Kenneth Trodd

Kenith Trodd (born 1936, Southampton, Hampshire) is a British television producer best known for his long association with television playwright Dennis Potter.

The son of a crane driver, Trodd was raised in the Christian fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren. A graduate of Oxford University, following work as a university teacher in West Africa, Trodd began his career in television as an assistant to Roger Smith, script editor of The Wednesday Play in 1964. A problem with the script of Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton first brought Trodd into contact with Dennis Potter, the play's author. A desire to adapt a short story for an episode of BBC 2's Thirty-Minute Theatre, led to a phone call from its author, Simon Gray, beginning Trodd's association with him and Gray's work in drama.

In 1968, with colleagues Tony Garnett and Ken Loach, he set up Kestrel Productions, a company which was affiliated with London Weekend Television. From now on Trodd worked as a producer, and the short-lived Kestrel saw the beginning of Trodd's professional relationship with Dennis Potter with Moonlight on the Highway (1969) and Lay Down Your Arms (1970), Potter's first play produced in colour. British Sounds (aka, See You at Mao, 1970), a film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, which Trodd produced, had a particularly deleterious effect on Kestrel's relationship with LWT, who banned it.

Trodd returned to the BBC, and worked on Play for Today. On an annual freelance contract, it was not renewed in 1976. The BBC's Personnel Department objected to Trodd's political contacts; he had attended meetings in the early 1970s of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, which attracted a small minority in the media, but had never joined the organisation. A letter signed by Trodd's colleagues was sent to Alasdair Milne, Director of Programmes, Television, and Ian Trethowan, Director General of the BBC. The BBC backed down and Trodd was reappointed.

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