Obituary: Peter Webb - Television director whose talents helped give Grampian TV a modern, trendy feel

Peter Richard Webb was born in Enfield in 1941. His father was a career diplomatic who rose to the position of Assistant High Commissioner to Ghana and his mother a talented secretary who became PA to the head of the Macmillan’s publishing empire. A younger brother, Bruce, was born in 1943.

Although Peter won a scholarship to Westminster College when he was 11, this was never taken up because, after his parents’ divorce, his mother remarried and the family relocated to New Zealand, where his step-brothers Alan and Mark were born.

It was some years afterwards, while reading Geology at Auckland University (subsidising his studies by driving a beer wagon) that Peter was recruited, in the early 1960s, by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to work for its fledgling TV department. Starting as a general dogsbody, he rose through the ranks with startling rapidity, winning, in 1963, at the tender age of 22, the best light entertainment director award for the country’s first home-grown pop programme Let’s Go. He also discovered, and set on his journey to worldwide fame, the celebrity chef Graham Kerr.

Moving back to London at the height of the Swinging Sixties with his first wife, Nerida Nichols, then prima ballerina with the New Zealand Ballet Company, Peter spent several months directing propaganda programmes for the Ministry of Defence before being given a chance to return to broadcast TV by Jim Buchan, then head of programmes for Grampian, the newly formed commercial station for the north-east of Scotland, based at Queen’s Cross in Aberdeen.

The liaison was a productive one. Jim was famous for allowing his creative talent free reign, and Peter covered the board, directing everything from quiz shows such as Mr and Mrs with Jimmie Spankie and Samantha Lee through local programmes like Cairngorm Ski Night to live news and current affairs. With his laid-back attitude, he was known for being able to diffuse any latent tension in the studio and respected for his ability to cover any job across the board from sound balancing to vision mixing, to cameraman to floor managing. He was a product of his time and had found his milieu.

Possessing that rare combination of creative talent and technical expertise, he was, quite simply, a born television director. Having the good luck to work with a predominantly upbeat set of young presenters like Jack McGloughlin (the Laird of Cowcaddens) and Tony Allen, he was able to help the station project a trendy, modern feel that not only was in touch with the community it served but fitted well with the times.

During his first stint at Grampian, Peter was also responsible for writing and directing the ground-breaking, sex education series, Living and Growing, for which he won the coveted Japan Prize. He was a documentary director of considerable depth and sensitivity, and another of his programmes, dealing with the trauma of a child’s stay in hospital, was nominated for a Bafta award. Nerida, meanwhile, returned to New Zealand to play a featured role in Xena – Warrior Princess. She never came back and she and Peter were divorced shortly afterwards.

Headhunted by Thames Television, Peter spent most of the seventies directing This is Your Life during that period when it was consistently number one in the ratings. Christopher Lee and Douglas Bader were among the “lives” covered while he was at the helm and it was Peter who directed the famous “pick-up” when Eamonn Andrews was helicoptered onto the QE2 in mid-Atlantic to confront an astonished orchestra leader Stanley Black, with the infamous red book.

The Sooty Show and the children’s programme Rainbow were also part of his brief during this period, as were a number of pop videos with groups like The Electric Light Orchestra. He also made a brief foray into theatre, directing the German version of Jack Good’s rock adaptation of Othello – Catch My Soul – in Berlin.

At the beginning of the 1980s and after a couple of short placements with Anglia and Tyne Tees Television, Peter returned to Grampian, with his new partner, Samantha Lee and their young son, Stevie, leaving for a short stint at London Weekend before finally returning to head up Grampian’s commercials department. He eventually left TV in the 1990s to form his own IT consultancy.

Always an avid and accomplished skier, Peter retired a few years ago to Miramont Village in Bulgaria, where he died in his sleep, of cardiac arrest, on 8 June. His ashes are scattered in the hills above Sofia where one hopes he can now ski to his heart’s content. He is survived by his last wife Cheryl, by Ned and Sam, by his son Stevie, step-daughter Sara and only remaining step-brother, Alan Fensome.

Lest we forget.

Samantha Lee Webb