Richard Searle Drewett (1935–2008) was a British television executive producer specialising in talk shows and light entertainment from the 1960s to the 1990s. Working for BBC Television and London Weekend Television and later with his company Watchmaker Productions, Drewett played a key role in the development of the television talk show. He started in television as one of the producers of the 1960s arts and review show Late Night Line-Up and in a career of nearly 40 years, during which he won three British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA Awards, he developed long-running professional partnerships with presenters Michael Parkinson and Clive James and promoted the television career of Barry Humphries in his comedic alter-ego Dame Edna Everage. He promoted the early careers of a number of noted female television producers and executives.
Early life Drewett was born on 22 October 1935 in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, the son of an engineer. He was brought up in Wimborne Minster, Dorset and after school carried out his compulsory National Service in the British Army where he sustained a non-combat foot injury followed by a "bungled" repair operation which caused great pain for the rest of his life.Anthony Hayward, "Richard Drewett: Producer who launched 'Parkinson'", The Independent, London, England, 22 April 2008, p35.Clive James, "Richard Drewett", The Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008, Picador, London, England, 2009, .
Drewett's first employment after the army was as a local newspaper reporter on the Poole and Dorset Herald. He moved on to become a management trainee with George Newnes Ltd, one of London's magazine publishers. He then became a freelance comedy writer, working mostly for BBC Radio in London. Among the programmes he worked on were Monday Night at Home, described by the BBC as "a selection of recorded wit, music, and humour" and broadcast on the BBC Home Service with Drewett's first contribution being aired in March 1961, and Just Before Midnight, a long-running series of fifteen-minute plays on the BBC Light Programme.
BBC Television In 1964 BBC Television began recruiting and training staff to service its new second television channel, BBC2. Drewett took the opportunity, and joined the corporation to train in production. Within a few months, he joined the BBC's Presentation department and became one of the writers and producers of BBC2's Late Night Line-Up, a nightly, live, open-ended programme which reviewed television, interviewed guests, presented musicians performing, and discussed the arts generally."Richard Drewett", The Guardian, London, England, 4 February 2008Philip Purser, "Line-Up",Halliwell's Television Companion, Paladin Books, London, England, 1980, p353. It was on this show that Drewett first learnt the skills of booking guests and shaping programmes, experience that governed his programme choices for his entire television career. The writer and television presenter Clive James who worked with Drewett for twenty years towards the end of his career maintained that Drewett "remained trapped by his skill at meeting the elevated requirements of Late Night Line-Up."
After five years with Late Night Line-Up, Drewett was persuaded to move to the BBC's Variety department, which in 1969 was presenting Dee Time, a sometimes troubled early evening chat show presented by a former pirate radio disc jockey, Simon Dee. Drewett took over production of the show in May 1969, making 26 programmes until the end of Dee's BBC contract in December that year.
An arts documentary followed, as part of the weekly arts magazine programme Review. Elmyr - The True Picture?, about the painter and art forger Elmyr de Hory, was jointly directed by Drewett and the French film director François Reichenbach and produced by Drewett. It was first broadcast in May 1970 on BBC2.
Searching for a replacement for Dee Time the BBC decided on a chat show series to be presented by the actor Derek Nimmo, a sitcom star. The show was called If It's Saturday, It Must Be Nimmo and was billed as "And if it's Derek Nimmo expect the unexpected as he talks, entertains, and welcomes his guests". Drewett was producer and the series of nine programmes ran in the same early evening slot as Dee Time from October to December 1970. It was felt that Nimmo was "uneasy" in the role of chat show host and the series "wasn't doing great business".
Drewett badgered BBC Television's head of light entertainment, Bill Cotton, with an idea for a late-night talk show based on the Dick Cavett Show he had seen in the United States. Cotton thought his idea was worth trying and suggested that Michael Parkinson, a former newspaper journalist turned casual TV presenter, might be a workable host and instructed Drewett to produce a series of eleven shows in the summer of 1971. In preparing for the series Drewett and Parkinson set the pattern for a talk show which was to give Parkinson solid work for 36 years. A late night talk show was not a new concept in Britain; ABC Weekend TV launched The Eamonn Andrews Show on the British Independent Television network (ITV) in October 1964 and it ran for five years. But for Drewett Parkinson and its success was a calling card for the rest of his career.
Drewett and Parkinson, very much in agreement, set ground rules. The opening music was upbeat and jazzy. There was a staircase down to the set for the entrances of Parkinson and his guests. Serious interviews would be blended with show business. Guests would stay on the set throughout the programme so that a conversation could develop. Music on the show would be anything from jazz to classics and in between, but not hit parade material. It was found difficult to book a star guest for the opening programme with a comparatively unknown and untried presenter and a series with no previous profile. Drewett solved the disinclination of any star to agree to appear by persuading his parents' neighbour in Ibiza, British film star, Terry-Thomas, to consent to appear.
The first edition of Parkinson went out on BBC1 on Saturday 19 June 1971. For the ensuing editions, Drewett - "a clever and tenacious booker," according to Parkinson - managed to book stars of the calibre of Peter Ustinov, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Spike Milligan, Harold Pinter, Shirley MacLaine, George Best, Michael Caine, and for a solo guest episode of the series, after much perseverance by Drewett, Orson Welles. The series was deemed to be so successful that the BBC demanded a second series to start on 10 October 1971 after only a five-week break. The show, with Parkinson's increasingly adept interviewing and attractive personality and Drewett's "astonishing rigour" in the way he prepared talk shows, insisting on research interviews with guests prior to recording, quickly became the flagship of the BBC's prime-time schedule. Parkinson went on to present multiple editions of the show on the BBC and later on ITV, the last edition being transmitted in 2007.Jack Kibble-White & Steve Williams, The Encyclopaedia of Classic Saturday Night Telly, Allison & Busby Limited, London, England, 2007, pp245-247, . Drewett, widely regarded as Parkinson'''s "midwife", stayed with the show until 1977, producing the first 132 editions.
While running Parkinson, Drewett made two documentaries with Derek Nimmo in which the actor visited Las Vegas and Australia. They were transmitted in April 1972 and December 1973 respectively.
In 1973 Drewett acted as associate producer on the film F for Fake, a docudrama about art forgery co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. This film was initially a commercial and critical failure but it has grown in stature over the years.Jackson Ayres, "Orson Welles's: Complicitous Critique: Postmodern Paradox in F for Fake", Literature/Film Quarterly, Salisbury University, Maryland, United States, 1 January 2012.
A further diversion from Parkinson came with the making of Forty Years, a programme looking back at the previous four decades of BBC Television, produced by Drewett and transmitted for the first time in August 1976.
London Weekend Television As the sixth series of Parkinson came to an end in the spring of 1977, Drewett left the BBC after thirteen years to work for the independent television company London Weekend Television (LWT)."LWT sign three", The Stage, London, England, 28 April 1977, p14. For an entertainment and features producer, Richard Drewett's move to LWT made sense. With Michael Grade as director of programmes and David Bell as controller of entertainment, in the late 1970s the company was moving quickly to challenge the BBC's dominance in the ratings in an attempt to establish ITV as the nation's Saturday night entertainment channel.
One of the first programmes Drewett produced for LWT was one-off special with the US film actor Robert Redford entitled Robert Redford on the Outlaw Trail in which Drewett tempted the star to expound on his obsession with the truth about the American frontier. Drewett's film crew followed Redford as he retraced an old outlaw trail to Colorado. It transmitted on ITV in the summer of 1978.Penny Valentine, "Controls and the TV state", The Sunday Times, London, England, 27 August 1978, p48.
Soon afterwards Drewett's next one-off programme was another look back at television history, written and presented by Denis Norden. Of necessity this show went back only one decade, to feature Ten Years of LWT, and was described as a personal view by Nordern. It was transmitted on 1 September 1978.
Drewett's first major programme at LWT was Bruce Forsyth's Big Night, a series transmitted in the autumn of 1978. Bruce Forsyth was poached from the BBC to act as the anchor for a full Saturday evening's entertainment, with quiz games, situation comedy, audience participation, and celebrity guests and interviews. The budget was £2million for what was originally planned as a 14-week run.Jules Stenson, Bruce: The Biography of Sir Bruce Forsyth, John Blake Publishing, London, England, 2001, p88, . LWT's controller of entertainment, David Bell, ran the variety part of the show as executive producer, LWT's head of comedy, Humphrey Barclay, produced the sitcom segments, and Drewett was the producer in charge of booking celebrity guests and running the chat show elements. Big Night was promoted as ITV's "first serious attempt to dent the BBC's superiority on Saturday nights". Drewett booked guest interviewees and performers of the stature of Dolly Parton, Elton John, Cleo Laine, Bette Midler, The Carpenters, Sammy Davis Jr. and Demis Roussos. The first show in the series was on 7 October 1978 and it topped the UK television ratings, but audience numbers rapidly declined. Within weeks the show had lost a third of its audience to the BBC. Considered a disaster, the series ran to only ten programmes. Despite Drewett's big-name roster of guests the series was poorly received by critics and the public and was unsuccessful in winning over the BBC's audience. LWT brought in consultants to assess the show. Among their recommendations was that British star guests should be brought in rather than Americans. At the end of the year the series was abandoned.
Drewett's next big LWT show was a royal gala entertainment in the presence of Princess Margaret. It was staged at the National Theatre to celebrate 50 years of the British actors' trade union Equity with the proceeds going to theatrical charities. Billed as The Night of 100 Stars it actually featured 130 stars and was Drewett's biggest booking project in his television producing career to that date. As it was such a major endeavour he shared production with David Bell. It was transmitted on the ITV network on 21 December 1980.Edward Durham Taylor, "Stars with the precious gift of laughter", The Great TV Book: 21 Years of LWT, Sedgwick & Jackson Limited, London, England, 1989, p88, .