Michael Jay

Writer, Producer, Director. I began my television career as a film editor. I worked on the first two series of Channel Four’s cult series Comic Strip and established my own independent editing facilities company, developing a client base which included all the major UK broadcasters. During this period I worked as an editor on many of the leading documentary strands on UK television, including BBC's Omnibus, C4's Dispatches, as well as over fifty 'behind-the-scenes' movie documentaries. I gave up editing to direct a two part travel/history series with writer Tim Severin, as he retraced the route of the first Crusade on horseback. The resulting series, Crusade, was shown on Discovery Channel US, and broadcast around the world. Following the success of Crusade, I went on to produce the six part series Time Traveller, documenting Tim Severin’s explorations of legendary historical voyages. After this spate of history documentaries, I produced and directed the Grammy nominated Stan Laurel: The Last Laugh, for the South Bank Show, celebrating the centenary of the birth of screen comedian Stan Laurel. In 2001, I established my own independent production company, Infonation Media and was awarded the contract as Head of Programming for the broadcast output of the UK Government's Foreign Office. In this capacity I devised a number of new documentary series, commissioned other producers and produced and directed three award winning series – The Edge (24 episodes - Discovery), Style Tribes (6 episodes -Sky Arts), and Beyond Babel (4 episodes - Discovery). Beyond Babel won a silver IVCA award for best documentary series, and has since become a key academic resource on the globalisation of the English language used by Universities around the world. I also produced and directed the DVD Britain: The Big Picture, which was made specifically to promote the UK film industry to US executives and producers. The Big Picture included interviews with over 100 key film industry figures in the UK and US and went on to win the DVD Europa award for best documentary. I devised, produced and directed the reality series UK/China Challenge, which had the distinction of being the first made for China, foreign television series to gain a national broadcast on CCTV, China's state broadcaster. UK/China Challenge went of the attract an audience of 130 million viewers. For the past three years I have been concentrating on writing drama. During this period I have written, a pilot for a TV satire, four feature film scripts, and produced and directed six short films. I am currently writing a three part TV crime series set in London during the 1980's recession.

Unique traits: Proud father of two beautiful daughters and lover of all things culinary.