Amanda Ross is a prominent British television executive known for her significant contributions to the television industry, particularly in developing long running formats, food and book-related programming.

She is co-founder and CEO of Cactus TV, a production company she founded with her husband Simon Ross in 1994. Cactus specialises in broad-based entertainment, features and chat shows, making programmes for many major UK broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, UKTV and Channel 4. In a recent Broadcast Independent Survey 2023, Cactus was ranked as the fourth biggest supplier to the BBC and the fifth biggest supplier to ITV by hours.

Always closely involved in her productions, Amanda has won a Royal Television Society Award and been nominated for four others as a producer and a director. Amanda has been instrumental in creating and maintaining many long running TV programme brands including Saturday Kitchen for over 18 years (2006 – ongoing), Between The Covers for 8 series (2020-ongoing), and Richard & Judy, 5 nights a week for 8 years (2001–2009).

Before founding her own production company, Amanda worked for many major TV companies, including ITV, BBC, and American channel VH1 - producing, presenting, and creating formats.

She made her network debut as a presenter on the ITV Telethon in 1988 and has since hosted many shows including her own gameshow format Follow Your Nose (ITV, 1992) and Intuition (Anglia, 1999). Most recently, she also hosted a live stage tour of Between The Covers, presented awards and made several podcast and radio appearances.

Early life and education Amanda Ross () grew up in Pitsea, Essex, alongside her two brothers. They lived on a small holding with their grandparents overlooking the Thames estuary and kept a variety of animals.

Unfortunately, due to plans to create a new road, their home was compulsorily purchased. Her parents divorced when she was 11 and she moved many times after that, living in several council estates in the area. She pursued her passion for drama and completed 3 A levels at SEEVIC in Thundersley.

Between Sixth form and university she worked in a bank, and later as an au pair for a family in Paris.  At their properties in the South of France, she taught herself to properly cook, and regularly prepared dinners for 20 people.

She received a BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University, where she fostered her ambition to be a children's presenter. Whilst at Birmingham she performed in 3 successful plays at the Edinburgh Fringe, including playing Celia in Volpone and singing and performing comedy in a sellout revue style show. Amanda was the first person in her family to go to university.

Career

Early career Shortly before graduating in 1984, Amanda got a job as trainee/researcher at Central Television. Here she earned her first TV credits, writing and working on make & do and cookery items for Saturday Starship. After a year in the role, she toured Germany as a singer with a 30-piece big band in order to get an Equity card to further progress her performing career.

When she returned to the UK, she produced a variety of music and entertainment shows, including the Roxy, Catchphrase, and Chain Letters. She went on to work on many live children's shows including, No 73, Get Fresh, Gimme 5, Motormouth and Ghost Train.

She realised her dream of becoming a children's TV presenter once she had already been working for years as a producer. At job interviews, she was put under pressure to pick one or the other, but Amanda persisted as she loved doing both. She presented and produced on Children's ITV shows Docurama: Shooting Stars (1990) and Follow Your Nose (1992). Follow Your Nose was a gameshow format devised by Amanda Ross. In it, a team of children were set challenges around different tourist attractions. Each successfully completed challenge would earn the team a letter tile. At the end of the show, the children had to rearrange their letter tiles to quickly guess the ‘puzzleword’ related to where they were. If their guess took less than 30 seconds, the team would win a prize.

She went on to work on Mouse Trap (1991–1992) as producer writing games, puzzles and successfully reformatting the show and producing 75 show series for German transmission, as Maus Reiss Aus on RTL Germany. The new format was later sold to Holland and Greece.

She started her own TV production company Cheeky Productions in 1993. The first commission was a televised special on The Royal Premiere of The Fugitive attended by Princess Diana. The programme was presented by Amanda Ross, Andrew O’Connor and Iain Johnstone, and featured interviews with Harrison Ford, Arnold Kopelson, Andrew Davis and Clint Eastwood.

She produced and directed film packages for This Morning, Good Morning Anne and Nick, Film ’93, What's Up Doc, London Tonight, The Little Picture Show and Sky News. She coordinated booking of US talent for Jonathan Ross Presents (BBC 1 & VH1) and made live appearances on GMTV and The Time The Place.

Cactus TV In 1994, she founded Cactus TV, with fellow TV Producer and husband, Simon Ross. Cactus TV secured an unprecedented number of commissions from different channels in their first few years, and continued to gain a reputation as a dependable, hard-working indie under Amanda and Simon's leadership. She created and produced a diverse array of entertaining and popular programming across numerous genres—from low-budget channel interstitials and high-volume studio-based quizzes to large-scale TV events, award shows and musical spectaculars like Songs of Bond, The British Soap Awards and The British Book Awards.

In the first five years, Cactus created and produced many quiz and game shows, including Incognito (BBC1, 2 series, 87 episodes), King of the Castle (ITV, 19 episodes), It's Anybody's Guess (ITV, 40 episodes), Sports Anorak of the Year (UK Gold, 2 series, 64 episodes), Intuition (Anglia TV), Upshot (Anglia), and Morphit (BBC1).

Intuition saw Amanda Ross make a return to presenting. The ten-episode light entertainment series aired in 1999 on Anglia TV. In it, four contestants had to use their intuition to match improbable facts to fellow contestants.

For the youth market, Cactus created the lively current affairs discussion show Mad For It (ITV), which was nominated for three RTS Awards, and Off The Wall (Anglia). Other youth-oriented series included Pop-elganger (UK PLAY), For Your Ears Only (UK PLAY), and The TV Set (LWT).

Most prominently during this time period, Cactus created and produced The British Soap Awards, originally hosted by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan from 1999 to 2002. This was an annual awards ceremony celebrating the best moments in British soap operas, and was the highest-rated entertainment show for 3 successive years on any TV channel, capturing a remarkable 53% audience share, amounting in 12.8 million people tuning in. The format continues to be produced by ITV.

Richard & Judy

Thanks to the close working relationship developed during the production of The British Soap Awards, Amanda became aware that Richard & Judy had begun to feel unhappy at ITV, after 13 years of working on This Morning.

In May 2001, Amanda made headlines when she secured a multi-million-pound deal for Richard & Judy to move to Channel 4. This was big news as the presenter pair became so closely associated with the brand of This Morning, that many viewers referred to the show as the Richard & Judy show rather than its original name. The commission brought Amanda and Cactus’ name to a new level of mainstream prominence as Richard & Judy insisted that they'd like to be exclusively signed with Cactus to produce the new show, and it became the biggest single commission by Channel 4 to an independent production company, and remains so.

Industry experts were sceptical about Richard & Judy presenting a later timeslot on Channel 4 as they felt that it would not fit with the young viewership the channel attracted, but Amanda and Simon worked hard to make the switch a success. After initial struggles with the ratings, the show steadily climbed in popularity, securing a renewal by Channel 4 at the end of their initial contract for an even more impressive sum.

For the next eight years, Richard & Judy broadcast live to the nation each weekday at 5pm, establishing the coveted ‘5 o’clock slot’ and consistently attracting over 2 million viewers. The show generated numerous media stories, welcomed a wide variety of celebrities, from Madonna to Bill & Hillary Clinton, and received nominations for both a Royal Television Society Award and an Indie Award. During this series run, Cactus consistently ranked in top 10 independent production companies in Britain.

In 2004, Amanda made headlines again when she introduced the idea of a TV Book club, hosted by Richard and Judy. Although there were initial doubts from TV bosses whether these shows would have the needed entertainment value, Amanda was emboldened by the success of Oprah in America. Her instinct was proven right when books featured on the programme enjoyed astronomical boosts in sales. The sales of ‘Starter For Ten’, David Nicholls debut novel, saw an 871% uplift in the week after it was discussed on the Book Club, and ‘Star Of The Sea’ by Joseph O’Connor had sales immediately multiply, going from just under 4000 books sold before transmission to over a million almost overnight. 'Star of the Sea' instantly went to No 1 in the Sunday Times Best Seller lists and stayed at the top of the charts for 13 weeks.

Amanda was responsible for all the book choices, and over the years helped make best sellers of authors, including David Nicholls, Kate Mosse and Victoria Hislop. Other notable choices included ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold, ‘The Time Traveler's Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger, ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell, ‘My Sister's Keeper’ by Jodi Picoult and ‘Restless’ by William Boyd.

Amanda never made any money from the sales, unlike her American counterparts, as that was the condition of promoting books on British television. However, her influence on book sales was recognised by publishers who hoped to have their books featured on her show, and she could request a change to a book's publication date or cover. She is credited as being responsible for changing the cover of Cecelia Ahern's ‘P.S. I Love You’ from pink to blue to make it more appealing to male readers, her choice propelled Ahern to an international Bestseller.

The Book Club also played a pivotal role in the creation of The British Book Awards, a televised event sponsored by Galaxy, then the National Book Awards sponsored by Specsavers. This event was broadcast annually on Channel 4 from 2004 to 2008 and on UKTV's entertainment channel Watch in 2009. Later, it led to the commission of ITV Crime Thriller Awards (2008 – 2014), which ran for six years on ITV with accompanying documentary series and book clubs. These awards were attended by many stars including Dame Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ricky Gervais, and were hosted for the last three years by Bradley Walsh.

Ross booking policy and the stature of the show made it a destination for Hollywood stars. She secured exclusive interviews with the likes of Bill & Hillary Clinton, George Clooney, Tony Blair and Madonna. Ross coached Cherie Blair for her first TV guest appearance which was on the show in September 2004.

In October 2008, Cactus transferred Richard & Judy to UKTV's Watch, where their show continued to attract A-list celebrity guests until its final broadcast on July 1, 2009.

Saturday Kitchen