Former ITV chief, World in Action producer and Grumpy Old Men creator Stuart Prebble has passed away with pancreatic cancer aged 74.
Prebble enlisted the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Bob Geldof, John Humphrys, John Peel, Will Self, Tim Rice, Rick Wakeman and Kelvin MacKenzie to unleash their every peevish irritation and spluttering outrage over a seemingly inexhaustible list of where the world had gone wrong in his 2002 hit Grumpy Old Men, which ran for four series of grumbling as well as various spin offs, including Grumpy Old Women, in which Ann Widdecombe, Germaine Greer and Janet Street-Porter were among those who were invited to have a grouse about the iniquities of 21st century living, a series of books on the theme, including an “official” handbook, DVDs, audiobooks and a West End show.
Prebble’s TV career took him from BBC trainee to Granada, where he produced and edited ITV’s Manchester-beased current affairs show World In Action, and on to become ITV’s first commissioning editor for factual programmes before he headed, with some reluctance, to the boardroom in 2001 to become what he called a “suit” as ITV’s CEO.
His tenure in the top job was brief and ended in the wake of the debacle over ITV Digital, of which he was also CEO. Keen to start a dedicated sports channel to take on BSkyB, which would broadcast via its own platform, cable and on Sky, Prebble paid £315m in a three-year deal to air 88 live Football League games per season. Many at the time felt he had overpaid but the deal began promisingly in August 2001, when ITV Digital’s first live game saw Manchester City, in Kevin Keegan’s first game as the club’s manager, thump Watford 3-0 on the way to their return to the Premier League.
However, when Sky refused to carry ITV Sport on its platform, the new channel was limited to around a million ITV Digital subscribers, compared to Sky’s circa 5m, which didn’t make for a great commercial success for the lucrative deal.
ITV Digital quickly proved unsustainable, and couldn’t afford to pay the Football League the agreed £105 million per year. In March 2002, before its first season was over and £1.3 billion in debt, ITV Digital was put into administration.
Prebble left ITV six months later. “ITV was consolidating at the time from five big regional companies down to one,” he said, referencing the Granada/Carlton cut-up of regional TV a couple of decades ago. “So I worked out over a couple of years I would be firing all my friends and then at the end of that they would fire me as well, so I thought that would be a good time to go.”
Prebble set up his own indie production company Liberty Bell, and Grumpy Old Men was its most successful progeny, along with other successful productions for BBC2 including Three Men in a Boat and The Alastair Campbell Diaries.
He subsequently sold Liberty Bell and founded Storyvault Films, making Portrait Artist of the Year and sister show Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. He is survived by his wife Sam Richards, a film producer whom he married in 2020, his daughter Alex, a medical secretary, from an earlier marriage to Marilyn Charlton, which ended in divorce, and a stepson, Jonnie, who is a sound engineer.
Prebble was born in south London in 1951, but found his calling when he moved North to study English at Newcastle University. There, he was elected president of the students’ union and cut his teeth as a journalist through editing the student newspaper The Courier. He also organised one of Paul Mcartney’s first post-Beatles gigs with Wings thanks to, basically, being the only person around in the student union when Mcartney showed up looking for a gig.
On graduating in 1974 he joined the BBC’s journalist training scheme and moved to London on a two-year contract as a news reporter, but he was soon back in Newcastle working for BBC North East & Cumbria where he presented the Look North slot.
Prebble remained with the BBC for five years before moving to ITV in 1980, when he joined Granada in Manchester. He went on to present, produce and edit World In Action, “righting wrongs, taking on the establishment and uncovering dodgy dealings of one kind or another.”
Twitter was on hand with tributes from the great and the good in the community:
He quickly rose the ranks at the broadcaster, although if his autobiography Still Grumpy After All These Years, is any indication “suitdom” never really, err, suited him – he, perhaps somewhat grumpily, described his time in ITV’s boardroom as “interesting, but not fun.”
