What Unfulfilled Potential Looks Like

Last year my friend and colleague Jay Mukoro died and life is not fair.

A few times in life something happens that puts everything in perspective. An event so dramatic that it shocks the system and either forces you to re-evaluate your beliefs or spurs you on to redouble your efforts.

Last April I was on holiday in America when my personal phone started ringing at 3.50am in the morning. It was my Production Manager and I knew instantly something was wrong. Back in the UK it was still only ten to nine.

"There's no easy way to say it, so I'm just going to say it" was all the warning I got by way of preamble. "We think Jay is dead - drowned in Barbados". Just typing this conversation still makes my lip quiver. He was in Barbados for a wedding but he was also directing a film for me about the 1986 Commonwealth Games. One of the interviewees happened to live in Barbados and so the day before he had shot an interview with him. Work done the following day he had gone back to enjoying his holiday. My understanding is that he swam out to sea and simply never returned.

There are supposedly seven stages to grief and now nine months on I think I have gone through them all, but if I think too much about it I am quickly transported back to the “anger stage”.

Jay was a brilliant Assistant Producer. He had worked on numerous high profile landmark Current Affairs films. Everything from The History of Modern Britain with Andrew Marr to Mixed Britanica. But like hundreds of black people working in television before him he felt he had hit a glass-ceiling.

No one would give him the break he needed to direct his first film.

I've lost count of the conversations we would have in Pret A Manger or Costa Coffee by the BBC where we'd discuss the problems of the glass-ceiling. Part career advice, part therapy session they were fundamentally just two black people discussing the obstacles we face. But no matter how difficult the issues were Jay would always be laughing and smiling.

Everyone I spoke to who worked him all said the same thing;

“Jay is brilliant”. “He should be directing”. “He deserves a break”.

Last year I was finally in a position to give him that break. BBC Scotland - due to the Commonwealth Games and The Referendum - had more opportunities than usual. I didn't give him the break out of some act of goodwill but because I knew he was perfect for the job. The film was about the 1986 Commonwealth Games, a fascinating story of an African led boycott due to South African apartheid. Jay had a great track record in history docs, understood how to distill complex race issues to a mass audience (in this case apartheid) and had brilliant visual ideas.

                                

He had to move up to Glasgow to direct the film but he didn't hesitate. The first month he moved into my spare bedroom while he looked for a place to stay. That's when I'd like to say the professional relationship became a friendship. I found out he loved Radiohead (although knew the difference between a Tribe Called Quest track and a De La Soul song) and I discovered how he proposed to his wife Olivia and about his relationship with his Nigerian father.

It is trite when someone young dies suddenly to talk about "what a loss it is", "a waste of talent" or "how we lost him in their prime". But with Jay these oft quoted phrases have an added edge that literally fills me with anger and sorrow.

Jay may have been finally directing his first broadcast film but there was no way this should have been his directing debut. His talent was so immense and obvious, not just to me but everyone you spoke to, he should have had a plethora of directing credits. I shouldn't have been "giving him a break", he should have been "doing me a favour" to direct a film I was exec'ing.

We often talk about "glass-ceilings" in the abstract. Jay's death exposes the cruel reality behind such an innocuous phrase. It is about wasted talent. It is about people being held back despite amazing talent. It is about the fact that for far too many black people working in the media fundamentally life is unfair. Jay's tragic and untimely death just brings that into focus.

Jay was never able to fulfil his potential. The same is true for too many people from diverse backgrounds working in television – although rarely as obvious or tragic.

I will miss Jay terribly, as I am sure will everyone who ever worked with him. It might be almost a year later but I am sure all our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Olivia and the family he leaves behind.