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Tony Cash, co-creator of The South Bank Show, which changed the arts landscape of Britain – obituary

Tony Cash
Tony Cash

Tony Cash, who has died aged 86, was a television producer and director who co-founded The South Bank Show, the longest-running and best-known arts series on British television. In a career of more than 50 years in broadcasting he made dozens of documentaries on a huge range of subjects, from Stalin to the Bee Gees to “Sex and Religion”.

The South Bank Show was a ground-breaking achievement for its time. The style of arts documentaries on such BBC series as Monitor had been reverent, the topics highbrow. The idea that independent television might invade such hallowed territory was shocking in itself, and the groovy animations of the opening titles, and the emphatic rock backbeat of the title music, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Variations for cello and orchestra, must have made many think the barbarians were at the gates.

Cash – and Melvyn Bragg, who presented every one of the more than 700 episodes – were determined to range across the whole of culture, from high to low and East to West. Cash’s vast knowledge of jazz and popular music was reflected in topics such as the Bee Gees, the Smiths and Eric Clapton.

Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show  - ITV/Rex Features
Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show - ITV/Rex Features

The series also covered Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese and comedians such as Ken Dodd and Billy Connolly. But there were also episodes devoted to François Truffaut, Eugène Ionesco, Peter Brook and Trevor Griffiths.

The point was to show that if popular art and culture were treated with same rigour and seriousness as the high arts, they would be shown to be every bit as significant and worthy of attention. The show’s regular outing on Sunday evenings was etched in the diary of anyone with an interest in culture, and its wide reach, coupled with its anti-highbrow stance, was a huge factor in changing the cultural climate of Britain.

Tony Cash was born on November 23 1933 in Leeds, the son of Michael Cash, a lecturer in Food Technology, and Eileen. He was educated at Leeds Modern School, then between 1952 and 1954 he did his National Service in the Navy, where he learned Russian and worked on breaking Soviet coded messages.

He studied Russian and French at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he also honed his jazz skills on clarinet and saxophone, was president of the university jazz society for a term, and occasionally played alongside his fellow student, the jazz pianist Dudley Moore.

After a few years teaching and playing the occasional jazz gig Cash got his break in broadcasting, in the Russian branch of the BBC World Service. He liked to say that it was his enthusiasm for jazz and pop which got him the job, as these were regarded as subversive topics in the Soviet Union, and over the years he wrote and presented several series on them in Russian.

He then moved to the BBC’s Further Education Department, and then to Music and Arts, where he worked as an editor on Melvyn Bragg’s arts programme Second House and directed his own documentaries, including one on the songwriter Johnny Mercer.

Melvyn Bragg with one of his guests, Steven Spielberg - Television Stills
Melvyn Bragg with one of his guests, Steven Spielberg - Television Stills

In 1977 Cash left the BBC with Bragg to set up the South Bank Show at London Weekend Television. Among the award-winning programmes he made for the show were “The Dancer and the Dance”, about Mikhail Baryshnikov, and a drama-documentary about Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington.

Working on The South Bank Show sparked an interest in classical music, and Handel and Bach took their places in Cash’s personal pantheon alongside the Beatles and Louis Armstrong.

In 1983 he left LWT to set up Lilyville Productions, where he made 22 episodes of a projected 100-part series on classical music, commissioned by Channel 4 and Granada TV. He also returned to one of his first loves, Russian and Soviet history, to make a series about Stalin as well as numerous other programmes and series including Poetry in Motion, a six-part series presented by his friend Alan Bennett.

Bragg with Dolly Parton in 1999 -  Television Stills
Bragg with Dolly Parton in 1999 - Television Stills

Retirement allowed Cash to return to playing jazz, which he did most Sundays with the Elastic Band at the Half Moon in Chelsea. He also co-wrote a book about his experiences in the Navy, The Coder Special Archive. His curiosity about everything continued to the end, as did his lifelong support of the Labour Party; one of his last acts was to vote for Keir Starmer in the Labour leadership election.

Tony Cash’s first marriage, to Judith Carr, who he met while at Oxford, was dissolved in 1968. He is survived by his second wife Gill, née Clark, who he married in 1971, by their two daughters, and by two sons of his first marriage.

Tony Cash, born November 23 1933, died April 16 2020