Derek Smith (television producer)

Derek Smith (16 April 1927 - 17 March 2015) was a BBC Television producer whose body of work extended to more than 100 programmes or series. He was the creator and producer of the original series of Top Gear and the adventure survival series Now Get Out Of That.

Smith joined the BBC in Birmingham 1957, working as an assistant producer on the newly created Farming magazine programme. In the early 1960s he moved on to work on general programming, directing and producing films and programmes on a range of subjects for the BBC.

One of the first of a number of films he made about the services was Soldier In The Sun, a film looking at the Royal Anglian Regiment in Aden and Yemen (1964). The film has been chosen by the BBC for inclusion in its BBC Four Army Collection. Another was Singapore Twilight (1965) showing the closing tasks of Midland army units. Others include: The Last Outpost, a film about the Trucial Oman Scouts in Arabia (1965); Men Of Action, a Royal Marines team competition (1966); Fly The Helicopter, showing the RAF Search and Rescue at work (1966); They Speak The Language Anyway looking at life at a US Air Force base at Mildenhall in East Anglia. (1967)

Smith produced The Flight Deck Story, the history of the aircraft carrier, filmed on HMS Eagle and on USS Enterprise off the coast of Vietnam. He also produced Mission To Hell, which followed the Bishop of Birmingham Leonard Wilson returning to Singapore to tell his story of war time imprisonment by the Japanese Army. Another military history film Smith made at this time was Jump Jet, the history of the Hawker Harrier, vertical take-off or land aircraft.

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