My friend Alan Scales, who has died aged 88, started out in television as a cameraman, and later moved into producing and directing at the BBC.
Behind the camera in the early 1970s he worked on the BBC’s Nationwide programme and travelled the world for Panorama and Newsnight, often filming in remote and dangerous parts of the world.
As a produced and director in the late 70s, he made films and documentaries for the channel, including The Brendan Voyage (1978), a recreation of St Brendan’s sixth-century journey from Ireland to America,
A Prince for Our Time, the BBC’s official film about Prince Charles, broadcast the night before his marriage to Diana Spencer in 1981, and The Great Palace series (1983), in which Alan took cameras inside the Houses of Parliament for the first time.
In 1984 he left the BBC to work for the independent production company Imagicians, which he went on to run for more than 40 years. There he produced more than 50 documentaries on the lives of members of the British royal family and the age in which they were living – programmes that were sold throughout the world.
Born in Isleworth, Middlesex, Alan was the son of Ernest, a civil engineer, and Dorothy (nee Stevenson), a housewife. After attending Brighton secondary school for building and engineering in East Sussex he spent a period as an apprentice quantity surveyor followed by a job as a teller with the Bank of America in Évreux in France. After two years of national service at Nato Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium, in 1957, he became a member of Nato’s press team, based in Paris.
It was there that he met Alette Rye, a linguist from Denmark, and they married in 1967, after which the couple moved to London. Alan, a keen amateur film-maker in his spare time, then successfully applied for a job as an assistant cameraman at the BBC, and embarked on his new career.
In his later years Alan’s camera was turned to recording images of his friends and family. He is survived by Alette, their three children, Nina, Christopher and Lucia, and six grandchildren.
