Presenter / Producer / Director / Journalist
On June 12th 2010 I married my sweetheart Nikki at Christchurch in Burntwood. We’d known each other since 1993, when she was a guest on the ‘NightSchool‘ programme on Beacon Radio which I’d helped to produce. We’d kept in touch, and finally started seeing each other in 2001. We got engaged that Autumn, and finally […]
After the excitement of launching Big Centre TV with a first night party at a bar called “The Bureau” on Colmore Row in the centre of Birmingham, we settled down to the day-to-day business of making and broadcasting programmes The station was originally set up to be the local television channel for Birmingham, Solihull and […]
When I was little, in the late 1970s, Saturday afternoons were really special because of Worzel Gummidge, the Southern Television adaptation of Barbara Euphan Todd’s ‘Scarecrow of Scatterbrook’ stories. This TV version starred Jon Pertwee, Una Stubbs and Geoffrey Bayldon and for many is considered the definitive version of the stories, though Mackenzie Crook’s 2019-2020 […]
In November 2006 I received an email from a gentleman called Mike Smith. At first I wasn’t sure who he was, but he explained that he was Sally James‘s husband and as a Tiswas fan I certainly knew who she was! Mike is an almost legendary name in the music and media business, and he […]
Cliché alert! In broadcasting you know that things don’t always go to plan. You’ve watched “It’ll Be Alright On The Night” or “Auntie’s Bloomers” (blimey, that’s going back a bit) and so on… Yeah, so did I, but I never thought I’d be an outtake myself… From the Summer of 2015 I had joined Chanelle […]
Elsewhere on this website there are various “Box Sets” of a number of the Television programmes I made when I was working at Big Centre Television and Made in Birmingham. I didn’t really intend them as a history of the place, but I later realised as I was looking back across them that they do […]
Now here’s a real blast from my past. When I was at Beacon Radio (1989-2000) I got involved in one of the evening magazine programmes for teenagers called “NightSchool”. It was described by the presenter Chuck Street (Andy Hitchman) as ‘the Midlands top-rating teenage radio show’, and was broadcast every weeknight from September 1992 – […]
During March 2021 an old friend, Philip Solomon, got in touch to ask if I would like to be interviewed on his radio programme. I was rather flattered as I’d never really considered myself worthy of an interview. But Philip convinced me, and so we met ‘virtually’ and recorded the interview on 26th March. It […]
Back in 2011 and 2012 I was, along with a group of like-minded TV-loving friend, part of “ATVLAND.productions” and we produced 2 DVD documentary series charting the television history of the “ATV Centre” Studios in Birmingham, and the Midlands News Magazine Programme “ATV Today”. Both “From ATVLAND in Colour” and “From Headlines to Tight-Lines: The […]
Who doesn’t love Crossroads? Don’t answer that! Seriously, I used to love Crossroads when I was growing up. I was born and raised during the Mid-1970s in “ATV Land” (West Midlands) and Crossroads was our very own Soap Opera. Granada had Coronation Street in Manchester. Yorkshire had Emmerdale Farm in Leeds. ATV had Crossroads in […]