Biography

 

Humphrey Barclay, who between 1967 and 2000 was one of the UK’s foremost prolific and innovative producers of television situation comedy, was born on March 24^th 1941 in Dorking, Surrey, to a barrister father John Barclay and artist mother Patricia Slade. The Barclay family of Mathers and Urie, of which he is currently the Head, traces its history back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066, and founded Barclays Brewery as well as Barclays Bank. Ancestors of his held lands in Scotland for 800 years and were active in the leadership of the Quaker movement, prison reform and the Anti-Slavery Society, and included the renowned Regency sportsman and walker Captain Robert Barclay, known as The Pedestrian. On his mother’s side he is a great-great-great grandson of Mary Hyde who arrived in Sydney Australia as a convict in 1798, and he was a first cousin of the late Julian Slade, the composer of  ‘Salad Days’.

 

He was educated at The Old Malthouse preparatory school in Dorset where he was Head Boy, at Harrow where he was Head of School and Captain of Swimming, and, after one term’s teaching at a prep school in Nairobi, at Trinity College Cambridge where he was a Classical scholar. There he began acting, gained a BA in Classics, and directed the 1963 Cambridge Footlights Revue CAMBRIDGE CIRCUS, starring John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie, which transferred to the West End, toured New Zealand, and played on Broadway.

 

Simultaneously he joined BBC Radio, where he produced the first 50 episodes of the cult comedy hit I’M SORRY, I’LL READ THAT AGAIN.

 

In 1967 he was invited to Rediffusion Television to invent a children’s comedy series DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET, for which he put together for the first time Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and The Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band, and discovered (at the end of a pier in Bournemouth) David Jason, whom he teamed with Denise Coffey. DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET won The Prix Jeunesse in Munich in 1968.

 

He was then recruited by Frank Muir to join London Weekend Television at its outset in 1968 and produced its first programme on air WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU LAUGH. Over the next fifteen years with LWT, the last six of which were spent as Head of Comedy working to Michael Grade, he produced Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ THE COMPLETE AND UTTER HISTORY OF BRITAIN; a musical with Michael Flanders and Nina and Frederick NO! NO! NO!; LWT’s first colour series DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, created for television by John Cleese and

Graham Chapman, and its successors (totalling 138 episodes) in the course of which he found such writers as Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, Phil Redmond, Douglas Adams and Jonathan Lynn; HARK AT BARKER, for which he first paired Ronnie Barker and David Jason; SIX DATES WITH BARKER which included Spike Milligan’s ‘The Phantom Raspberry-Blower of Old London Town’; three series by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham: NO – HONESTLY starring John Alderton and Pauline Collins, YES – HONESTLY starring Liza Goddard and Donal Donnelly, and PIG IN THE MIDDLE; Beetles and Buckman’s THE PINK MEDICINE SHOW; TWO’S COMPANY starring Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden; A FINE ROMANCE which introduced Judi Dench and her husband Michael Williams to situation comedy; Arthur Lowe in BLESS ME, FATHER; John Esmonde and Bob Larbey’s NOW AND THEN, featuring June Brown; AGONY, which made a star of Maureen Lipman, featured UK television’s first gay couple and won Best Situation Comedy at the Banff Television Festival; a TV movie THE STRANGE CASE OF THE END OF CIVILISATION AS WE KNOW IT, starring John Cleese and Arthur Lowe; television’s first remote-controlled robot star vehicle METAL MICKEY, for which he recruited as a first-time director ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz (the show was another Banff winner); Andrew Marshall and David Renwick’s first series END OF PART ONE (International Emmy nominee) and their end-of-the-world sitcom WHOOPS APOCALYPSE which starred Barry Morse, John Cleese and Alexei Sayle and won The Royal Television Society’s Most Original Programme Award; Julia McKenzie and Irene Handl in MAGGIE AND HER; Jimmy Edwards, Ian Lavender and Patricia Brake in THE GLUMS; Stanley Baxter’s avowedly favourite special STANLEY BAXTER’S CHRISTMAS BOX; HOLDING THE FORT, which discovered script-writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran and introduced Matthew Kelly to television; David Jason’s first two starring series THE TOP SECRET LIFE OF EDGAR BRIGGS and Terence Frisby’s LUCKY FELLER; TV’s first inter-racial romantic sitcom MIXED BLESSINGS; Rowan Atkinson’s first television programme CANNED LAUGHTER; Peter Cook’s last TV special PETER COOK AND CO. (the Co. included John Cleese, Beryl Reid, Terry Jones and Rowan Atkinson, and the show won a Gold medal at the New York Film and Television Festival); and NO PROBLEM!, Britain’s first authentic West Indian situation comedy.

 

During the last eighteen months of this period his programmes won eleven national and international awards, and he achieved two out the three nominations for the Popular Arts category of the International Emmy Awards in 1981.

 

In 1983 he left LWT to form, with Al Mitchell, Gyearbuor Asante and Diana Crystal Honey, his own independent production company Humphrey Barclay Productions. At the same time he became an Associate of Limehouse Productions, producing and directing Emma Thompson’s first one-person show SHORT VEHICLE for the Edinburgh Fringe and her subsequent special for Channel Four UP FOR GRABS; the opening special for Limehouse Studios CELEBRATION, starring Gary Wilmot; and the sitcom DREAM STUFFING.

 

Humphrey Barclay Productions’ first programme was Black Theatre Co-operative’s New Year’s special for Channel Four PARTY AT THE PALACE (the first UK independent production to be selected for competition at the Montreux International Festival), followed by the Marks and Gran / Matthew Kelly series RELATIVE STRANGERS, Channel Four’s highest rating sitcom to this day, an International Emmy Nominee, and winner of a Silver Medal at The NY Film and Television Festival. These were followed by Marshall and Renwick’s newspaper satire HOT METAL for LWT, starring Robert Hardy, Geoffrey Palmer and Richard Wilson; Emma Thompson’s ground-breaking comedy series THOMPSON for BBC1 (which led directly to the commissioning of her Oscar-winning screenplay for Sense and Sensibility); Judi Dench, Joely Richardson and Frances Barber in the four-part drama series BEHAVING BADLY; Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in Judi Dench’s production of LOOK BACK IN ANGER; Peter Learmouth’s long-running sitcom starring Nicola McAuliffe SURGICAL SPIRIT; Sue Limb’s starring vehicle for Imelda Staunton UP THE GARDEN PATH; New Zealander Roger Hall’s CONJUGAL RITES; and St. Lucian Trix Worrell’s ground-breaking black barbershop sitcom DESMOND’S, which won The Royal Television Society’s Team Award and a British Comedy Best Sitcom Award before being honoured with a special Silver Medal by The Royal Television Society at a ceremony recognising outstanding contributions to the cause of multicultural television, a spin-off PORKPIE, and a multicultural youth-orientated sitcom WHAT YOU LOOKING AT?. During this time he also produced Terence Frisby’s long-running THAT’S LOVE for Sarah Lawson and TVS, which starred Jimmy Mulville, and DAY TO REMEMBER, a play for Theatre of Comedy and TVS by Jack Rosenthal starring George Cole. Development included IN THE MIX, a young British Asian sitcom for the BBC which starred the team which subsequently went on the write and perform GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME, and a new black sitcom MARVIN, starring Curtis Walker.

 

In 1966 he returned to London Weekend Television, this time as Controller of Comedy, where he assumed responsibility for HALE AND PACE and the award-winning FAITH IN THE FUTURE, the re-introduction of SATURDAY LIVE starring Lee Hurst and Harry Hill, BLIND MEN, THE PEOPLE VS. JERRY SADOWITZ, Richard Wilson in DUCK PATROL, a panel game CAN WE STILL BE FRIENDS?, Chris England’s soccer comedy special BOSTOCK’S CUP, the first ITV pantomime JACK AND THE BEANSTALK and its successor CINDERELLA, both written by Simon Nye, and Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson’s break-through ‘slackcom’ SPACED for The Paramount Comedy Channel UK and Channel Four.

 

In 1999 he moved to the international scene, becoming Head of Comedy Development for Granada Media International, working principally in Australia and America. With Granada Entertainment USA he developed Micky Dolenz’s LIVING OFF LARRY, combining real time animation and live actors, and created with John Cleese a legal sitcom WHETFISH. With Artist Services (subsequently Granada Australia) in Melbourne, he helped to develop the Ten Network / Paramount Comedy Channel UK ten-part situation comedy SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, which first aired in the UK in November 2000.

 

He retired in September 2000, but returned to the scene in April 2002 as Development Executive (Comedy) for Celador Productions, whose CEO Paul Smith had directed THE PINK MEDICINE SHOW and PETER COOK AND CO for him. He remained with Celador until October 2006, taking responsibility for the second and third series of the Jasper Carrott sitcom ALL ABOUT ME, developing BBC1’s ANGEL CAKE, starring Sarah Lancashire, and BBC 3’s DOGTOWN, featuring the talented LIVE! GIRLS!

 

In the course of his career he also spent five years as a script editor for Video Arts (John Cleese’s training films company), developed situation comedies for D.L.Taffner Ltd and the Nine Network in Australia, and served on juries for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Montreux International Festival, The Royal Television Society, and the UK’s Race In The Media Awards, as well as spending a year on the West End theatre’s Olivier Awards panel. In March 2001 he was invited by the South African Script Writers’ Association to give two three-day comedy writing workshops in Johannesburg and Capetown, and at the invitation of Scriptnet 2000 he then did the same in Accra, Ghana.

 

He has lived in Surrey, Kensington, Clapham, Highgate and West Hampstead, is a caricaturist and watercolour painter, enjoys theatre and travelling and is a Liveryman of The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and a Freeman of the City of London. The playwright Ben Travers was one of his proposers for membership of The Garrick Club along with DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE author Richard Gordon.

 

In September 2000, in tribute to his long friendship with the late Ghanaian actor Gyearbuor Asante (‘Matthew’ in DESMOND’S), he was adopted into the Royal family of Asona in Ghana and made a Chief. He was given the ‘stool’ name Kwadwo Ameyaw Gyearbuor Yiadom I, and appointed to the position of Nkosuohene (Development Chief) in the town of Kwahu-Tafo, where he was installed at a ceremony in September 2001.

 

In 2002 he founded and now chairs the UK Charity Friends of Tafo, to inspire and facilitate projects in education, health, employment and sustainable development in his adopted town.