Of Savile, Ball says: “I knew he was a wrong ‘un from way before television. I knew that from my club days. We all knew to stay away. I was the only children’s TV presenter who was never asked to do a Fix It for Jimmy and I wonder why. I wonder if he knew what I knew…”
Johnny Ball left children’s TV in 1994 and says he’s made double the money working for the private sector making promotional videos for energy providers and other companies.
Since then, he argues: “The BBC destroyed children’s TV by giving it its own channels,” pointing out that when kids shows were on the main channels “viewing figures at 4.30pm were 5-6 million”. Meantime, he claims: “Blue Peter on one occasion last year, recorded NO viewers?”
His theory is that this is a consequence of “drama taking over with Grange Hill and Byker Grove, which taught kids how to be naughty, which they already learnt for themselves. In our factual days, we were by far the finest children’s TV production unit in the entire world. My shows might stand repeating even today.”
Ball won’t be drawn on whether Rishi Sunak is right to push for all kids to learn maths up until the age of 18. He’s never publicly backed any political party and has previously found himself in hot water for arguing against man-made climate change – a topic on which he won’t comment today.
What he will say is that: “Rishi Sunak can see that the maths curriculum has been thinned over the years; this leads to boredom as teaching does not move fast enough and is not challenging enough.”
During the rainy afternoon we’ve spent together, he’s explained Greek theories of horizon calculation. He’s made the maths of the earth’s curvature accessible and fun. But he believes there’s now “too much emphasis on numeracy in primary school and statistics in secondary school. Both are boring and have little to excite students with.
“Geometry, as the Greeks found, is a far better and clearer way to enthuse people about maths, as it teaches us about the world and its shape, about spatial awareness and how maths also connects to art.”
He’s so energised, I ask for his secret. “There isn’t one!” he says. “I’m just me!” He shows me the many gazebos he’s designed and built in the garden. But he laments that while he keeps pitching ideas to TV execs “the phone doesn’t ring as often as I’d like. People seem to want simpler and stupider ideas than I do.”
Although Ball has framed photographs of his appearances on Strictly Come Dancing – as the show’s oldest ever contestant in 2019 – beside his television, he tells me he had an awful time on the show.
He loved doing Gogglebox with Zoe and her 23-year-old son Woody at first, though the trio have decided not to do it again after feeling “sold out”. Ball has six grandchildren, including Woody and his young sister, 13-year-old Nelly.
