TV veteran working as shelf stacker describes struggle to find UK freelance work

Veteran UK showrunner and executive producer Nicky Taylor has revealed she is now working as a supermarket shelf stacker to help make ends meet after freelance jobs in the TV industry dried up.

Nicky Taylor

In what has become a familiar story in the UK, former ITV commissioner and format creator Taylor said she is just one of many executives with “extraordinary CVs” forced to find jobs such as Uber drivers and delivery couriers.

Taylor, who told the story of her career pivot to UK newspaper The Daily Mail, boasts a 35-year career in TV.

She created and exec produced series such as 5’s reality travelogue franchise Celebrity 5 Go…, Love Your Garden and Cowboy Builders. Her career includes roles as a factual and daytime commissioning executive at ITV and a six-year tenure as an exec producer at Warner Bros International Production-backed prodco Ricochet.

However, like many in the industry, Taylor said she has struggled to find freelance TV work as the domestic screen sector suffered after the Peak TV bubble burst, with jobs and commissions increasingly hard to come by.

“Looking back, the writing had been on the wall for a while,” she wrote in The Daily Mail. “At first, it was almost imperceptible: fewer TV commissions, longer gaps between projects, the phone ringing a little less often than it used to.

“As a freelance executive producer, for most of my career I’d moved seamlessly from one production to the next. If one series ended, another was already waiting in the wings.

“Part of me blamed the changing TV industry for the lack of work. The middle ground of factual TV had been hit hard by streaming and social media, after all. But another part of me couldn’t help wondering whether age had something to do with it as well.

“I didn’t take it lying down. I updated my CV, rang former colleagues and worked my network – but gradually realised that no one was coming to rescue me. If I wanted a future, I was going to have to build it myself.”

Brighton-based Taylor, 60, now works at a local Waitrose supermarket manning the cash till and stacking shelves. To help pay the mortgage on her home, she also earns money in a variety of other roles such as dog-sitting, care work and shifts as an after-school science club assistant.

“And it wasn’t just me,” she said. “Talented editors with extraordinary CVs were – and are – struggling to find work. Around me, producers and directors were becoming Uber drivers and delivery men.

“People who have spent decades making some of Britain’s best-loved programmes were piecing together freelance jobs simply to pay the bills.”

Taylor’s article received dozens of messages of support on LinkedIn from industry colleagues, many of whom admitted to their own struggles to find employment.

It comes as Lisa Nandy, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, recently announced that the government will soon reveal the name of its new ‘creative freelance champion.’ The role will see the appointee act as an advocate for self-employed workers in the creative sector.

Nandy told the House of Commons last week: “We are acutely aware as a government of the challenges of a very casualised industry in which freelancers often don’t have the voice that they need in order to stand up for their rights, protect them at work and to make sure that the industry that they work in is fair and is safe.

“We have recently appointed the freelance champion role and they will advocate for the creative sectors freelancers within government.”

The appointment has been welcomed by UK creative industries’ trade body Bectu.

Philippa Childs, head of Bectu, said: “Their in-tray will be full of tricky issues, from pensions to employment rights, meaning time is of the essence if we are to capitalise on the momentum for change. The government must now announce the appointee without further delay. Bectu and our members stand ready to work with them to support their important work.”