The series’ format of 15-minute episodes, each containing a song – Barry Gray already being on board as arranger and conductor – proved popular and was repeated when Leigh and AP Films reconvened to make Leigh’s new project, Torchy The Battery Boy.
Twizzle the tigers series#
The resulting series began broadcasting on 13 th November 1957, and can quite fairly be described as a success, selling to English-speaking foreign markets such as Australia and being a staple of children’s television in Britain right throughout the 1960s. The company, which had previous experience making puppet films in the form of an advert for Corn Flakes featuring Enid Blyton’s Noddy, was close to collapse and had no choice but to accept. Having been turned down by every company she’d approached, eventually she arrived at the door of Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis’s ailing production company AP Films. Having sold the idea of The Adventures Of Twizzle to Associated-Rediffusion, which broadcast to London on weekdays, Leigh then set about finding a company willing to make the series for £450 per episode, a meagre amount of money even in 1957. Displaying huge energy, she maintained a parallel career as a journalist, writing for the Daily Mirror before joining the Daily Herald as a columnist.īy the latter half of the 1950s Leigh turned her attention to writing for children and the newly emerging market for independent film producers brought about by the creation of ITV, which began broadcasting to the London area in September 1955.
Twizzle the tigers professional#
Throwing herself into the life of a professional writer, Leigh remained a prolific writer of romantic fiction for the rest of her life, using several pen names, including Janey Scott and Rachel Lindsay, over a series of novels whose number is estimated at between 140 and 160. Taking on the professional name of Roberta Leigh and with a keen awareness of the popularity of romantic fiction her first novel, In Name Only, was published in 1950. She married the football pools magnate Michael Letwin in 1948, which allowed her to follow her passion for writing.
She was born Rita Shulman in London’s East End on 22nd December 1926, but was evacuated to North Wales during World War 2 and educated at St. Roberta Leigh, the prolific author and pioneering female television producer who produced AP Films’ first two television series, The Adventures Of Twizzle and Torchy The Battery Boy, died on 19th December 2014 at the age of 87.
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