Tony Garnett

Tony Garnett (born 3 April 1936) is a British film and television producer. Best known for his thirteen-year association with director Ken Loach, his work as producer has continued into the present century.

Born in Birmingham, Garnett lost his parents when young: his mother died when he was five from the after effects of a back-street abortion, and his father committed suicide nineteen days later. Garnett was raised by an aunt and uncle. He attended the Central Grammar School in Birmingham and read Psychology at University College, London, a constituent college of London University. By his own admission, he spent most of his time acting in the Drama Society and on television.

Beginning as an actor, Garnett appeared in An Age of Kings (1960), the BBC's mounting of Shakespeare's eight contiguous history plays, several television plays by David Mercer, and an episode Catherine (1964) in the Teletale series, significant for his career because it led to his first meeting with its director, Kenneth Loach.

Appointed by Roger Smith, he became an assistant story editor at the BBC, working on The Wednesday Play. The plays he worked on included the "very, very personal"Up the Junction (1965), directed by Loach, which features a then still illegal abortion, but he was soon under contract as a producer. The best known of his contributions to The Wednesday Play series in this role is the docudrama Cathy Come Home (1966), again directed by Loach. Garnett in 1967 introduced Loach to writer Jim Allen, who would be one of the direct or's collaborators for a quarter of a century. Garnett worked with Allen too, sometimes independently of Loach (The Lump, 1967), but also with him on such works as Allen's The Big Flame (1969), which had been shot in February and March 1968, but was withheld from transmission by the BBC.

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