DOCUMENTARY film-maker Ross Wilson has as good a chance as any of lifting a coveted prize at this week's Bafta Television Awards in London and bringing it home to Glasgow, although the final decision is in the lap of the gods -- or, at least, in the hands of an anonymous jury of broadcast professionals.
The competition for the prestigous Flaherty Documentary Award is as diverse as it is formidable. He's up against Channel Four's True Stories film, The Grave, a harrowing insight into the work of forensic archeologists in Croatia; and two documentaries from BBC1 -- Nazi Gold, an Inside Story investigation into the connection between Swiss banks and looted wartime treasure, and a Wildlife Special on the polar bear.
But Wilson's entry, one of the most talked about documentaries of the year, is up there with the best of them. Scottish Television's two-part film for the Network First strand, Out of the Shadows and We are the Treasury, was a remarkable work of observation, a fly-on-the-wall record of Gordon Brown's progress during last year's General Election campaign and his first few months as Labour's first Chancellor for 18 years.
The film lifted the lid, not just on Brown himself, but on his political back-up team, with the spotlight of controversy firmly trained on his press chief and spin doctor Charlie Whelan, a man practised in the black art of manipulating the press and the media.
For Ross Wilson, however, it was just another job. As both producer and director of the films, he found himself steeped in politics for the duration of the project. Then, when it was completed, he moved on. Such is the nature of the documentary. For a few months you become an expert in a particular subject. When it's over, you cleanse your mind and prepare to address another suitable case for treatment.
This, for Wilson, is the true appeal of what he does. ''I like the sheer diversity of the job. You become intensely involved in something, you make the best piece of work you can, and then you move on to something else.''
Right now for ''something else'' read football. The film-maker is currently working with Man United manager Alex Ferguson on a World Cup project for Scottish Television, the company with which he has been associated throughout his career. With silver and bronze medals from the New York Television Film Festival, the documentary prize at the Celtic Film Festival, a Royal Television Society and (now) Bafta nominations to his credit, the affable Glaswegian is one of the most experienced documentary makers in Scotland.
Through Scottish Television he has produced programmes for high-profile series like Cutting Edge, Dispatches, and Equinox at Channel Four and for Network First on ITV. One of his films, Crimes of War on C4, an investigation into war criminals living in the UK, was effectively responsible for the law being changed in Britain.
Wilson, like everyone else in his field of expertise, was astonished by the recent controversy surrounding the Carlton Television documentary, The Connection, which was screened in the same Network First strand as his Gordon Brown two-parter. The ITC is currently investigating allegations that the film, an apparent expose on Colombian drug smuggling into Britain, was a fake.
However, Wilson is confident that the scandal will have no adverse bearing on this week's award ceremony. Pointing out that the allegations have yet to be proved, he admits that there is enormous pressure these days on documentary film-makers to produce the goods.
''When someone gives you a #150,000 commission to make a film, it must be very difficult to turn round half way through and say: ''Sorry, the story's not there.' and you've wasted all that money,'' he notes.
Whatever else, Wilson could never be accused of having faked the Gordon Brown programme. For him, filming the documentary was the easy bit. What happened before -- spending months trying to pursuade Labour to allow the candid film to be made -- and what happened after -- editing almost 100 hours of film into just two hours -- were infinitely more difficult.
''Yes, there was about 100 hours of film but, of course, we didn't wade through it all in the editing suite. As we went along, I had a pretty good idea which parts I wanted to keep. Like any observational documentary, the most interesting parts were where those involved were being entirely natural and not performing to the camera as politicians.
''The strange thing is that, because they do this every day and don't think about it, they never seem to realise that it can be extremely interesting to viewers,'' he added.
n The British Academy Television Awards, hosted by Bob Monkhouse from the Prince of Wales Theatre, London, can be seen tomorrow at 8.30pm on ITV.
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