Trained as an actor, I worked in the theatre after drama school, both on stage and behind the scenes. This was most useful experience. As a professional actor, I learnt about the natural rhythms of dialogue, and could tell whether a line was easy or difficult to say. All actors know this, but most never tell anyone ....  

I joined the BBC in 1984, and spent my second week on location with "Hi-De-Hi!" at Dovercourt, on the Essex coast,  and my long association with DAVID CROFT OBE began, which happily continues to this day. I had such a good time as part of that fantastic team, that I attended every studio recording of that series, despite working on another programme during the day.  This gave me a taste for doing two jobs at once. The following year I joined the production team of "'Allo! 'Allo!" and worked on many other sitcoms, such as "No Place Like Home", "You Rang, M'Lord?","Joint Account", "The Brittas Empire", "Last of the Summer Wine", and the last ever series of  "Terry and June". Working my way through the BBC system I became a production manager, then director, and finally acheived the position of  producer - with David Croft's last sitcom "Oh, Dr Beeching".

Once "Beeching" was finished I began work on re-editing "Dad's Army". The BBC wanted to repeat the show, but needed each episode to run at exactly 29 minutes. I was given permission by David Croft to make whatever cuts were necessary to acheive this. At the same time, we also cleaned up the pictures and sound, and made everything look new and fresh.  Having completed 78 episodes of "Dad's Army", I moved on to "'Allo! 'Allo!", "Porridge", "The Good Life", "Are You Being Served?", "Steptoe and Son" and many others. After almost five years, upgrading the bulk of the most popular comedy programmes was complete. Time to move on, and become a full time writer, freelance producer / director, and script consultant. 

During my years at the BBC I wrote, produced and directed several sitcom pilots in my spare time ... One notable example was "Hands Together", (co-written with old friends from teenage, John and Nicky Scott) using a mainly student cast from Central School of Speech and Drama. One of the lead roles was played by CATHERINE TATE (The Catherine Tate Show, Doctor Who, and so on) and another by DERREN LITTEN, creator and writer of "Benidorm" (ITV)  The other principal role was taken by the brilliant LOUISE GOLD. 

For eight years I ran a course for professional actors at The Actors Centre in the heart of London, called "Sitcom From Scratch" helping predominantly stage actors to adapt their performance skills to the small screen. The material we used on the course was all original, specially written by wonderful talented writers, who used my course as an exercise in writing sit-com. 

TAPS was a brilliant organisation, a charity dedicated to encouraging new writers to television and film.  For many years I ran the annual comedy course, as course co-producer with JILL JAMES, the indefatigable founder of TAPS. The list of founders and board of TAPS read like a Who's Who of television. Each year, sit-com scripts would pour in from all over the country.  A panel of readers took a number to read and evaluate, and an "A" list of scripts was drawn up. I was the only person who reads EVERY WORD OF EVERY SCRIPT. My opinions were not worth more than the other readers, but there were more of them!  During my years on the staff of the BBC, and working with TAPS, I have read several thousand sitcom scripts - and that's part of the reason why I am qualified to read yours.

I have an MA in Creative Writing from the prestigious University of East Anglia School of Literature.

I am a member of BAFTA, the Royal Television Society, The Writer's Guild of Great Britain, Directors UK,  PRS for Music and Equity. 

This photograph was taken in studio 8 at BBC Television Centre. As producer, I always welcomed the audience and introduced the cast before each recording. Perhaps some day I'll be in the audience watching a producer do the same for your sit-com ...