GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE MA FSA FRNS FHA
Historian, archaeologist, author and broadcaster
1. NOTE TO TELEVISION
I am NOT under
contract to Channel 4’s Time Team and never have been. Any arrangements made with
me to take part in Time Team have been on a purely ad-hoc shoot-by-shoot basis.
I am therefore free to take any other commitments that I wish to, and always
have been.
I don’t
provide a free/gratis on-demand consultancy service to TV researchers. I work
on a strictly freelance basis either for appearances or consultation. So if
you’re a television researcher who fancies ringing me up on the expectation
that I’ll sit on the phone for hours doing all your work for you for nothing to
help you, especially with a pitch that is 99% guaranteed to disappear into the
Black Hole of a commissioning editor’s desk, please don’t bother. No
exceptions, so please don’t ask – I have heard every excuse under the sun.
Here’s some of them:
·
‘We’re on an education budget’ (I
love this one – what on Earth does it mean?)
·
‘We’re making a film for
xxxxxx but the budget isn’t settled yet’
(translation: it hasn’t even been commissioned yet)
·
‘Well can we just talk
now and then when we hire you for the programme we
can talk money then?’
·
‘I’m afraid I’m not
allowed to talk money – you’ll have to speak to our production manager’
And the best
of all, worth including because it’s so funny:
·
‘We can’t afford to pay
you but we’d buy you a good lunch’. Nice to know my expertise is valued at
roughly equivalent to a bowl of pasta and a bottle of sparkling water!
However, if
you are seriously interested in approaching me about taking part in a film,
then by all means contact me on the email address shown on the HOME PAGE. I shall be happy to get
back to you but you should expect to discuss the fee first – I work on the
basis of whole day-rates, not a TV ‘hour’-worth of filming (attending a shoot
invariably involves writing off the whole day for travel etc and the day I
experience a TV hour that lasts 60 minutes will be the day I eat my hat). I am
not prepared to discuss any sort of filming or arrange a date until a financial
agreement has been made with your production manager and I am (frankly) sick
and tired of the way some production companies try to avoid this.
Either way, I
now work fulltime as a teacher, which means that my availability is extremely
limited and I will put school first where it belongs and TV a very firm second,
which is definitely where it belongs.
2. USE OF MY
IMAGES: NOTE TO AUTHORS
Thanks to
various publishers who have defaulted on previously agreed terms for the use of
my images, and one author who helped himself to half-a-dozen of my pictures
without asking and tried to conceal the fact by digitally manipulating the
images, I now only grant requests to use images if the charge for doing so is
paid in advance. The image will not be released until after receipt of the fee.
This also applies to picture researchers who work for publishers ‘who only pay
when the book is published’. No exceptions. If you are happy with the
conditions I’ve outlined then by all means get in touch.
Anyone who
uses one of my pictures without permission will find that the relevant publisher
has been contacted, informed of the breach of copyright and invoiced an
exorbitant sum accordingly.
IF, however,
you are a school or university student, or you teach in either a school or
university, you may freely copy my pictures from this website or one of my
books to use in classes. But I would appreciate it if you credited them to me.
3. FINDS
If you’ve
found a coin or what you think is an object of archaeological interest, perhaps
because you were out for a walk or were using a metal-detector, by all means
email me and tell me about it and if I can identify it for you I will. But you
should also report it to the
Portable Antiquities Scheme. Their job is to take down the details and
record your find so that we all benefit from the information. They’ll also tell
you what you should do with it. Lots of detectorists
are already routinely sending information about their finds in.
Please don’t
ask me to keep your find secret from the
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