Banking on the success of the North East's TV industry

Sep 1 2008 by Graeme King, The Journal

Sandra Jobling’s career was transformed when she was Robson Green’s bank manager. Graeme King meets the co-founder of one of the region’s top television production companies.

IT MUST be an unusual existence in television production – close to the world of celebrity and stardom, but always in the background.

Sandra Jobling probably knows this better than most, being the business partner of one of the best known North East faces on television – Robson Green.

The pair have run Coastal Productions from offices on the Newcastle Quayside for some 12 years now and have an enviable track record of producing prime time drama behind them.

Wire in the Blood is about to start its sixth series on ITV1, and Coastal also has a three-part thriller called Place of Execution set to go out at the end of this month.

These are just the latest high profile Coastal projects to go before a national audience – and all begin life in the cosy, top floor offices the company occupies close to the Live Theatre.

Under the eaves of the building, Jobling has a glass walled office looking out on to an apartment-like space with deep, comfortable sofas for the country’s top television talent to relax on.

It has been an interesting journey into television for the now 56-year-old Jobling, having begun her career in secretarial work. But the whole story actually begins up in Northumberland.

Jobling was born in Acklington where her father was in the RAF, so they lived on the base there, but it was not long before they were moving on.

The family lived in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in Warwickshire, Aberdeen in north east Scotland and even Libyan capital Tripoli for a period.

She remembers: "We used to be evacuated quite regularly from Tripoli. One time, we went from the heat of Libya to 10 feet of snow in Aberdeen almost overnight. But I have fond and happy memories of being in Tripoli, of the whole experience.

Eventually Jobling returned to the North East though, and she attended what is now Tyne Metropolitan College on the Coast Road in North Tyneside, to do a secretarial course.

She says: "My career has been down different paths. I was a travel agent, I worked in Bainbridges department store, and I worked for Mincoff Science Gold solicitors for a number of years."

Jobling was a clerk and secretary to partner Howard Gold for several years, and recently crossed paths with him again by a strange coincidence.

She says: "Just a few weeks ago, I got a call from our location manager, saying I would never guess where we were filming Wire in the Blood. It was in Howard Gold’s house in Gosforth!"

After the law firm, Jobling went to work in banking for Abbey National as was. She had left her previous job to have her daughters, and says she was looking for a part-time role.

She says: "They dithered about employing me. The manager knew me very well, as I had brought them a lot of will work. I asked if I could have a job typing, but he said I would soon want to do something else. Sure enough, after two to three weeks, I asked if I could do mortgages, or be on the counter. I worked my way up from the cash desk to being in financial planning, and ran two branches.

"It was during that time that I met Robson. He banked in my branch, so I got to know him well. He asked me one Christmas if I fancied leaving and going to work for him.

"I was asked to be a PA, but actually a jack of all trades. So I decided to leave my security at the bank and go to work for him. Within a few weeks, the job became lots of other things -– youth theatre, the production company, etc, etc.

"It’s just grown from there. In 1996, we rented a 12ft by 12 ft ‘box’ in the Live Theatre. We were there for two years. They had been given a lottery grant to buy this building. Everything up here was covered in pigeon poop – it was just terrible. It took eight months to get it put right.

"I knew nothing about television production, so we started off co-producing. I thought it was the best avenue to learn the industry.

"I can do a company’s books, run the business, but this industry is a different thing."

Jobling goes on to tell a little of Coastal’s early days, and one or two of the projects along the way, including Grafters, which starred Robson Green alongside Stephen Tompkinson.

Green has always been at the heart of Coastal, and it was a deal tying him to just one channel which proved a groundbreaking moment for the company.

Jobling says: "We struck the first ever golden handcuffs deal with an artist. We had been asked by the BBC and Granada to sign Robson up.

"But we thought, why not sign directly with ITV? So that’s what we did. We worked closely with people like Nick Elliott and David Liddiment on that."

Getting such a significant deal would appear to be not only testimony to the popularity and ability of Robson Green as an actor for ITV to sell to its audience, but also Coastal’s reputation for producing quality, mass audience dramas – and all based in the supposedly unfashionable North East.

Jobling says: "We made a conscious decision to stay here. Everywhere else in the country was quite well served by the television industry, but we did not think Newcastle was.

"We’ve tried to bring a lot here. We always say the north is a location, and it does not have to be named. We are not making ‘Geordie drama’ – you have to make it a universal landscape.

"We can shoot everything we need within a 30-mile radius of the city centre here – urban landscape, beaches, countryside.

"It’s about sustainability. Before us, it was the Cooksons being made up here. You tend to find it’s one company or one show sustaining the industry, but you need multiples.

"We need to introduce directors and directors of photography to the region. Once they come here, they can’t believe it – the locations we have, and the access they have.

"Just the ease of doing it. In London, it can take two to three hours to get from one location to another. Here, we can build three moves into a day and manage it, so you get more time on camera."

Jobling would like to see more television production in the region. She says: "There needs to be more support out there. Commissions will bring work here, and we need scripts and ideas. Unless you are investing in writers and scripts, you don’t get commissions. You can invest all you like in other areas, it won’t matter.

"We have trained make-up artists, sound people, editors, but I can only do that if I have a show to make.

"It would be an easier route for both of us to go to London, but my philosophy is about making shows in the North East. That is not to say we would not shoot somewhere else, but our main philosophy will always be about working and shooting in the north."

And what does the future of Coastal look like, once Robson Green is not a mainstay of the ITV1 schedule?

"Robson and I have worked to make drama he is in, and drama he’s not in. He is half the company, but he works for Thames Talkback, and Granada – as many hours outside Coastal as within.

"We made a series called Hereafter, or Shades as it was known abroad, with Stephen Tompkinson and Dervla Kirwan.

"I co-produced it with another company. It was not broadcast here, but has gone out everywhere else in the world. We are also making a drama called Place of Execution with Greg Wise and Juliet Stephenson, adapting a Val McDermid novel. It will be on television in late September, with three one hour episodes as part of something called "Monday night is thriller night".

Whatever the subject matter, Jobling’s thoughts are never far from the importance of Coastal’s home to the way the company works – and she hopes to be making drama here for many years to come.

"I’m passionate about the North East. I have to say, Coastal, Robson and I have been passionate about the region for years. There’s a camaraderie about the North East, and as long as that does not get parochial, it’s great.

"I think we’ve done extremely well – we are a small ‘indie’ but if you look at what we’ve achieved – 40 hours of drama made on our own, and it’s all been successful. Wire is in its sixth season – that’s a tremendous achievement."

CV

Born: 1951

Education

North Tyneside College (now Tyne Metropolitan College), secretarial qualification

Employment

(most senior positions)

Late 60s Positions at Exchange Travel (travel agent) and Bainbridges department store.

1969-79 Mincoff, Science, Gold solicitors – secretary

1979-1996 Abbey National, branch manager

1996-present Coastal Productions, executive producer

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

What car do you drive? A Mercedes SLK 350 – I love it.

What’s your favourite restaurant?

McCoy’s at The Tontine in North Yorkshire, and Terry Laybourne’s Cafe 21.

Who or what makes you laugh?

Probably my three-year-old ‘G’ child – I won’t be called Grandma, so she calls me Sandra.

What’s your favourite book?

There is not really one book, but my favourite authors are Val McDermid and James Patterson.

What’s your favourite film?

Always, with Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfus and Audrey Hepburn.

What was the last album you bought?

My husband buys my music really – the last was Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

What’s your ideal job, other than your current one?

I’ve always said that, in another life, I would love to be an estate agent in the USA. I think it would be fun, and they do it in a different way to here.

If you had a talking parrot, what’s the first thing you’d teach it to say?

No comment – I can’t think of anything.

What’s your greatest fear?

Death.

What’s the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

Honesty – at all times. And never being afraid to say you don’t know.

Worst business advice?

Not to take your own financial advice. I think you are best off following your own instincts [on what you are comfortable with doing].

What’s your poison?

Chocolate. I don’t smoke or drink, but I do like chocolate.

What newspaper do you read, other than The Journal?

The Daily Mail or the Sunday Times.

How much was your first pay packet and what was it for?

I don’t know how much I got, but it was for working in a value store in Wallsend. I took the meat off the back of vans and put it in the butcher’s section of the shop.

How do you keep fit?

I have an exercise machine in the office – a cross trainer. And I try to walk whenever I can.

What’s your most irritating habit?

I talk too much, and I’m quite a quick talker.

What’s your biggest extravagance?

Clothes.

Which historical or fictional character do you most identify with/admire?

Probably CJ Cregg in the West Wing. Ever since it started, I’ve always thought I would love to be CJ – and she talks fast like me. If I was a man, I’d like to be Jack Bauer in 24!

And which four famous people would you most like to dine with?

Jack Bauer – or at least Kiefer Sutherland who plays him, Audrey Hepburn, Hillary Clinton and Elkie Brooks – she was fantastic in her day.

How would you like to be remembered?

As somebody who cared.