My friend and former work colleague Simon Welfare, who has died aged 78, was a writer and pioneering TV producer whose programmes aimed to make science accessible to all.
Together with the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke and a fellow producer, John Fairley, in 1980 he cooked up the format for the British TV series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, which examined unexplained phenomena around the globe and became a huge success, with bestselling spin-off books.
The series ran to 52 programmes in all, and, with Fairley, Simon put together the associated books with his trademark erudition, painstaking research and irreverent humour. He never forgot that we are all, at heart, still children who like a laugh.
Born in Cambridge, to Bill Welfare, a judge, and Patience (nee Ross), a social worker, Simon went to Harrow school in London, and then to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied modern languages. He was active in university journalism and drama, and became interested in the newly emerging world of independent television.
His career began in 1968 in the newsroom of the fledgling Yorkshire Television. He used to delight in recounting that, as a new graduate, his opportunity came from a chance meeting at a party in Oxford. A girl there casually mentioned that “Daddy’s in charge of one of those TV companies”. “Daddy”, it transpired, was Donald Baverstock, the newly appointed managing director of Yorkshire TV. A meeting was arranged, Simon impressed, and he became a TV journalist.
Initially he was involved in Yorkshire TV’s nightly news magazine, Calendar, working as an on-screen reporter and presenter. He then moved into the company’s science documentary team, which created the prime time ITV science series Don’t Ask Me, a launching pad for the small-screen careers of Magnus Pyke, David Bellamy and Miriam Stoppard.
It was in the “science office” unit at Yorkshire TV that Simon became involved in the creation and making of Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World.
In 1988 he left Yorkshire TV to set up his own company, Granite Film and Television Productions, which made documentaries, including histories of the Soviet Union (Red Empire, 1990) and China (China Rising, 1992).
Simon had married Mary Gordon, an artist and children’s book writer, in 1968, and the couple settled in Aberdeenshire, close to Mary’s childhood home, Haddo House. After retiring from television Simon wrote Fortune’s Many Houses (2021), an entertaining biography of the quixotic Marchioness Ishbel, wife of the 7th Earl of Aberdeen. A further book, The Stolen Earl, a “cold case” investigation into the disappearance in 1881 of the body of the 25th Earl of Crawford from his grave at Dunecht House on Deeside, is awaiting publication.
He is survived by Mary and two children, Toby and Hannah.
