth the Green Party (of all people!) had ended up as implacable opponents of HS2. Now I started to get an inkling…

It all felt so familiar from watching W1A or Twenty Twelve, in which the paranoia of the organisations drove them time and again to shoot themselves firmly in their own feet.

So, despite having had my time wasted by HS2, I will offer them this unsolicited communications advice.

The controlled and paranoid approach makes enemies of your closest friends. The incident I described took place nearly five years ago. I suspect everyone involved has moved on. It’s under new leadership.

Let’s lighten up, get on the phone to the W1A team and get the scriptwriters working.

Both the Olympic Deliery Authority and the BBC came out smelling of roses, with Seb Coe (London 2012 leader) and Tony Hall (BBC Director General at the time) putting in cameo appearances to show there were no hard feelings - and enhancing their reputations as a result. I can see Lord Hendy doing a cameo on Fast Track.

Imagine this lot running HS2. ..

I’m sure Hugh Bonneville will be up for it!