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Former BBC producer opens up about drug abuse in media |
A former BBC producer has opened
up on the use of drugs in the media industry, especially by television and radio
stars. Sarah Graham, who worked for BBC Radio 5, Children's BBC and Channel 4's
The Big Breakfast, told Home Affairs Select Committee hearing on the cocaine trade
that the people in the industry who do drugs are often praised for their "off-the-wall"
brilliance instead of being reprimanded. The woman who went to a rehab clinic
in 2001 after getting addicted to drugs said that she was offered cocaine on the
first day of her job at the BBC in the 1990s, after passing out from college.
She claimed that she was offered the drug during a night out in SoHo with the
presenter and producer of her show. She said: "We were celebrating the end of
a live show. I had a few glasses of champagne and I was asked if I would like
to go to the toilet and do some cocaine. "I'm ashamed to say I didn't really know
very much about cocaine beyond the hype - celebrity, glamour, success - that goes
with it and I unfortunately went to the toilet and took cocaine and I believe
that changed the course of my life from that point on." Sarah also answered the
question if any of her colleagues who did drugs still worked at BBC. However,
she did not give any names, reports the Telegraph. She said: "One of the things
about the media... is that, as your addiction progresses, certain behaviours which
would not be tolerated in a normal job can actually be spun to be part of your
creative genius or part of your extraordinary personality. "So some of those people
are still in place, some of them are behaving in off-the-wall ways and are enabled
left, right and centre, and people bow down to them. Some of this stuff is rewarded
- it depends where you are and who you are. "There is a culture within the media
and within the celebrity world that is very relaxed around the use of cocaine.
It's seen as something that is socially acceptable in certain areas, in industries
where this 'work hard, party hard' ethos exists. "The hype about drugs is that
all these successful people are doing drugs... I bought into the showbiz myth
of cocaine being part of that success." Troubled singer Amy Winehouse's father
Mitch was also present at the conference. |
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