About Me, Simply Web Wise

Do you remember ‘Together’, ‘Whizz Kids’, ‘Beryl Marsden’, ‘Runaround’? Surely you remember ‘Runaround’! Well, in the late '70s on Independent Television in the South of England there was an ITV company called Southern TV. I joined the Lighting department there and trained to become a Lighting Director.

‘Runaround’ was a great kids programme that Southern TV networked (Mike Reed was presenter on it for a while and went on later to Eastenders). That programme, and the others I mentioned were some of the programmes that I worked on as a Lighting Director. ‘The Saturday Banana’ was another manic kids programme, this one was broadcast live — great fun!

When Southern lost their franchise to broadcast, TVS took over and decided to open up a new studio center in the east of the region, using Maidstone as their center of operations. I became Senior Lighting Director there and moved to Maidstone. While the new studios were being built we worked in what had been a Cinema in Gillingham, converted into a TV Studio. One of the programmes I was responsible for as a Lighting Director, in the Science series ‘The Real World’ was the first national 3D colour TV broadcast.

Other programmes I lit (and had credits on) included; Harry Secombe's religious programme ‘Highway’, ‘Number 73’ (long running national networked live Saturday morning TV), ‘Strawberry Blonde’, 'Concentration', 'MotorMouth', and of course Roy Walker and ‘Catchphrase’.

I left TV in the second round of redundancies when TVS were cutting back, at the time when the whole TV production industry in Great Britain was rapidly changing. Looking back now the last few years there were not particularly good.

Because I already had a technical background from my early training in the BBC, I had developed a strong interest in Computers, so bought into an IT recruitment agency and for 11 years had the chance to learn about computers from the experts as well as run my own company and ‘do recruitment’. During those years I computerised the company with a network, designed and ran 2 websites which were very successful in promoting the company and pulling in lots of job–seekers.

Eventually it was time to part company and retirement seemed like a good thing, so the move away from Kent to somewhere much more peaceful took place around 2002/3.

During that year, prior to relocating, I made my first contacts with clients who commissioned me to design web sites and also some home PC/network support.

Now fully settled in the Cotswolds, I have time to be involved in Web site design and Search Engine Optimisation for my clients.

Try me!