David Bell was a
Scottish television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
producer and director in the
light entertainment
Light entertainment encompasses a broad range of television and radio programming that includes comedies, variety shows, game shows, quiz shows and the like.
In Great Britain
In the early days of the BBC virtually all broadcast entertainment wou ...
genre. In the mid-1980s, he became head of light entertainment at
LWT
London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 un ...
.
Live From Her Majesty's
''Live from...'' was a Sunday night live entertainment variety show, variety television show that aired on ITV (TV network), ITV from 16 January 1983 to 27 November 1988 and was hosted by Jimmy Tarbuck. It was broadcast live from a theatre in ...
,
Copy Cats and ''
The Stanley Baxter Show
''The Stanley Baxter Show'' is a British comedy television show which was originally broadcast on the BBC. The original series aired in 1963, with three more between 1967 and 1971. The show used a variety format featuring a mixture of sketches a ...
'' number amongst his successes. He died of
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
, aged 52.
In 1978 Bell was involved with Michael Grade's move bringing Bruce Forsyth to ITV to present a Saturday night spectacular. On the back of his mammoth success with The Generation Game, Forsyth was never settled with ITV's two-hour multi-format evening of glitz, mini-soaps, game shows and gags. None of which was for want of trying by David Bell, whose biting wit and flair meant he enjoyed the respect of all in his production team.
1936 births
1990 deaths
British television directors
British television producers
Scottish television producers
AIDS-related deaths in England
20th-century British businesspeople
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