Kneale’s other issue was that the BBC owned THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, and so didn’t have to pay him a penny for the film versions. And therefore didn’t. He was furious about this, by all accounts.
The BBC eventually, in 1967, paid him £3000 (three grand in 1957 being the equivalent of nearly a hundred grand in 2025). But not actually for that slight. They called it an “ex gratia” payment in recognition of the success of the Quatermass series, not an admission of guilt or misdemeanor. This practice continues today all over the world. I got one of those – a lot closer to three grand than a hundred – in 2013.
This was how he returned to the BBC to write SEX OLYMPICS.
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