John Cooper - Producer / Director

John Cooper was born in 1927 in Edale, Derbyshire where he attended New Mills Grammar School. Aged 17, he joined the BBC Sound radio engineering department in Glasgow before moving onto Manchester and finally, Broadcasting House in London. It was whilst there that National Service intervened and John found himself as an instructor in the general education service with the R.A.F.

In 1949, he was back at the BBC working at Alexandra Palace as an engineer with the newly resurrected television service. After specialisation occurred, he became a cameraman eventually making the move to ABC on the new ITV service in 1955 becoming a senior cameraman there by 1956 and eventually Head of the Camera Department the following year.

In 1958, John became a director working on such diverse programming as "Ad Mags", science documentaries, "Right to Reply" and, eventually, "Emergency Ward Ten" - which was then ITV's popular medical drama. The early sixties saw John spending three years producing the show for twice-weekly broadcasts.

He also produced and directed many episodes of ATV's most popular programmes including "The Plane Makers", "The Power Game", "Sergeant Cork", "The Sullivan Brothers", "Mrs Thursday", "Knock on Any Door", "Love Story", "Crimes of Passion", "Hunter's Walk", "The Foundation", "Thriller" "General Hospital" and "Sounding Brass" He was also responsible for a number of milestones whilst at ATV including the production of two series of "Happy Ever After" which was the first colour series made at ATV's Elstree Studios and "Honey Lane" which marked the first use of Elstree's back lot in filming. (The backlot is nowadays more famous for playing host to the EastEnders set.)

In 1970, he was responsible for producing "Timeslip". He also directed its first six episodes and went on to produce "Tightrope" which also featured Spencer Banks and re-united many of "Timeslip's" production team in 1972.

He remained at ATV when it was taken over and became Central Television and in 1980, produced the drama series "Diamonds" directing nine episodes out of thirteen.

In 1983, he was seconded to TVS where he produced and directed segments of the short story anthology "Strange But True". Returning to Central, he directed episodes of "Murphy's Mob" and several other series for children's television including "Them and Us" and "Y.E.S.".

John Cooper retired in 1987.

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