Rob Rinder: A lucky break kickstarted my career — so here’s to the bosses who seek out rough diamonds

Unless you’re a serious television-luvvie-type you will not have heard of Tom McLennan. He is the creative director of ITV in Manchester. The shows he runs are diverse; from The Jeremy Kyle Show to University Challenge. They have about as much in common with each other as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Love Island (dear Lord, please make that happen!).

What makes Tom special in the industry is that he doesn’t care where a person comes from. As long as they have ability there is always a role for them on his production teams. Tom’s resistance to nepotism of any sort has given his shows access to unimaginable talent.

On Judge Rinder for example, the team boasts young people who years ago one might more likely have imagined as the future Dalai Lama than gaining a GCSE. Yet they are quite ridiculously good. The thing is that Tom could easily have overlooked some of them, assuming their youths to be blighted with “bad choices”.

In an age where academic hoop-jumping is made out to be all important, it is easy to forget that even a top degree is not enough to forge a successful career. A CV unadorned with a glittering array of internships and work experience is not worth a jot. That’s why it’s not quite enough for the BBC to consider “blind” CVs, because hard-to-get experience counts — although it’s interesting that The Spectator’s blind CV policy did produce an excellent new intern, a 48-year-old woman returning to work after raising her family.

How does one gain this experience? Connections. Elite organisations (especially in the media) play host to a constant stream of Hugos and Tallulahs whose parents needed only to have a quiet word with a friend to secure their first step on the ladder. Armed with a few weeks at a prestigious publication, these lucky few breeze nonchalantly into work. Columnist Julie Burchill puts it like it is: journalism “is made up of SADs (sons and daughters)” — the new WAGS. It is now a truth that “for a SAD, just one call from Mummy to a chum gets your cretinous arse through that door, and from then on it’s plain sailing”.

Increasingly, you can’t walk down a corridor without bumping into some shiny-haired example of nepotism. Some would have succeeded regardless of their parents. But a small legion of the less talented are given opportunities and prevent more gifted people getting a chance.

Discounting the ineffably repetitive homophobic barbs that I receive most days, Twitter trolls’ most common gripe against me appears to be that I am “posh”. Contrary to their unshakeable view, I was not born into the upstairs world. My father is a taxi driver and my mother ran a small business. I hadn’t even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break — I can’t help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.

Don’t get me wrong: I would never begrudge Brooklyn Beckham his book of blurry photos. But the issue is not his photography. It’s that the people he will meet in publishing, the connections he’ll be able to make and the photographers he will be set up with are all advantages inaccessible to many others. This platform shouldn’t be denied to others equally deserving.

Look around in every industry and it won’t take you long to realise that nepotism has reached unsustainable levels. Let’s start spreading work experience and opportunities a little wider so that the photographers, writers and TV producers of tomorrow are drawn from a broader section of society.

Strictly needs to take a step forward

I could not have been more upset to find my defence of Susan Calman flagrantly shanghaied for the purpose of some shocker headlines. Was it so naive to presume it obvious that few things could bring me more delight than a waltz with one of Strictly’s delightful men?

The debacle screams of people’s absolute determination to see the worst in one another. Trolling Susan over this amounts to attacking a gay woman in the name of gay rights. I have a highly positive relationship with my own trolls the vast majority of the time but this particular misconstrual has managed to be really quite devastating.

My point was, and remains, that we are both open about our sexuality (we are both married, for heaven’s sake!) and appearing with opposite-sex partners on Strictly does not undermine this fact nor either of our support for LGBTQI issues. Nonetheless, perhaps now is the ideal time for Strictly to change. And so, I reiterate my offer — do let me stun in the Christmas special alongside perhaps Anton du Beke or the charming Gorka?

* Female grime! The 21st century’s answer to Sylvia Plath must surely be Lady Leshurr or one of her unfathomably ingenious rivals. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the cheek … Brush your teeth,” she deadpans at her woefully halitotic suitors in Queen’s Speech 4. And who among us can’t empathise?

Culture is everywhere and for everyone, and cultural snobbery daily gets my goat. It’s a relief, then, that the lyrical flair of Lady Leshurr, above, and her ilk is here to stay.