Verity Lambert

Nov 27 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THE working-class Liverpool playwright’s name was brushing heaven then, but the young woman had his magnificent eyebrows beetling in frustration beneath his mop of black hair, when she suggested cuts to his new drama.

And the woman, who carried one of the finest reputations in British TV, noticed herself that Alan Bleasdale was turning “redder and redder”, as they discussed how 200 pages could be taken from GBH (1991), which was to run for 10½ hours, as a follow-up to his triumphant Boys from the Blackstuff.

“I’m going to kill her,” he reportedly confided to a colleague on Channel 4 during a 4am phone call.

Happily, matters were resolved and GBH was a great success for Bleasdale and Verity Lambert, its executive producer. She was already associated with Adam Adamant Lives!; the Naked Civil Servant (1975), the bold and imaginative treatment of Quentin Crisp’s life as a flamboyant homosexual; Rock Follies, Minder and Widows.

However, Verity Lambert will forever be remembered as the founding producer of Doctor Who in 1963, introducing the Daleks in the second series, when they set out to exterminate in their cardboard jackets with Morris Minor indicator lights.

Miss Lambert, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish accountant, was sent to Roedean, which she left at 16 to spend a year at the Sorbonne, in Paris, before settling in the more sedate, female atmosphere on a secretarial course in London.

This led to her job as a secretary in the Granada press office, before commercial TV’s launch in 1956, and then as a shorthand typist with ABC.

Attractive, slim, but temperamental, Miss Lambert was ideally suited to the world’s most powerful medium at a time when smoking, drinking and extended lunches were routine. Quick to grab her opportunities, she worked on the acclaimed Armchair Theatre series and then followed Sydney Newman, its producer, to the BBC. In 1965, she produced The Newcomers, a soap intended to rival Coronation Street.

But another soap Eldorado (1992-93) was her only major failure.

Despite that, the credits poured in. Jonathan Creek, with Caroline Quentin and Alan Davies, and Love Soup, with Tasmin Greig and Michael Landes, were among her more recent successes.

Miss Lambert was appointed OBE in 2002, five years after she entered Royal Television Society’s Hall of Fame.

Verity Lambert, TV and film producer; born November 27, 1935, died November 22, 2007.