My cousin Dilys Howell, who has died aged 90, was a television director and producer whose education and religious programmes included ITV’s flagship Stop Look Listen. Aimed at seven-year-olds and above, it was widely used as a teaching aid for the English language.
Between 1968 and 1993 she worked on more than 60 programmes, mainly on film, including documentaries on subjects ranging from bricklaying to sausage making and carmaking, and from pottery and pilgrimages to coalmining.
She also made an often-repeated French language teaching series, for which she had to teach herself French from scratch, as well as the religious education programme Believe It Or Not.
Born in Oswestry, Shropshire, the youngest of four daughters of Frederick Howell, a corn and seed merchant, and Mabel (nee Edwards), she was brought up by her mother, her oldest sister, Phyllis, and her aunt and uncle after the early death of her father.
On leaving Howell’s school, Denbigh, she went to the Central School of Speech and Drama to study speech therapy, but soon changed to stage management. Her first job in the early 50s was as an assistant stage manager with Amersham rep, and she then joined the Wilson Barrett repertory company, with which she travelled the length and breadth of Britain, and toured South Africa.
In her late 20s she joined BBC radio, and then moved into television in its early days, as a floor manager, vision mixer, then director and producer. The religious programmes covered all faiths, and often involved travel far afield. She was particularly proud of a rare interview – not long before his murder in 2005 – with the influential cleric Roger Schütz, known as Brother Roger, founder of the ecumenical Taizé movement.
She spotted the potential of the young Chris Tarrant, who did many voiceovers for her education programmes, including Pottery, and a Stop Look Listen programme about ice cream (1983). Long after he became well known, he continued to voice many programmes for her out of loyalty to the person who had given him some of his earliest experience in broadcasting.
Her antidote to the pressures of television was to restore a Tudor cottage in Chirbury, Shopshire, rebuilding many of the dry stone walls herself. In the early 80s she and her niece Carolyn ran highly popular needlepoint workshops there, and she also had a particular interest in making and collecting exquisite miniature furniture and needlework for doll’s houses. After her retirement in 1993, she devoted herself to birds and animals, supporting rescue charities, as well as caring for a large menagerie of dogs, cats and foxes at her then home in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham.
She is survived by her nephews, Robert and Julian, her nieces Carolyn, Pamela and Charlotte, eight great-nephews and nieces and eight great-great-nephews and nieces.
