Reggie Collin, who has died aged 84, ran Bafta (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) during the 1980s and as a television producer 20 years earlier revived the fortunes of the popular ITV spy series Callan, starring Edward Woodward.
Edward Woodward in Callan
Collin’s brief had been to kill off Callan, but when his series was broadcast by Thames in 1969 it was such a ratings hit that the show was recommissioned and returned in both 1970 and 1972, as well as spawning a feature film and a range of novels.
In June 1970, when the Labour prime minister (and Callan fan) Harold Wilson called a general election, ITV postponed transmission of an episode called Amos Green Must Live. It starred Corin Redgrave as the eponymous Green, a politician with the combustible view that “coloured immigration is dangerous to Britain and must stop”.
It was obvious that the Amos Green character was a thinly disguised portrait of Enoch Powell, the Conservative MP who had made his notorious “Rivers Of Blood” speech two years earlier and returned to his theme during the campaign, alleging that government officials had falsified immigration statistics.
As a result Amos Green Must Live became the first British television programme to be pulled for political reasons since the cancellation of That Was The Week That Was ahead of the 1964 general election.
Reginald Thomas Collin was born on July 7 1927 in Islington, north London. His father, who designed women’s handbags and also worked as a part-time greengrocer, moved the family to Harrow shortly after the outbreak of war. Leaving Wembley grammar school at 14, Reggie’s first job at the height of the Blitz was that of lab boy at the then Westminster Hospital. A month after the war ended he was called up for military service.
When the RAF trained him as a shorthand typist, Collin embarked on the most enjoyable three years of his life. Posted to Headquarters Bomber Command at High Wycombe, he spent most of his time either playing tennis or running the amateur drama group; happily very little was done by way of work.
On leaving the Air Force he won a scholarship to The Old Vic Theatre School, where Prunella Scales was a fellow student. Three years’ weekly rep in Huddersfield followed, and then several more directing pantomimes and summer shows.
In 1959 Collin was invited to join ABC Television (later to become Thames), becoming a director in the features department and creating the arts programme Tempo before moving into the drama department.
As well as Callan his other credits, mainly directing for Thames, included Sat’Day While Sunday (1967); the series Special Branch (1969); Mystery and Imagination ; and the dramas Man at the Top and The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (both 1971). Napoleon and Love (1974) was a series of plays starring Ian Holm as Napoleon; In Sickness and in Health (1975) starred Patrick Mower as an overworked London GP.
In 1977 Collin was appointed director of Bafta. During his tenure he oversaw the expansion of the organisation’s headquarters in Piccadilly, central London, and the opening of a Bafta office in Los Angeles, since reinforced by another in New York. He retired in 1987.
In the course of his television career, Collin received a number of awards, among them Best Drama Producer for 1969, as well as two Bafta nominations and awards for services to the industry from Bafta and Kodak.
Reggie Collin married, in 1960, Pamela Lonsdale, who won a Bafta for the pre-school children’s programme Rainbow, which she created; she survives him.
Reggie Collin, born July 7 1927, died December 16 2011
On leaving the Air Force he won a scholarship to The Old Vic Theatre School, where Prunella Scales was a fellow student. Three years’ weekly rep in Huddersfield followed, and then several more directing pantomimes and summer shows.
In 1959 Collin was invited to join ABC Television (later to become Thames), becoming a director in the features department and creating the arts programme Tempo before moving into the drama department.
As well as Callan his other credits, mainly directing for Thames, included Sat’Day While Sunday (1967); the series Special Branch (1969); Mystery and Imagination ; and the dramas Man at the Top and The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (both 1971). Napoleon and Love (1974) was a series of plays starring Ian Holm as Napoleon; In Sickness and in Health (1975) starred Patrick Mower as an overworked London GP.
In 1977 Collin was appointed director of Bafta. During his tenure he oversaw the expansion of the organisation’s headquarters in Piccadilly, central London, and the opening of a Bafta office in Los Angeles, since reinforced by another in New York. He retired in 1987.
In the course of his television career, Collin received a number of awards, among them Best Drama Producer for 1969, as well as two Bafta nominations and awards for services to the industry from Bafta and Kodak.
Reggie Collin married, in 1960, Pamela Lonsdale, who won a Bafta for the pre-school children’s programme Rainbow, which she created; she survives him.
Reggie Collin, born July 7 1927, died December 16 2011
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