Last updated 19:28, Thursday, 31 January 2008

The theme tune – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Variations (on a theme by Paganini) – tells the story. String, flute and piano fuse into electric guitar and bass. Classical and popular in perfect harmony. Welcome to The South Bank Show, one and all.

The tune and the fingers from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, which come together at the end of the opening titles, have been sparking an hour of Sunday night culture for exactly 30 years.

Only Coronation Street and Emmerdale have been running on ITV for longer. Melvyn Bragg from Wigton is ITV’s longest-serving presenter, and the person perhaps most associated with the arts in Britain.

The arts have always been a passion for Bragg. They helped shape him and since 1978 he has used his position as producer of Britain’s longest-running arts programme to give artists of all mediums a window into the nation’s homes.

There was an evangelical element to Bragg’s vision for the show. This Labourite wanted equality of opportunity for the classical and the popular. Bragg’s manifesto, as he calls it, was to make a new sort of arts programme which ditched the traditional divide.

“I wanted it to have the usual elements of arts programmes: the theatre, opera and art,” he told The Cumberland News. “But I wanted it to concentrate just as much on the cinema, television drama, pop music, stand-up comedy and so on.

“I felt in my own childhood in Wigton, pop music and radio and TV plays and stand-up comedians who were brilliant people – in my view their work was often as of high a quality as anything else.

“One week Paul McCartney, the next the Berlin Philharmonic. One week Dennis Potter, the next Harold Pinter. An essay on Shakespeare then Billy Connolly, and shake it all about.

“Some critics criticised that, and still do. But everyone I know long ago ceased to make class distinctions in the arts.

“They like the latest popular music, opera, television drama; and they see more of that than West End theatre.

“I think that manifesto I set out in 1977 has proved to be fairly durable and accurate in terms of what people in this country think in the arts arena.”

There have been hundreds of profiles and the list throws up the constant crackle of contrast: Woody Allen, Catherine Cookson. The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stevie Wonder. Noel Coward, Norman Mailer. Rudolph Nureyev, The Sopranos.

Elizabeth Taylor would not appear until she had had all the lighting rearranged. Pavarotti liked Bragg’s boots so much, Bragg offered to have some made for him.

George Michael caused controversy when he was filmed smoking a joint. Salman Rushdie’s first major interview since having a fatwa imposed on him prompted the leader of Britain’s Muslims to campaign to have it retracted.

Tracey Emin started watching at the age of 10, hoping one day she’d be on it. Damon Albarn heard Morrissey insist that the Smiths were the last great pop band, and started writing music to prove him wrong.

Despite rarely enjoying a primetime slot, with its usual home being late on Sunday nights, audiences rarely dip below a million, reaching a peak of eight million for a 1997 profile of Riverdance star Michael Flatley.

In ratings terms the show’s manifesto has been vindicated. The film stars, pop stars and stand-ups tend to pull in larger audiences than opera and ballet.

Whatever its subject, Bragg’s arts programme has never been watched by anything like the 15 million people who have tuned in to I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

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But Bragg, 68, does not interpret this as symptomatic of society’s, or TV’s, decline. “I think there’s a lot of good stuff. I don’t take the dumbing down argument. Take the word ‘print’. If I said ‘How’s print these days?’ you’d accept that there’s a huge range of things there. There’s the most rubbishy rubbish. Then you’ve got The Cumberland News, The Times. But television is somehow taken to be one thing.

“People have always preferred popular shows. It’s like book sales. My books sell well but they don’t sell as well as Harry Potter.

“If you start chasing the audience of I’m A Celebrity for The South Bank Show, it wouldn’t work. There’s room for the minority.”

Doesn’t he find it depressing that the minority appears to be people who are interested in the arts? “No, a lot of people want easy-to-watch TV.

“They’re very tired after shift work. They’ve every right to sit back and watch something easy. X-Factor is very well done. When I see it I enjoy it.”

But The South Bank Show has struggled for survival at times and Bragg has publicly appealed for sponsorship.

The immediate future, however, looks healthy. ITV chief executive Michael Grade, who commissioned the first series, renewed the programme’s contract last year.

“At one time I was very angry at the time of night it went out,” says Bragg.

“But over the years there’s no doubting I have been well supported by Michael Grade.

“I have never been told to do more programmes about television or pop music. We are doing that anyway.

“I like to cover the waterfront. I wouldn’t like to have something where we don’t cover pop music and opera.

“What hasn’t changed is that we have always gone for artists either towards the end of a great career or rising stars.”

The South Bank Show has helped bring many rising stars to a national audience.

Early series included up-and-coming writers such as Martin Amis and Ian McEwan.

But the programme has also backed a few horses who have failed to reach the grandstand. The Darkness, anyone?

“Concentrating on living artists is very risky,” says Bragg. “It’s very easy to pick out the all-time greats: Dickens, Picasso.

“What’s difficult is finding new talent and backing your judgement.”

Staff are currently working on profiles of Simon Cowell, Gore Vidal and Ronnie Corbett. Kylie Minogue, Madonna and Robbie Williams are among those who have been approached to take part.

There are periodic claims that the South Bank Show is dumbing down but perhaps the pop culture artists just grab more headlines.

The upcoming programme on February 10, a profile of young Chinese pianist Lang Lang, may not stir the tabloids or top the ratings but it does help sum up what Bragg says he is most proud of in his creation: “Its eclecticism – going for quality in whatever field.”