3:  OBITUARY: JOHN PERCIVAL;
  TELEVISION PIONEER
From Independent - 09/02/2005 (929 words)
DANIEL PERCIVAL
LOOKING AT today's family of reality shows from The 1900 House to Big
Brother, I'm a Celebrity to Survivor, it's hard to imagine that all these
programmes share a common ancestor. But as Alex Graham, the independent
television producer and originator of the "House" series, admitted, they
all owe a debt of gratitude to John Percival's groundbreaking 1978 BBC
programme, Living in the Past.
Over 12 episodes, Living in the Past followed a group of volunteers as
they struggled to build, stock and successfully farm an authentic Iron Age
village for one year. Cut off from the outside world, the villagers were
expected to survive with nothing but the resources available to an average
Iron Age community.
What made Percival's concept so radical was that it combined
archaeological experiment with a real-life tale of survival. The soap
opera of conflicts and triumphs it provided made it the "water-cooler"
television of its day, drawing an audience of around 18 million viewers a
week. The series caused nationwide scandal for showing full frontal nudity
(bath-time), and the slaughtering of a much-loved pig - neither of which
would be tolerated by today's more squeamish prime-time broadcasters.
Looking back, it's clear that the creation of this Iron Age village was
the culmination of Percival's guiding passions - anthropology, the
environment and a desire to find alternatives to what he saw as the
ecological and human cost of the industrial, mass-consumer economy.
John Percival was born in north London, the son of Edward Percival,
managing director of Beresfords Sugar, three years before the Blitz. His
family home was destroyed when he was six and a V1 doodlebug bounced off
the roof and exploded in a mansion block across the street. From early on
Percival seems to have been driven by a need to explore how we survive,
physically and emotionally.
After Bedford School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read
Archaeology and Anthropology, Percival worked for the United Nations as a
junior plebiscite officer in Cameroon. His journeys "up country" into
remote tribal areas were formative. There, in the traditional villages, he
encountered a culture living in balance with nature. He also witnessed at
first hand the negative impact on Africa of so-called "Western
development".
Percival's pioneering contributions to British television began in 1965 as
one of the original reporter/producers of the landmark Man Alive
programme - the first documentary series to report on social issues by
interviewing "real people" rather than experts. But it was with his
anthropological series The Family of Man (1969), which controversially
compared life in the Home Counties with tribespeople in New Guinea and
Africa, and Rich Man Poor Man (1972), exposing the devastating
consequences of globalisation long before it became received wisdom, that
Percival found his voice as a film-maker. Provocative and polemical, his
reporting paved the way for the style of documentary film-making now more
associated with the likes of John Pilger and Michael Moore.
In 1972, with his first wife, the novelist and broadcaster Jacky Gillott,
and two young sons, Percival turned his back on London life to set up a
smallholding in Somerset. His dream, shared by many at that time, was to
reject consumer society by creating a self-sufficient life in rural
England. His sons grew up surrounded by goats, pigs, sheep, chickens and
the enthusiasm of a father whose joy at building his own pork-smoker from
clay knew no bounds. The family's shared life and experiences on the farm
were published in Gillott's book Providence Place (1977), which was
serialised on the radio. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Percival dreamt up his
Iron Age project while struggling to manage his own experiment in self-
sufficiency.
But in 1980, following a long battle with depression, Jacky Gillott killed
herself. Percival returned to London, and went back to the continent he
loved to make the acclaimed series Africa (with the historian Basil
Davidson), for the newly launched Channel 4. And in 1984 he married his
second wife, Lalage Neal, with whom he had a daughter a year later.
Percival's frustration diminished as he grew more contented and at peace
with the world. He continued to make challenging and enquiring programmes
(The Great Famine, Living Islam and All Our Children), but he also began
to focus his career on one of his greatest passions - horticulture. As
series producer of Gardeners' World and later Channel 4's Real Gardens, he
brought pleasure to millions of viewers.
For those who knew Percival he will probably be best remembered for his
integrity, humanity and non-judgemental tolerance. As a communicator he
challenged us all to think more deeply about the world around us and our
place in it. Kate Rossetti, one of the 12 Iron Age villagers who remained
a close-knit group in contact with Percival, described that period as "a
year that shaped my value system and beliefs".
John Percival was the author of three books on the documentary subjects of
his programmes, Living in the Past (1980), For Valour (a history of the
Victoria Cross, 1985) and The Great Famine: Ireland's potato famine, 1845-
1851 (1995).
With his retirement in 2004 Percival returned to Cameroon to discover what
had happened to the people and the way of life that had so inspired him 45
years ago. He finished the manuscript for a book about his experiences two
weeks before he died.
John Edward Percival, film-maker: born London 25 May 1937; married 1963
Jacky Gillott (died 1980; two sons), 1984 Lalage Neal (one daughter); died
London 6 February 2005.
Copyright 2005 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Date: 09/02/2005


John Percival

Influential television producer who introduced anthropology to the small
screen - and invented reality TV

Paul Kriwaczek
Thursday February 10, 2005
The Guardian

John Percival, who has died of cancer aged 67, was one of the pioneering
film-makers of the 1960s and 1970s who saw in television a medium for
bringing serious issues before the public, while at the same time making
them both accessible and entertaining.
He was fortunate in having the talent and dedication to be able to build a
long career around his three great loves: anthropology, particularly that
of Africa, the environment, and horticulture, producing a string of
programmes and series that strongly influenced the course of television
history.
Both Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! can trace their
roots back to his award-winning 1977 BBC series, Living In The Past, in
which a group of volunteers lived in a reconstructed Iron-Age village for
a year, while being filmed for monthly television episodes that regularly
attracted audiences of 18 million viewers.
Equally influential was his 1969 series, The Family Of Man, which turned
television anthropology away from its predilection for patronising the
strange ways of exotic peoples, and instead presented a true sociology of
difference, outrageously comparing life in the home counties of England
with that in Africa, India and New Guinea. His decision to abandon what
was then the standard way of translating what his filmed subjects said -
in voiceover or reported speech delivered by a narrator - by hearing them
speak for themselves and granting them the dignity of intelligent
subtitles, is unremarkable today. In 1969 it came over as shocking.
John Percival was born and grew up in London through the years of the
second world war. In 1944, during the "baby blitz", the family home was
destroyed by a V1 "buzz-bomb" and John and his sister Jane (now a
distinguished painter with whom he always remained very close), narrowly
escaped death, before being rescued by their father. The experience
affected him deeply and triggered a lifelong interest in how people manage
to survive against great odds.
He graduated from Cambridge with a degree in archaeology and anthropology,
and in 1960 took up a position with the UN as a plebiscite supervisory
officer in British Cameroons, observing the count that was to divide the
country between Nigeria and French Cameroon. The experience of travelling
around the remote African bush, often in difficult circumstances, meeting
villagers and learning about their lives, kindled a love affair with
Africa and an enduring concern for development issues.
Percival joined the BBC as a general trainee, was selected as one of the
original reporters on the ground-breaking social documentary series Man
Alive, and from 1969 spent five years producing The Family Of Man and then
another series, Rich Man, Poor Man, which for the first time brought the
attention of the public to the damaging consequences of globalisation on
the developing world.
Television did not, however, satisfy his need to live out his ideals in
practice, and in 1972, with his wife, the author and broadcaster Jacky
Gillott, and his two young sons, John moved to Somerset, where he set up a
smallholding, attempting a life of near self-sufficiency at the same time
as continuing to produce yet more "firsts" for the BBC: Down To Earth
(1972), the first weekly programme about the environment, and By Way Of
Change (1973), which was the first series about the so-called alternative
society.
His own experience as a countryman, combined with his training in
archaeology and anthropology, led him in 1978 to devise Living In The
Past, intended as not merely a TV series, but also as a genuine
archaeological experiment. He admitted, however, that the experiment was
imperfect. "Our villagers were all volunteers. Real Iron-Age people had no
choice."
John Percival's own experiment with rural life ended in tragedy when his
wife, with whom his relationship had become increasingly stormy, committed
suicide in 1980 after years of depression. He returned to London, and went
back to Man Alive, for which he made two films and then three for its
successor Forty Minutes. In 1983, for the new Channel 4, he revisited the
continent he loved to make the prize-winning series Africa, later to
return yet again for the BBC's Living Islam.
His marriage in 1984 to Lalage Neal and the birth of his daughter a year
later brought John much longed-for peace of mind. "At last he was able,"
his son has said, "to become the husband and father that he always wanted
be."
Thereafter, John turned increasingly towards his love of botany and
gardening, making two series with David Bellamy and becoming series editor
of BBC Gardeners' World. He supervised with great tact and discretion the
difficult transition when Geoff Hamilton died and Alan Titchmarsh took
over, but grew tired of the artificiality of the BBC format and moved to
C4 with his own Real Gardens series, which helped to establish Monty Don's
television career.
John made one final return to Cameroon in 2004, aiming to write a book
about the changes that had taken place in four decades. But the diagnosis
of his cancer, and its rapid progress, meant that he was left the time
only to compose a short memoir of his experiences there in the 1960s.
He is survived by his wife, his sons Matthew and Daniel, and his daughter
Eleanor.
• John Edward Percival, film-maker, born May 25 1937; died February 6 2005