By Isle of Wight Observer
I began song-writing in 1964, writing for Billy Fury, Cupid’s Inspiration, The Herd, Don Partridge and the New Seekers, and by 1966 I had landed a creative job in music publishing at EMI. We managed the songs by many writers/artistes, including Neil Diamond and the Four Seasons; we also signed Barclay James Harvest and Stone Graphics (who eventually became Hot Chocolate). Then I was invited to become a record producer at EMI Records.
During this period, I had the privilege of recording with Elton John, David Bowie and Marc Bolan before they were well known. Instrumental in starting the Harvest label, which was for prog-rock acts, I produced many LPs that sold worldwide.
In the early ‘70s, I helped produce ‘The Bubblies’, a children’s animated puppet series, and ‘Supersonic’, a live pop show – both for ITV. With a couple of partners, we set up a television commercials production company and studio.
In those days the business was dominated by Ridley Scott, Alan Parker and other distinguished film-makers. However, we managed to win some of the pitches, such as the British Airways ‘Poundstretchers’ skywriting series, commercials for Renault, Talbot, Citroen, British Rail’s ‘Nightstar’, British Airways overseas commercials, featuring Robert Morley, and Anchor Butter – with real cows playing football whilst singing a song I co-wrote called ‘We are Lucky Cows’.
Leaving the company in the early eighties, I directed the first fully interactive programme on laser disk, financed by the Department of Trade & Industry. It was a collection of high-end chemical experiments that used equipment too expensive for schools to buy. The students could see the outcome of all their decisions in real-time. This led to my producing and directing several interactive training programmes.
I was then headhunted to run an industrial documentary company making films for clients such as BT, Shell, Gordon’s Gin and British Gas. Having sold the company on behalf of the owners, I became involved in producing a ‘Tomorrow’s World’ type programme for China Central Television, setting up an animation production house and studio in Bulgaria and a facilities company to service American and European feature films, also in Bulgaria.
Teaming up with John Coates, the producer of ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘The Snowman’, we produced the multi-award-winning ‘The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends’, bringing Beatrix Potter’s beautifully illustrated books faithfully to television. These were all produced using traditional hand-drawn, traced and painted cels, filmed on a rostrum camera. We then produced two animated feature films for ITV, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ and ‘The Willows in Winter’, which won many prestigious awards including two Prime Time Emmys.
Having bought into Millimages, a small French animation studio, and set up a UK subsidiary, I helped build the business into a major producer of over fifty television series, a dozen half-hour specials and six feature films. The company developed animation studios in Bucharest, Kiev and Chennai, which we sold before going public in 2001. The animation was all made digitally, apart from the initial hand-drawn key poses. Apart from executive producing, I wrote and edited scripts and directed voice recordings. The shows I was most proud of were five series of the award-winning ‘64 Zoo Lane’, which played on the BBC for twenty years, and our BAFTA winners ‘The Little Reindeer’ and ‘Pablo the Little Red Fox’, also the award-winning ‘Watch my Chops!’
I spent twenty-two years on the Animation and Children’s Committee of the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television, with six years as chairman. I was vice-chairman of PACT for four years and then a patron. I retired from work in 2022. Would I do it all again? Not half!