Terence Pettigrew

Terence Pettigrew is a published author, poet, playwright, journalist, and BBC radio documentarist.

Born in Wimbledon, South London in 1937, the second son of Robert Pettigrew (1900-1957) a building site agent, and Bridget (nee O'Farrell) (1903-1991), a niece of the Irish-Gaelic poet Padraig O'Millheadha (1877-1947). He has an older brother Hugh (b. 1934). He began writing as a hobby during National Service in Germany in 1960. Returning to civilian life the following year, he decided to try his luck at writing for television.

Agented by the Noel Gay Organisation in 1962, he wrote scenarios for several popular UK television drama series including The Avengers and The Planemakers, which later became The Power Game. Books and radio documentaries followed. The books include Bogart (1977), British Film Character Actors (1982), British Films (1985, sponsored by the Post Office), Raising Hell (1993), and Trevor Howard : A Personal Biography (2001).

Pettigrew's radio work comprises a large number of 60 min and 30 min documentaries for the BBC. For Radio 2, he made Nobody Cried When The Trains Pulled Out and Caught In The Draft, both narrated by Michael Aspel. For Radio 4 he wrote and presented documentaries AbOUT Hollywood ICONS Humphrey Bogart, (Bogart, Man And Myth) James Dean (You're Tearing Me Apart) and Montgomery Clift (I Had The Misery Thursday).

His guests included Hollywood 'Baby Doll' star Carroll Baker, Adam Faith, Susannah York, Bob Monkhouse, Henry Cooper, David Kossoff, Vince Hill and Lord (formerly David) Puttnam.

His programmes were produced by Harry Thompson, who originated Have I Got News For You and They Think Its All Over for BBC Television. Thompson died from cancer in 2005 at the age of forty-five.

Pettigrew's feature articles and poetry have appeared in a wide variety of national newspapers and glossy magazines including The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, The Mail On Sunday, and Photoplay Magazine. For Photoplay, he devised and wrote a monthly 8pp TV supplement and conducted the main-feature InterViews. Among his interviewees were Trevor Howard, Dennis Waterman, Francesca Annis and three actor-knights, Sir John Mills, Sir Donald Sinden and Sir David Jason.

After lunching with Jason, then comparatively unknown, he remembers cadging a lift in the actor's three-wheeled Reliant, an obvious prototype for the one owned by Jason's character, 'Del'Boy' Trotter in Only Fools And Horses.

He has written five poetry collections under the titles Twenty-Five For Celia, Dream Castles, Brotherly Sisters, Pilate & Claudia, and Outside Looking In.

Twenty-Five For Celia comprises twenty-five love and remembrance poems, the inspiration for which was his wife Sheila.

Dream Castles is a further collection of love poems.

Brotherly Sisters is a collection of over fifty original poems which tell the story of the Brontes. Providing a poet's vision of many of their triumphs and tragedies, the 14,000-word series of narrative poems contain many evocative descriptions of the Yorkshire moors, which were the background for a number of the sisters' classic novels. He has written a play based on Brotherly Sisters under the title Searching For The Blue.

Pilate and Claudia, a collection of sixty-five poems, tells the classic story of the love between Gaius Pontius Pilate and Claudia Procula, set in ancient Rome and Judaea--a story of tenderness and passion counterpointed by the dramatic events leading to the death of Jesus Christ, and, afterwards, how their great, but ultimately DoomEd, love ends in tragedy.

His most recent poetry collection, Outside Looking In, has a strong, autobiographical theme, and includes memories of being a wartime evacuee in Ireland, schooldays, military service, literary and other influences, and bereavement.

His other plays include Mainly Edward, a dramatisation of the life and work of Victorian author and statesman Edward Bulwer-Lytton ; Blackpool Rock, The George Formby Story ; and Arousing Passions, which he co-wrote with Barbara Butcher.

In 1966, Terence Pettigrew married Sheila O'Connor (1943-1996), a Great Ormond Street nurse. They remained happily married until her death thirty years later. He has not married again.

They had two children, a daughter, Debbi Jane (b. 1970), and a son, Neil Robert (b. 1978). In 2004, Debbi married Les Stockings. The couple have a son, named Ben Ryan Stockings (b. 2007).