Actor, My Parents Are Aliens, CITV 1998 - 2006
“What quality children’s TV means to me? Well, I have been fortunate enough to have played Brian in My Parents are Aliens for 8 years, which I like to think of as quality.
What that means is that most days I meet fans of the show who are delighted to tell me how much they love the show. Some of these fans are children, some are parents, one was an elderly man in a Prostate Clinic. Remember that the 18 year olds who I talk to were 11 when we started making our programme. This is their show, the one they grew up watching, much as I grew up watching Tiswas, How! and The Double Deckers.
Now we are being told that the next generation of children will not have Children’s TV. They will not have these shows they can call their own. Parents, teachers, indeed anyone who cares about the welfare of children in Great Britain need to realise that this is happening. Children’s TV doesn’t make money, therefore it won’t exist any more. But isn’t it important that kids have these programmes? It doesn’t matter - they don’t make any money. What are we supposed to conclude from that?
Perhaps children should not be thought of in purely financial terms. Do we not need to find a way of financing children’s TV to protect it in some way?
Children are going to be the losers in all this, watching adult daytime programmes, cheap American imports and repeats of shows that are no longer relevant to them - including ours I might add. I think they deserve better.”
Tony Gardner qualified as a doctor from Guy’s Hospital in 1987, but soon started working in comedy as half of the medical comedy duo Struck Off and Die at the Edinburgh Festival and on Radio 4, winning the Writers Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy in 1994. As well as My Parents are Aliens (episodes of which he has also written), his TV credits include The Thick of It, The Armando Iannucci Shows, Lenny Henry in Pieces, Bremner, Bird and Fortune and Armstrong and Miller. He is currentyl appearing in Jack Dee’s new sitcom Lead Balloon. Radio credits include Three Off The Tee, Absolute Power and The Sunday Format.
