Television was still a young medium when my father, Neville Green, who has died aged 86, started out. He began in 1965 as a young production designer at ABC Television (which in 1968 became part of Thames Television), working on series such as Van der Valk and The Benny Hill Show.
Later he switched to directing and producing for shows including Warrior Queen (1978) and Jemima Shore Investigates (1983).
The youngest of three sons of Joe Green, who worked as a foreman in the local bobbin mill, and his wife, Elsie (Hanson), Neville was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and grew up in the village of Steeton. He was known in his early life (to avoid connections to Neville Chamberlain during wartime) by his middle name, Terry, but returned to his given name when he went into TV.
His oldest brother, Derick, encouraged Neville to draw and paint and helped him to go to art school in Leeds, then Bradford, where David Hockney was a fellow student. Dad’s art school friends told us about the time he took home one of Hockney’s paintings (on hardboard) for safekeeping, but found when he came back for it that his father had used it to build a chicken coop.
He went on to the Royal College of Art in London (again studying alongside Hockney as well as Ridley Scott). After graduating he tried out various lines of work in 60s London including advertising, interior design and furniture making. I wish I had listened to the tales of his adventures more closely. What was that story of meeting Salvador Dalí in Paris? Did he say something about Marlon Brando and a Jaguar?
He married Annette, a photographer who worked out of a black-painted studio on Kings Road, Chelsea. Annette was involved with setting up the Fulham Road Clothes Shop, and some of the furniture Neville designed went on sale there. But he soon went into TV as a production designer, and one of his early jobs was designing sets for a summer spectacular at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool featuring the Beatles.
His marriage to Annette ended in divorce, and while working at Thames Television he met Jean Kelly, a costume designer. They married in 1973, had two children, my brother Keiran and me, and settled first in Isleworth, west London, and later in Weybridge, Surrey. Mum died of breast cancer in 1997.
While filming a TV show in Nottingham, Dad met Sue (nee Glancz), an artist, who became his third wife. In 1999 he decided to retire from television, and he and Sue moved to the south coast, first to Brighton, and later to near Worthing. There he went back to painting, sculpting and writing. He was particularly proud of his sci-fi book Candle Dancers. After he and Sue separated in 2023, he settled in Arundel, West Sussex.
Dad was often provocative, always very good company and full of love for his family. He is survived by Keiran and me, and by two grandchildren, Midori and Lila.
