Jeremy Paul was born 29 July, 1939 and educated at King’s School Canterbury and St Edmund Hall Oxford.
He sold his first TV play ‘Mr Morecambe’ while still a student prompting his tutor to say "Your English is lousy so how do you write TV plays?"
Lew Grade’s ATV gave him a 3 year contract. Amongst his success during that time was the much acclaimed play ‘Room for Justice’, starring distinguished actor Marius Goring and directed by Peter Sasdy. After these early flukes he went back to learning his trade writing for the Doctor and Crime Soaps of the day such as ‘No Hiding Place’ and graduated to adaptations of books such as John Wain’s ‘A Travelling Man’ and Paul Scott’s ‘The Bender’ for BBC’s Story Parade , produced by Irene Shubik , followed by Arnold Bennett’s ‘Lord Raingo’, starring Kenneth More and directed by Peter Hammond, for the BBC’s prestigious Classic Serial. Other adaptations through the 60's included Frances Hodgson Burnett’s ‘ A Little Princess’, James Joyce (Eveline from The Dubliners), ‘Simenon’ (The Fate of the Malou, retitled ‘The Son’) and episodes for ‘Out Of The Unknown’ (John Brunner and Isaac Asimov).
Original plays during this time included ‘Consequences’, directed by Alan Gibson, later director and co-writer on the ‘Dominick Hide’ plays . Also ‘Love Doesn’t Grow On Trees’ starrring Michael Bryant and Ian Hendry.
Episodes for anthology series included ‘Redcap’ (starring a young John Thaw) ‘Love Story’, ‘The Gamblers’, ‘Van der Valk’ (Barry Foster), ‘The Rat Catchers’ (a spy series set in Lisbon, Vienna, Amsterdam - writers sent out on the loose to fashion their stories, a rich experience), ‘The Informer’, ‘The Gold Robbers’, ‘The Ten Commandments’, all for ITV).
The 70's brought numerous episodes for the International award winning series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ (ensemble acting) , ‘The Duchess of Duke Street’ (Gemma Jones) , ‘Country Matters’ from the stories of H E Bates and A E Coppard, and ‘Danger UXB’ (Anthony Andrews).
The 80's kicked off with three BBC Plays For Today; ‘A Walk In The Forest’, starring John Alderton and directed by Jack Gold, ‘The Flipside of Dominick Hide’ and ‘Another Flip for Dominick’, starring Peter Firth and co-written and directed by Alan Gibson, ( Banff International Awards etc). Then an adaptation of Warwick Deeping's ‘Sorrell and Son’ starring Richard Pasco and the pilot episode plus others of the BBC’s Civil War series ‘By The Sword Divided’ (ensembe acting). Then two episodes for Marjorie Allingham’s ‘Campion’, starring Peter Davison and into Granada’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series with Jeremy Brett, David Burke, Edward Hardwicke).
90's - The ‘Sherlock Holmes’ episode ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ brings the Edgar Alan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Also episodes for ‘Lovejoy’ starring Ian McShane, ‘Hetty Wainthropp’ with Patricia Routledge, ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ and ‘Midsomer Murders’ (Who Killed Cock Robin? - 2002) starring John Nettles.
Running alongside the TV life, Jeremy has nurtured his love for theatre and cinema. His play ‘The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes’ starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, and directed by Patrick Garland, ran for a year at Wyndhams Theatre and toured the country. His thriller ‘The Watcher’ won critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival 2006. He is a founder member of the hugely successful Orange Tree Theatre run by Sam Walters, MBE. He has both written and directed in this venue (see Theatre Portfolio). He has a writing partner of long standing in Carey Harrison, playwright, novelist and currently professor of literature at Brooklyn College, NY; their fruitful efforts sustained by blind faith and the magic of technology (see Theatre Portfolio).
Cult cinema credits include ‘Countess Dracula’ starring Ingrid Pitt and directed by Peter Sasdy.
Jeremy's radio contributions include ‘Opening Up’ with Daniel Massey and Oliver Ford Davies, and ‘Heape at Cambridge’ with Alfred Molina and Sasha Paul. Both were directed by Matthew Walters.
Here is a trivia question for you. Who wrote Cliff Richard’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ ?
The song was plucked from an Orange Tree musical ‘Scraps’ (1976), later renamed The Little Match Girl from the story by Hans Andersen and written by Keith Strachan, Leslie Stewart and Jeremy Paul. A later TV version directed by Michael Custance had Twiggy singing the song, and also starred Roger Daltrey.
Despite his intense and self imposed working schedule Jeremy still finds time to pursue his hobbies, such as cricket (see his book ‘Sing Willow’), football (a lifetime supporter of Stoke City), theatre, cinema and walking the Dorset coast with his dog. He’s married to the actress, sculptress and writer Patricia Garwood and has four daughters, Amanda, Tara, Sasha and Sophie, variously actresses, writers, singers and producers and between them they have given Jeremy 10 grandchildren.
The latest word from JP:
"My years in TV were a privileged apprenticeship. The best is yet to come.".