How I started
A wise boss, a producer's hunch, and a two-minute film about ducks. How I started editing in 1998.
Andy
6/3/2026
How I got started.
When I started out in TV, I wanted to be a camera operator. My first boss — a lovely guy, Mike Womersley — suggested a different path. He simply said: "Andy, the best camera operators I know are good editors. Learn how to edit and you'll understand what shots you need and why. You'll shoot better. You'll be a better director." I was sold.
This was March 1998. I was twenty-two. I'd dropped out of university and spent the previous twelve months making short videos for a late-night community noticeboard on the local ITV station. The show was called FreeScreen. They paid me £100 per two-minute music video, and I made loads of them.
I was living at home with my parents, so I spent the cash on VHS decks and edit controllers — anything that let me wring as much as humanly possible out of that linear format. Two decks. A vision mixer that gave me wipes and fades, and let me lay music under and fade it in and out. One bonus of the format: I could use commercial tracks. So I made mini music videos with Jimi Hendrix or John Williams scoring my two-minute film about fly fishing, or the more experimental ones — brown autumn leaves intercut with a scrap yard. My other advantage: my dad was dealing in military hardware at the time, and had friends in low places. It got me into some interesting places to film.
One of those films caught the eye of a producer at ITV, and I was invited in for a chat. Me being me, I turned up with two or three ideas for documentaries and series. Thinking back, she must have found me overly keen. She was polite — heard me out — but said they didn't really fit what a local station did. Her name was Claire Lewis. She was a producer on 7 Up — the landmark series that's followed the same group of British kids every seven years since 1964, asking whether the life you're born into decides the one you get.
She didn't offer me a job. But she suggested I meet Mike, who ran the editing department at Meridian TV. Did she see something in my film about ducks? Maybe. Whatever the reason, she gave me a foot in the door, and for that I'll be eternally grateful.
I met Mike. He took me on a long tour of the facilities. I remember walking into the massive studios and my brain instantly connecting them with making TV. I know that sounds obvious. But I'd spent years seeking out and consuming anything about how film and television got made — so to be standing where it actually happened felt very right. Inspiring. The place I needed to be.
We had a quick chat in the office, and he asked me what I wanted to do. Then he offered me a job as an assistant editor. I started on the 8th of March, 1998.
My father was very pleased. He said I'd picked a profession that meant I'd never be without an audience — people will always want stories, news, film. He called the next chapter of my life.
I wish he was around now. After twenty-eight years of cutting, it feels like I'm entering another one.
Not a bad run, Dad.