Violet Berlin shot to fame as the presenter of ITV’s Bad Influence! – but the convoluted story of how she got the job involves everything from watermelon ninja turtles to a last-ditch dash around Eastern Europe in a Ford Cortina

Words by Lewis Packwood

After presenting the youth-focused satellite TV show Cool Cube and the kid-focused animal programme WildBunch, Violet Berlin went on to host the CITV videogame show Bad Influence! alongside children’s television stalwart Andy Crane. The programme ran for four series, and concurrently Violet wrote games columns for the Observer Magazine and Digitiser, as well as setting up her own TV company to make programmes for The Children’s Channel. She later hosted science show The Big Bang and Gamepad, as well as writing and presenting the technology series SoundByte for the BBC World Service. Shortly after the birth of her children in the Noughties, she switched focus to become a script writer and narrative designer for interactive and immersive experiences.

So how did you get into games TV after leaving university?

I studied English language and Anglo Saxon and Old Norse at university – because I was obsessed with Tolkien and that’s what he had taught. I wanted to write stories, and I’d grown up without a television, so I was very naive about the TV industry – and in fact about life in general.

Oh you didn’t have a TV, that’s interesting! Did that make you want to be on TV all the more?

No, not at all! I wanted to write children’s stories. And I thought if I want to write for children, the thing to do is to get a job with my audience and understand what they love while I’m doing it. So my grand, ambitious, foolhardy plan was to get a job in children’s television while writing my books.

Anyway, by absolute chance I managed to find a TV company that was looking for a runner and researcher, so I applied. And I think that he really liked all my ideas because I was so ‘out there’ – because I hadn’t had a television, I don’t think I really had any clichéd ideas, as I didn’t really know what was expected. I got a job researching, writing and running on WAC ’90 with Michaela Strachan and Tommy Boyd, the successor to Wide Awake Club.

We used to love that show! 

Yeah, it was really fun making it. One of my jobs was to get the pop stars out on set on time, and it was really stressful because they would have big boots with loads of laces, and you’d say, ‘OK, it’s ten seconds to go,’ and they’d say, ‘I’ll just put my boots on,’ and you’d be like, ‘Ooooooh, I’m going to get into trouble, they’re going to miss their cue!’ Anyway, I quickly progressed from that to become the sole writer and researcher on Wacaday. I had to get all the kids in, write the questions for Mallet’s Mallet, write the little drama inserts… oh, and I had to make the gunge.

What did you make it from? 

You can’t give away my hard-earned secret! No one gives you the gunge recipe, you just have to make your own up. Anyway, I was doing that for a few months until one day they were auditioning for a new show called Cool Cube, a live show for kids on BSB on Saturdays and Sundays. They were having the auditions on the roof of the TV-am building in Camden, and somebody didn’t turn up, so the head of the TV company came in –a fairy tale moment in a way – and said, ‘Oh, you’re looking chipper today, why don’t you do an audition?’ So I immediately spent the next hour on the toilet, and after that I managed to get up onto the roof. And I got the job!

So then I had to move to Manchester. The show was made at Granada Studios, and they had something called Granada Studio Tours…

Is that the one with the Coronation Street set?

Yes! Basically, they built a glass-walled studio, and we were part of the tour. And Stars In Their Eyes was going on in the studio next door at the time – it was the centre of the entertainment universe! Although we weren’t the centre of the entertainment universe, we were on a shoestring live TV show going out on satellite to a grand total of one person. But we could use any part of the tour as our set, and we would go up to people on the tour and voxpop them and find our quiz contestants from the crowds. It was really fun. And I got to be a live presenter with an earpiece and everything. Talk about trial by fire.