David Agnew

"David Agnew" is a pen name that was employed exclusively on BBC television drama programmes of the 1970s. It was used only as a scriptwriting credit.

The "David Agnew" pseudonym was most-often used when the original freelance scriptwriter was unable to accommodate fundamental changes requested by the production staff, and the production staff had to perform a major, last-minute rewrite themselves. BBC rules prevented the production staff from taking screen credit without a time-consuming, bureaucratic appeals process, meaning that the quickest way for the project to continue under the BBC system was to use the name of a non-existent writer. Sometimes production staffs were directly ordered by BBC management to use the credit.

Unlike the similar "Alan Smithee" credit for film directors, "Agnew" was not used in protest of the finished product. Indeed, the actual writers of a "David Agnew script" — typically the producer, director and/or script editor — would ideally liked to have received credit for their work, had BBC rules permitted it.

The name seems to date to 1971, when Anthony Read's script for the Play for Today episode "Hell's Angel" was broadcast under the pseudonym. Read's work on the 1975 BBC2 Playhouse episode "Diane" was likewise credited to "David Agnew".

The pseudonym entered into use on Doctor Who only after Read had become that show's script editor. Read and producer Graham Williams used the pen name hurriedly to assemble The Invasion of Time in 1978. A year later the name concealed the joint work of Douglas Adams, Williams and David Fisher on City of Death.

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