I met Bob Godfrey in 1952 when I joined the William Larkin studio in Mayfair. To relieve the boredom of the industrial instructional films we were making, Bob and I started working on cartoon films in his basement in Tufnell Park, north London. In 1955 we left Larkin's and started Biographic Films, specifically to make commercials for ITV. We had the first cartoon commercial on the first night of ITV in September 1955.
For Courage Ales we made a series of live-action ads parodying silent cinema. The commercials, complete with title cards, followed the adventures of a villain, a lady and a dashing hero – the last played by Bob himself. They typically ended with the rescued damsel telling the hero to claim his reward: he always chose the ale. We filmed one behind King's Cross station and another in Bognor Regis; I was left with the equipment when the tide came in.
We met Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and produced animated inserts for their TV sketch series The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d; A Show Called Fred; and Son of Fred. The shows were live and our animations gave the performers time to change costumes. Spike would call and say: "Give me 10 minutes of your usual rubbish." Then Richard Lester, the producer, would call: "We can only afford five minutes." Through Spike and Peter we met the comedian Michael Bentine and made cartoon sequences for his TV series It's a Square World (1960-64).
In 1957 we moved to larger premises in Dean Street, central London, and our colleagues from Larkin's, Vera Linnecar and Nancy Hanna, joined us. Bob directed a cartoon short called Polygamous Polonius, which was shown at the Royal Film Performance in 1960 with a feature called the Last Angry Man. We never did get to meet the Queen. The film-maker Bruce Lacey, Joe McGrath and Bob acted in a number of pop videos as characters called The Three Nits. The films were shown in a programme for ITV called Cool for Cats. Around 1964, he decided he wanted to concentrate on acting and he left Biographic to form his own film company.
Bob was not only a brilliant cartoonist who pushed the boundaries, he was also a nice chap, and very funny. He was continually coming up with daft ideas. Bob wanted to make the audience laugh, and we always ended up laughing, too.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/feb/22/bob-godfrey
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