Lorraine Heggessey’s impact on British television might be hard to measure – but it impossible to ignore.
She was a trailblazer as the first female controller of BBC1 in the early 2000s, and her influence is best measured in the remarkable cadre of shows she helped usher to screen.
At the corporation alone, her credits include Blue Planet, Spooks, Imagine, State of Play, Strictly Come Dancing, My Family, Doctor Who and The Secret Policeman.
Those titles are stellar mix of broad popular hits, provocative and inspiring factual, and thrilling scripted series and sum up the eclectic range of programmes that Heggessey helped deliver.
When she swapped the BBC for Talkback Thames, the indie label upped the entertainment ante with new titles such as Take Me Out and Britain’s Got Talent supercharged fledgling mega-formats including The Apprentice and The X Factor.
By the time she left in 2010, the latter was being watched by the best part of 20 million people.
After those two vast jobs, Heggessey’s career shifted gear. She led a 2012 management buyout of Boomerang to create Boom Pictures, which in turn merged with Twofour Group and was ultimately bought by ITV Studios. Her role kickstarted that process, sewing the seeds of creative and commercial growth that helped create a major Welsh indie sector player.
After that she ran the Royal Foundation (the Prince and Princess of Wales’ charity) for two years before becoming a distinguished chair of The Grierson Trust, helping shepherd the organisation and fighting the good fight for documentaries. She has only just called time on her 11 years at the Trust, and appears to have earned a proper rest.
The late and much-loved Jana Bennett, who was BBC director of television when Heggessey worked there, believed her colleague was a “human dynamo” and summed her up as well as seems possible: “Lorraine is a true champion of public service broadcasting, consistently backing talent and creativity. She has the capacity to make all that she does great fun, and teams love working with her because she throws herself into everything.”
AWARD SPONSORED BY GRAVITY MEDIA
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