By Andrew Young,
Entertaiments Editor
DAVID BELL, one of British television's most accomplished light
entertainment producers, died, aged 53, at his London home at the
weekend after being ill for several months.
Bell, a Scot who learned his craft with Scottish Television and BBC
Scotland, worked with all of the big names, particularly Stanley Baxter,
Benny Hill, Bruce Forsyth, Dame Edna Everage, Elton John, and Tommy
Steele. He won five BAFTA awards and was the man behind most of the ITV
Royal variety shows.
He had two stints with STV. In the early days, back in the fifties, he
more or less camped on the doorstep before being given a job, first as
floor manager then as cameraman. He went on to produce and direct a
string of shows for both STV and BBC Scotland before going to London
Weekend Television for the first time. With BBC Scotland in the early
sixties, he directed Between the Lines, the first light entertainment
programme to be networked from Scotland.
He came back to STV in 1976 as head of entertainment and drama,
initiating The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie series which marked the
beginning of the company's drama successes on the network.
Bell, a bachelor, later returned to LWT as controller of entertainment
in charge of many of ITV's most popular series.
Before getting into television, he had spent a brief spell working in
a mill in his home town of Hawick, and was particularly proud of the
headline that appeared in his local paper when he won BAFTA recognition
for the Stanley Baxter show. The headline was: ''Mill boy gets top
television award.'' David Macmahon, independent producer/director who
was responsible for the last two STV Hogmanay shows, said: ''He was
superb at engendering great enthusiasm in all who worked with him.
Second best was never good enough for David.''
When Bell realised he did not have long to live he prepared the
''running order'' for his own funeral as though it was for one his TV
shows. He said he wanted it to be like the funeral he organised for his
friend, choreographer and producer Bruce McClure, when waitresses served
champagne to friends following the service.
An STV spokesman said: ''This company owes a lot to David Bell's
talent and vision.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article