All About Pete
The first recording that exists of Pete is in his father’s radio station at the age of two – it was clearly something that he liked from that age because at the age of 12 he was helping at BBC Radio Bedfordshire. It may have been very basic labour but at that age his thirst for knowledge led to him being practically a full time employee of BBC Three Counties Radio in Luton after doing GCSEs. He did spare some time for A Levels but once they were done (a D in business studies and an E in General Studies along with a Distinction level GNVQ in Media) Pete was offered the chance to work at BBC Music Live 97 in Manchester, by his Dad! He did this and never came home as BBC GMR, the local station in Manchester, offered Pete a job and he worked in many of the North West’s BBC local stations for the next couple of years learning his trade.
In late 1999 Pete came to London and worked on a youth sports programme “The Score” for BBC Radio Five Live between 99 and 01, initially as the Assistant Producer moving onto the Series Producer after impressing the bosses at Somethin’ Else productions.
Following “The Score” was a series with DJ Spoony which was Pete’s first commission by a major network in Radio. The show entailed DJ Spoony doing an MTV Cribs style programme at the homes of Premiership footballers. This was about 4 years before MTV launched their cribs format – if only Jez had let him do the TV version he’d suggested!
After series one of this format Pete was offered a job at BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat, as their Radio Five Live entertainment producer which offered Pete the chance to travel the world making radio and visual content. The Oscars were covered on a yearly basis for 4 years as was the Michael Jackson trial, a 1 hour special with the Rolling Stones (Part 1 + Part 2) in New York along with a documentary looking at the shut down of the entertainment business after 9/11.
Once Pete decided to leave Five Live he set up Sniffer with his housemate Ralf Little in 2004. Sniffer was associated with their close friends Keith Bunker and Isobel Williams’ company Bite Yer Legs and was, essentially, the younger sibling using many of the same staff and a lot of the expertise of the older partners.
In the years since leaving the BBC Pete has done many things; TV for BBC, ITV & Channel 4, Music videos, regular corporate work for the likes of Disney, Pepsi, Papa John’s, Soho House, Bebo & MySpace along with Freud Communications. Pete also managed a successful 48 date DJ tour of the country’s Universities, regularly produces and edits programming for the BBC Radio network and TalkSPORT.
Drama is the place that Pete is really focussing the future on, and his induction into drama production came with KateModern, an internet drama which was the brainchild of three American producers, who had a great format and story world but no UK production contacts, so that’s where Pete linked up with them. Cut to two years later, masses of column inches, online articles and chatter on social networks, with two BAFTA nominations plus a Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Innovation in the bag and an impressive 66 million views the project was deemed a success.
Following KateModern, Pete moved back to the BBC for three series and 40 episodes of Drama series The Cut, Pete took up the role of Series Producer on Teen drama The Cut, leading a 50 strong team of people, creating a low budget, high aspiration piece of content which engaged with a number of youngsters across the country.
Under Pete’s guidance The Cut has run to 40 episodes across 3 series on BBC TV and 200 5 minute videos online. See the show in it’s online home by clicking the following link. “The Cut” or take a look at The Cut’s Facebook page.
Following The Cut, Pete linked up with his old mates at Bigballs films and after that did his first work on Hollyoaks and continues to develop his first feature film.
2012 has been a busy year of Hollyoaks and helping launch BigBalls’ first YouTube Originals channel Copa90 Pete led the content team through the development and through launch, before stepping aside and leaving them to continue developing the channel.
Thanks for your time, I hope it’s not been to dull a read!
Check out Other Bits of Pete’s work from back in the day….
