Iain Coyle's CV contains some worrying claims to fame.

Amid the usual personal details and work history, lie the fact he had made Germaine Greer physically sick, was the man responsible for putting John McCririck into lederhosen and, most recently, saw his likeness turned into a burning effigy by Indian protesters angry at Jade Goody's now infamous treatment of Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother and those behind the scenes who let the footage be aired.

With Channel 4 due to publish its own internal inquiry into the affair, the whole debate about the merits of the reality genre is likely to raise its head again, but Coyle, who on the latest series worked as producer on the spin-off shows Big Brother's Little Brother and Big Brother's Big Mouth, is confident the programme makers at least will be found not guilty of prizing entertainment over and above moral responsibility.

"The spin-off shows are supposed to be a bit of light-hearted entertainment, but during the last series it was suddenly like making Newsnight," he says. "When you're working six-days-a-week, 18-hours-a-day, you lose all sense of perspective, but of course on a human level those involved in making that series feel a sense of responsibility towards the contestants.

"However, the truth is that those who put themselves forward for the show are incredibly well briefed and you can only look after them so much.

"If you look at Jo O'Meara, even before the racism argument crept in she'd hardly covered herself in glory. Footage of her sitting around in a dirty old dressing gown smoking cigarettes wasn't particularly pretty.

"Most of the time it's how they deal with it afterwards that matters. Celebrities spend so much time in the company of people who tell them they're wonderful, that when they watch the footage of themselves in the house it can be complete shock. Of course it's edited, but anyone who has ever said they were misrepresented has never had a leg to stand on."

Coyle fell into a career in television after studying fine art at what was then Sheffield Polytechnic, initially landing a job on Tonight With Jonathan Ross in the early 1990s before moving on to work on Shooting Stars, with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. The latter tore up the blueprint for celebrity panel shows and is, he says, an example of the kind of off-beat programmes which would struggle to get made in today's increasingly competitive and budget minded marketplace.

"It was fantastic fun," he says. "It started off as a sketch for Comic Relief and when they decided to do the series there was no grand plan. In terms of organisation it was a shambles, but it was a shambles which worked. I often wonder what would happen if you tried to pitch the idea today. More than likely you'd be laughed out of the commissioning editor's office.

"There are so many more channels now that in theory it should be easier to get programmes made, but because the audience has become so split, channels know they are vying for an ever smaller percentage of the viewers and therefore are less unwilling to take risks.

"You can't blame schedulers for opting for a lifestyle property programme over some new untried format, because with the former they know they are guaranteed x amount of viewers."

One problem programme makers are facing is finding the magic formula which will not only attract younger audiences, increasingly suffering from gnat-like attention spans, but which will keep them switched on when they have a vast array of other entertainment technology at their fingertips.

"Most people accept the internet is on the verge of really revolutionising television," says Coyle, who will be speaking at an event tomorrow hosted by Sheffield Technology Parks on how to develop and make money out of creative ideas. "The only problem is that no one really knows how. However, what's certain is that people will access channels in very different ways. People will be so much more in charge of what they watch and while I'm not convinced it will necessarily be a good thing, you have to accept it's going to happen.

"The golden egg of TV audiences is the 15 to 25 age group who are increasingly turning off, but those who plough all their resources into desperately trying to attract them are at risk of alienating the 30 and 40 some things and ultimately pleasing no one at all."

Having been involved in the likes of So Graham Norton and Families At War, Coyle believes that while reluctance to experiment may leave the schedules looking tired, successful programming doesn't need to be controversial.

"One of my favourite programmes at the moment is Harry Hill's TV Burp," he says. "What he's also done has taken You've Been Framed, which I think was truly appalling, and remade it into something effortlessly entertaining. One of the problems ITV has had is that it has underestimated its audience. Much of its output suggests it thinks its viewers have an IQ no higher than an amoeba and it really does need to learn lessons from ratings winners."

When there were just four channels, television provided a common experience relived in conversations about favourite children's programmes in student flats up and down the country, where whether you were or weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill was a marker of how liberal or otherwise your upbringing was.

However, with a myriad of children's channels, digital television has fragmented the audience. One of the few things which brings us back together, apart from rolling footage of major disasters, is reality TV or rather those moments which see programmes upgraded from the entertainment sections to front page news.

"People moan about Big Brother, but it is one of the few formats which actually provides a common experience," says Coyle.

"The last episode was obviously surrounded by a lot of controversial publicity, but it raised issues like racism in a way that neither Newsnight or Panorama ever could. Viewers like watching big characters and those that play the game well know that. Look at John McCririck – he was fantastic. He knows he's a pantomime villain and plays up to the part. Although he was also responsible for one of my worst moments.

"I had come up with an idea called the Shrinking Thief for Celebrity Big Brother and the idea was that in the middle of the night we would swap the contestants underwear for identical, but slightly smaller versions. It never quite came off, but I had to go through Caprice's and John's underwear. It was like going from heaven to hell in one easy minute.

Coyle's own ideas for programmes have ranged from No Win No Fee to Dicing With Debt. They may not be exactly high brow, but he says the escapist element of television should not be underrated.

"Light-entertainment has to be about having fun," he says. "When I worked at Hat Trick Productions I remember my boss saying to me that if the programme's good enough, it will find an audience and that's what I still hang on to. Whatever anyone says about dumbing down, if the audience don't like what they see, they will be quick enough to tell you."



Iain Coyle will be speaking at the Sheffield Technology Parks event at the city's Millennium Galleries tomorrow. Tickets cost £10 and for more information, call 0114 221 1800 or visit www.shefftechparks.com