In 2005 Michael Apted, then president of the Directors Guild of America, sent me an email saying that he wanted to set up a meeting of British film and television directors, to seek to counteract the disastrous erosion of their rights, creative and financial. I had been his assistant at Granada TV 30 years earlier.
Three months later more than 100 people, few of whom knew each other personally, gathered in central London. Michael spoke quietly, pointing out that we were represented by multiple organisations and that this was a catastrophic weakness. A group of us volunteered to meet again and two years later a powerful single voice, Directors UK, emerged. It would not have done so without Michael’s gentle but firm insistence.
