Alesha Dixon: Who's Your Daddy?

When Flame Television approached me to develop and then direct the absent fathers’ documentary, Alesha Dixon: Who’s Your Daddy? I had a few initial worries. I thought the subject matter compelling and tough (which I loved) but I didn’t know a great deal about Alesha herself. I‘d always been sceptical of factual documentaries fronted by celebrities especially when the subject matter was as serious and sensitive as in this case. Would there be a genuine connection between Alesha and our subject or would it ultimately be another forgettable celebrity authored piece? I did wonder just how well the two would marry up.

The other worry I had was on the research front - it turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected to get up-to-date statistics on absent fathers and the numbers of children affected, how much, how badly and so forth. The cost of conducting our own nationwide survey or questionnaire was too prohibitive on this occasion so we had to spend a lot of plain hard-working man hours to find out the information required in order to springboard the whole show from development to production.  Ironically Mishcon de Reya have just recently released a study where they interviewed 4,000 parents and children to mark the 20^th anniversary of the Children’s Act. This had various revelations in it including the fact that one in three children in the UK never see their fathers after their parents have split up. Back in the summer we would have welcomed such a study with open arms.

As for the issue of Alesha fronting the programme, I met her after a week of starting work on the film and saw immediately that this wasn’t going to be just another celebrity fronted show – I could see how passionate she was about the subject matter. The spark actually entered her eyes and did not leave.  She was also so incredibly fresh and naturally inquisitive that to picture her as an ‘investigative reporter’ became a lot easier. What’s more, Alesha wasn’t at all demanding on the ‘celeb front’ either – the only riders we had on this show were Alesha herself when she got onto one of the contributors’ horses.

Thankfully BBC Commissioning Editor, Fiona Campbell, was also incredibly supportive editorially speaking, as was Executive Producer, Barbara Altounyan. They’d call me from wherever they were – a romantic weekend in Prague; their home on a cold, rainy Sunday….it didn’t matter the day or the time, we were all in it together to get the best result. Both never once tried to put on the director’s hat either.

On that front, the budget, schedule and subject matter more or less dictated how I decided to film it. I went for classic observational documentary style – simple but beautifully framed shots where the stories became the stars of the film over and above anything else. 

Once the team had got to work fact finding it was time to start looking for young people affected: children who had never known their father at all. Assistant Producer, Clare Cameron, scoured the country doing a fantastic job in casting and before long we had a list of young people for Alesha to meet and interview on the subject.

I have to say, at the risk of sounding sychophantic, it was truly incredible to see Alesha in action in these interviews. This was not the glamorous singer you see on stage (though of course she never once stopped looking gorgeous – even at 7am on a bleary eyed morning damn her!), neither was this the Strictly Come Dancing judge from your screens on a Saturday evening; this was friend, girl next door, fellow product of a single parent family…and at the same time, most definitely, ‘investigative reporter’. As Alesha engaged with our contributors she had a way of making the cameras disappear and our contributors, often very young, subsequently opened up on this incredibly sensitive subject. I think this was one of the most enlightening parts of the whole process and it was a privilege to be witness to it.

Don’t get me wrong, Alesha, like any other human being, would also suffer nerves before filming some sequences. On one particular morning when we were filming with a class of teenage school kids she turned to me beforehand and said ‘Christina I’m kacking my pants!’ and then she strolled right in and commandeered the childrens’ attention like she had been a teacher all her life! She did a Charlie Chaplin style kick in the corridor afterwards (all of her own accord) and I’m sure this was down to her adrenalin rush and sheer enjoyment of what she had just achieved!   

As for the production in general, we had a jam packed schedule right from the outset and literally ate tarmac for breakfast, lunch and dinner…  I think the crew would all agree we covered an ambitious stretch of the UK over a relatively short period of time - and several episodes of Friends were watched by Alesha in her car!

The whole production wouldn’t have been possible without a top team both in the office and on the road. The location crew definitely kept us in smiles (despite the serious subject matter being investigated).

On one occasion, Cameraman, Woody James, went the extra mile (literally) to get a shot through a corn field of Alesha’s car driving past - the driver, Drew, who was unable to hold back the boy racer in him, kept putting his foot to the floor. Woody only just managed to get the shot by the skin of his teeth – through gritted teeth – which has in fact become one of my favourite shots in the entire film.  Another time after a shoot in Liverpool, we discovered over dinner that our Drama and Documentary Soundman, Rob Saunders, had a secret ‘other life’ as a break dancer (semi-pro I think it was!) so naturally we demanded to see some of his skills at which point he stood up, sauntered outside and held onto a lamppost at a horizontal 90 degree angle for what felt like a ridiculously long time leaving us all humbly tongue-tied and feeling inadequate!

Finally, on a memorable night in Yorkshire, Alesha’s makeup artist and good friend, Bernadette, was given the ‘haunted’ room in a hotel which had originally been a coaching inn. The room had one of those portraits where the eyes followed you around - but that wasn’t the spooky part. While we were stood outside the next morning, Bernadette said she hadn’t slept very well because she’d been disturbed by lots of noise and footsteps overhead. At that point we all simultaneously looked up at her window only to realise that her room was actually on the top floor. 

Christina Nutter is producer/director of Alesha Dixon: Who’s Your Daddy, which will be repeated on BBC3 tonight (9 December) at 12:15am