Martin McKeand, who has died aged 86 of bacterial pneumonia, went from the glossy, commercial world of advertising to become producer of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, one of the grittiest television programmes of the 1980s, reflecting the haves-and-have-nots polarised world under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
He was already producing documentaries for ITV when it hired him to make the new comedy-drama, featuring seven builders finding work in Germany as unemployment soared in Britain. “It’s also about the insularity of the British abroad,” said McKeand, “blokes living in prison-hut conditions on German building sites unable to relate to anything or anybody around them.”
