My background lies mainly in arts administration, primarily music, recording and broadcasting. I spent five years in the Seventies with the Decca/London Records Phase 4 label working in just about every kind of musical genre – from the Verdi Requiem, through to Flamenco, Afro-Jazz and concept albums. Following this, I embarked on a career as a senior music producer with BBC Radio 2. Over a fifteen year period, I scripted and produced thousands of programmes, including some of the biggest and most prestigious gala concerts to be heard on the network. I won special praise for my production of the complete operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan, broadcast in the Eighties, and containing items not heard for over 100 years. It also represented one of the largest ventures ever undertaken by BBC radio.
Other projects for which I was responsible included the second Three Tenors broadcast and the 1995 New Year’s Day concert from Vienna, transmitted live and shown simultaneously with BBC television. Elsewhere, I looked after programmes as diverse as the Gloria Hunniford and John Dunn shows and, believe it or not, Sing Something Simple (but don’t hold that against me!).
I left the BBC in March 1995 to go freelance. While continuing to create, script and produce both musical and non-musical events – including the big VE Day 50th anniversary concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, a number of radio concerts and a much-acclaimed drama-documentary on the Gunpowder Plot – I was also appointed a consultant to Telstar for its Russian Revelation series, utilising the resources of a huge, newly-discovered recording archive in Moscow. I was also retained as an advisor for Century Classics, an ambitious project set up to produce a series of short TV programmes combining the Russian archive and the extensive film library of British Pathé.
Additionally, I have written thousands of programme notes for concerts, recitals and recordings and contributed obituary articles to The Guardian.
For a number of years, I served as the Chief Executive of the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom, an organisation transcribing some 230 newspapers and magazines into alternative formats accessible and navigable by visually impaired people and others for whom the printed word is not the medium of choice. During my tenure in office, there was a dramatic transformation of the service, in which it expanded from a purely recording-based activity operation to a fully digital operation which enabled blind and partially-sighted people to receive and browse daily newspapers quicker than sighted readers!
The acquisition a few years ago of a house in Languedoc, southern France led to an interest in the extraordinary history and heritage, especially the remarkable story of the Cathars as well as a few intriguing local mysteries!
It is this wide background experience that has resulted in the range of talks and presentations which I now deliver, most of them accompanied by visual images and, in some cases, music as well.