Richard Searle Drewett (1935–2008) was a British television executive producer specialising in talk shows and light entertainment from the 1960s to the 1990s.
He was brought up in Wimborne Minster, Dorset and after school carried out his compulsory National Service in the British Army where he sustained a non-combat foot injury followed by a "bungled" repair operation which caused great pain for the rest of his life.
[12] Searching for a replacement for Dee Time the BBC decided on a chat show series to be presented by the actor Derek Nimmo, a sitcom star.
[13] Drewett was producer and the series of nine programmes ran in the same early evening slot as Dee Time from October to December 1970.
Cotton thought his idea was worth trying and suggested that Michael Parkinson, a former newspaper journalist turned casual TV presenter, might be a workable host and instructed Drewett to produce a series of eleven shows in the summer of 1971.
[18] It was found difficult to book a star guest for the opening programme with a comparatively unknown and untried presenter and a series with no previous profile.
[20] For the ensuing editions, Drewett - "a clever and tenacious booker," according to Parkinson[21] - managed to book stars of the calibre of Peter Ustinov, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Spike Milligan, Harold Pinter, Shirley MacLaine, George Best, Michael Caine, and for a solo guest episode of the series, after much perseverance by Drewett, Orson Welles.
[2][17] While running Parkinson, Drewett made two documentaries with Derek Nimmo in which the actor visited Las Vegas and Australia.
[23] In 1973 Drewett acted as associate producer on the film F for Fake, a docudrama about art forgery co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles.
[24] A further diversion from Parkinson came with the making of Forty Years, a programme looking back at the previous four decades of BBC Television, produced by Drewett and transmitted for the first time in August 1976.
[27][28] Soon afterwards Drewett's next one-off programme was another look back at television history, written and presented by Denis Norden.
Bruce Forsyth was poached from the BBC to act as the anchor for a full Saturday evening's entertainment, with quiz games, situation comedy, audience participation, and celebrity guests and interviews.
[31] Drewett booked guest interviewees and performers of the stature of Dolly Parton, Elton John, Cleo Laine, Bette Midler, The Carpenters, Sammy Davis Jr. and Demis Roussos.
Despite Drewett's big-name roster of guests the series was poorly received by critics and the public and was unsuccessful in winning over the BBC's audience.
It was staged at the National Theatre to celebrate 50 years of the British actors' trade union Equity with the proceeds going to theatrical charities.
The first of these shows was An Audience With Dame Edna Everage, the "housewife-superstar" alter ego of Australian actor and comedian Barry Humphries.
Real senior lawyers and leading historians and scientists took part in the trial and at the conclusion the jury delivered a verdict.
On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald, featured a real judge and lawyers and a Dallas jury, together with surviving witnesses, to try to determine the guilt or innocence of the man believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
[47] In contrast to the two "trials", Drewett developed an "adult" version of LWT's popular long-running series of out-takes and bloopers, It'll be Alright on the Night.
[2] This series, which ran until 1993, long after Drewett had sent it on its way, was able to attract high-profile guests, though it had more British personalities than the many visiting US artistes Michael Parkinson brought to his show.
The Dame Edna Experience was "an unpredictable sort of anti-chat show ...in which game but bemused celebrities from Sean Connery to Mary Whitehouse, Charlton Heston to Germaine Greer, Edward Heath to Gina Lollobrigida were exposed to the Dame's dauntingly original interview techniques.
[56] He was also to continue his producing relationship with James who was offered two weekly shows, a number of annual documentaries and specials and his and Drewett's own well-staffed unit.
[57] At the BBC Drewett began a lengthy series of one-off Postcard films from a variety of cities around the world, presented by James, similar to a number of the city-based travelogues the pair had made together at LWT.
[67] Now free to work for anyone, Drewett left the BBC and returned to the embrace of ITV, where he and James transmitted further Postcard films: Hong Kong (1996), Melbourne (1996), Mexico City (1996), Las Vegas (1998), and Havana (1999).
[58] The Clive James Show, a chat programme, began on ITV in May 1995 with a long list of popular star guests.
There was An Evening with Spike Milligan in 1996 for ITV, a programme in the BBC's Omnibus arts documentary series entitled Bring Me Sunshine: The Heart and Soul of Eric Morecambe appeared in 1998, and at the end of the same year on ITV, Stanley Baxter in Person, featured the first in-depth interview for forty years with the actor, comedian and impressionist.
[6] Drewett decided Watchmaker Productions should revive the end of the year show format for the turn of the Millennium with himself as executive producer.
[70] James recorded in his Guardian obituary of Drewett that he received "a deep and touching apology" from him when he proved too ill to supervise the editing of the last show they made together.
It was with the onset of Parkinson's disease in his sixties that he was forced to sell his Lotus 70 Formula 5000 car and his Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica.
An Autosport tribute on his death described him as a "quick and competitive driver ... typical of the delightful characters you can still find in the hillclimb paddocks ..."[71] In his autobiography, Michael Parkinson remembered that he felt comfortable with Drewett from the first moment they met.