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Getting the 'Bastard of Billingsgate' to live up to his name in front of camera
Production company Indus FilmsLength 3 x 60 minutesTX 9pm, 16 November, BBC2Commissioners Charlotte Moore; Clare PatersonSeries producer/director Jamie BalmentProducer/director Will LorimerExecutive producers Lucy Carter; Steve RobinsonPost house GorillaSound Cranc
The night I met Roger Barton turned out to be typical enough: telephone receiver broken in two over head of hapless assistant; re-enactment of the Battle of Mons using a WWI bayonet and a box of advancing halibut; and a close call with the fish inspectors.
He'd also cornered the mackerel market, and by dawn was stuffing more than £60,000 in fifty-pound notes into a fishy briefcase. "You know what they call me?" I did - his staff, his ex-wife and most of his customers had told me.Roger Barton among the carrots at Mexico City's La Central de Abasto
Fast-forward 18 months and the 'Bastard of Billingsgate' was being royally screwed by a chilli baron in La Central de Abasto, Mexico City's vast 800-acre wholesale food market. There are bastards in all markets.
Roger did not come out well from the film I made for the Indus BBC2 series The London Markets. As the credits rolled, his fish were being crawled over by flies, and he was being crawled over by Tower Hamlets' environmental health department.
The press and public loved and loathed Roger in equal measure; and I knew he had his own television series in him. His subsequent prosecution - and a previous custodial sentence - made commissioning a three-part BBC2 series brave and I'm very grateful to Charlotte Moore and Clare Paterson for holding their nerve.
The idea was simple: take a charismatic character out of his comfort zone to do his job in a familiar yet...