The house | Documentary director Norma Percy on Boris Johnson, Mikhail Gorbachev and Slobodan Milosevic

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Norma Percy only came to these shores because she lacked foreign languages. As a graduate student at Oberlin College in Ohio, she was sent as one of five selected with the opportunity to study abroad but, unlike the others, she spoke only English. With her choices limited, she left for Great Britain in 1963.

Percy was already fascinated by British politics. In Ohio, she stood in the library and read about Harold Macmillan in The economist. On arriving in the UK, she abandoned her fledgling academic career and doctorate for a job in Parliament, working for John Mackintosh, a Scottish Labor MP considered one of the leading minds behind devolution.

“I had tried to get a job at the House of Commons Library, but you had to be British and born British to work there. While I was still at the LSE, I was short of money and needed a job, and miraculously this advert appeared in The times that said, you needed a researcher for a professor writing a book based in Parliament,” Percy recalls.

She remembers spending a lot of time trying to find deputies to take her to the Strangers bar during the all-night sessions. Life as a backbencher was “like that of a child in a Victorian family”, she says: “You would lean over the banister and see what the grown-ups were doing, and hope to one day become a government minister.
Soon after, her grant to work for Mackintosh was almost exhausted and she was trying to figure out what to do next.

“I went so far as to look inside The Times Guide to the House of Commons to find out who was married, to choose someone to marry, when Brian Lapping came along and offered me this dream job in television.

Lapping had been commissioned by Granada to make state-of-the-nation documentaries on Parliament, one of which followed the progress of a bill in the Commons. For the time, the documentary was unprecedented.

“We got permission to follow two clauses of a bill led by Geoffrey Howe, who was Minister of Consumer Affairs and who proposed a bill to protect the consumer,” she said.

“The concession we had to make was that they could watch the film and make whatever suggestions they wanted for facts. Howe said, ‘Yes! There’s one thing I have to ask you to change and you’ll say it’s not a fact, but I promised Elspeth I’d stop smoking – and in every cut, there’s someone smoking!'” Her request was granted.

After leaving Granada with Lapping, Percy moved to international documentaries and developed a trademark format: every key player in the room interviewed, formally discussing what had happened. The format proved effective.

One of the first international documentaries Percy worked on was The second Russian revolutionwhich followed the collapse of communism and glasnost. The series had been secretly broadcast in Russia and was extremely popular – so popular that Mikhail Gorbachev himself asked to appear.

In 1995 came The death of Yugoslaviawhich earned producer Percy a Bafta. The documentary ended up being cited several times in The Hague for incriminating statements that members of the Yugoslav politburo had made during the broadcast.

The biggest coup for Percy was getting an interview with Slobodan Milošević himself – far from newsworthy even at this stage. Milošević was eventually persuaded to appear on the show, first by David Owen, an old friend of Percy’s who was then leading the peace negotiations, and then by his wife Mira.

Mira Marković was a formidable politician herself, with her own political party and influence. Angus Roxburgh, formerly of the BBC and Sunday hours The Moscow correspondent who worked on the documentary played the role of matchmaker. He told Percy that she and Mira had a lot in common; she remembers him saying that “these two socialist ladies would get along well.”

When Milošević finally agreed to the interview, he pretended to be a staff member rather than himself on the phone. He spoke for nearly an hour, she said, but he struggled to find the truth in his claims. “Ethnic cleansing, me? » is how she sums up her attitude. And when he was finally officially declared, he spent an hour speaking and never came close to telling the truth about his role in the “ethnic cleansing” efforts.

Worse still, Milošević’s team only agreed to the interview on the condition that a complete, uncut version of the tape be released in the seventh episode. Coincidentally, BBC Two had just moved to 24-hour programming and was desperate for content of any kind. The full interview will be broadcast at 4 a.m., much to the frustration of the distraught Yugoslav government press service.

“The Second Russian Revolution was so popular that Mikhail Gorbachev himself asked to appear”

Despite Milošević’s lies, the program would be a success. Fortunately for Percy, Borisav Jović, the former president of Yugoslavia, told the truth throughout, including regarding Milošević’s role. Percy theorized that he was so honest because he was jealous of the acclaim Milošević was receiving from Serbian nationalists. She claims similar behavior was present in her new Brexit documentary.

“I had a bit of the impression that some Brexit participants were reveling in what they would call their ‘clever strategy’ that won them the referendum. The fact that it took a lie to persuade people to vote for them is not that different from Jović’s,” she says.

In Brexit: a very British civil warPercy gathers all the major initiates into the room again to discuss the referendum. The program has a narrowly focused framework, starting at the 2015 general election and ending on June 23, 2016. Interviewees include David Cameron, Michael Gove and of course Boris Johnson, with whom Percy had previously worked extensively.

“I had three experiences with Boris. The first was on Putin against the West“, she said, “and he was really good. He went to the Foreign Office library and did some research, and it was a very good interview.

“When we did a sequel, the deadline was a little short, but his office said yes straight away, because they liked it. Boris came in this time and said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I wanted to go to the Foreign Office library but I forgot.’ He looked exactly like my husband when he forgot to collect the laundry.

When Percy approached Johnson for the new Brexit documentary, she said his face lit up. “He said, ‘Now I could really help you.’ He promised us 90 minutes and gave us more than three hours.

Another star of the documentary was Marina Wheeler, Johnson’s ex-wife, who spoke factually and clearly throughout. Such was Wheeler’s recollection of this period, Johnson told the crew to follow his version of events over his if there were any differences of opinion.
However, one person who could not be secured was Dominic Cummings.

“We tried everything,” Percy said. “We tried a lot of people who knew his wife.” When they finally got his number, she adds, “The first time we tried, he picked up and said, ‘I’m on top of a mountain! I can’t talk to you now!’, which made us think he might agree when he came down. He said he wouldn’t, because everyone lies except him.”

She even hired Lord Gove, Cummings’ former boss, to persuade the former Vote Leave campaign manager – but to no avail.

For Percy, returning to British politics means she has come full circle from almost 60 years ago, when she worked as a parliamentary researcher. That said, she has no plans to stop her work anytime soon.

“My mother retired at the age of 87,” explains Percy. “I’m 84 now. I’ve got a few years left in me.”
Percy still loves politics and interviewed Nigel Farage’s head of communications, Andy Wigmore, for the Brexit documentary, which she describes as a “hoot”.

“I have this controversial view of politicians: I think they are reasonable people.”