Remembering Michael Macintyre: A Visionary BBC Producer and Photographer

My friend Michael Macintyre, who has died aged 85, was a television producer/director for the BBC. He worked with David Attenborough on The Tribal Eye in 1975 and Spirit of Asia in 1980, followed by a remarkable series of films, The Shogun Inheritance (1984) and The New Pacific (1985), both of which were accompanied by books featuring Michael’s striking photographs, taken on location. Many of his films captured cultures that have since disappeared, making them invaluable records of the past. Born in Baildon, West Yorkshire, Michael was the son of Vera Brougham and David Gray. After David’s death, Vera married Maurice Macintyre and Michael was educated at Cheltenham grammar school, followed by Magdalen College, Oxford. I first met him in 1961 at a BBC office in London, where I had gone for an interview as a trainee television engineer. Michael was there too, going for the same position, and we discovered that not only had we had both travelled from Oxford that morning, but that we had been studying on the same physics course for nearly three years and had never met. That short conversation led to an agreement to meet back in Oxford, and to a lasting friendship. We were both subsequently employed by the BBC, and from that point onwards we followed similar career paths, with Michael always slightly ahead. Soon becoming a videotape editor, by 1963 he was a director in BBC TV’s presentation department, moving on to its music and arts department in 1965 and working on programmes such as Look of the Week, Release and Review. After a year out in 1969, travelling in the far east, he returned to the corporation as a producer/director and subsequently began his work with Attenborough, including on The Tribal Eye. In 1991 Michael left the BBC to become a freelance director/cameraman, video editor and photographer. He made many more films, several for the BBC, before being diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, which forced him to retire in 2007. In his spare time Michael played the guitar, and he loved classical music and dance, both Indian and western. He was also a keen tennis player and cyclist, and had a collection of fast cars and motorbikes. But his passion above all else was photography. He is survived by his partner, Stephanie Chilman, whom he met at the BBC when she was a production assistant, and their daughter, Natasha.