Before becoming a Production Manager I had a variety of jobs  at the BBC which gave me a thorough grounding in TV Production. I started life in Drama Series and Serials as Guy Slater’s secretary, working on Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple series – classic BBC drama. I did my stint at Elstree in the early days of EastEnders. Shortly after, I became a Script Supervisor (PA) working around various BBC departments, including Comedy, which is how I worked on my first Comedy shows – I was a trainee PA on the last series of Hi-di-Hi!

I decided Comedy was where I wanted to settle and secured a permanent position as a PA working on shows such as 2point4 Children and The Real McCoy. When the department first introduced the role of Production Accountant, I was persuaded to try my hand. This wasn’t easy as the role wasn’t popular but it was very good experience and got me a trip to Portugal on ‘One Foot in the Algarve’.

This was followed by a year spent in TV Training as a PA instructor. This job was invaluable in making the move to Production Manager as it was a pro-active role where we were entirely responsible for our own output on the courses.

When Entertainment advertised for Production Managers, it felt like just the right time for me to make this move. The interview  proved to be somewhat plain sailing – I will never forget the Manager at the time, turning to the HR person and saying, “I told you she’d know it – she wrote the book!” He was referring to a Department Rates book I’d produced when I was a Production Accountant. So then followed many very happy years as Production Manager in Entertainment and Comedy, where I’ve enjoyed working on everything from small sketch show pilots to big-budget Saturday Night extravaganzas.