Michael Houldey, who has died aged 82, was a director whose documentaries for television ranged from portraits of film and music giants to insights on world issues that reflected his original ambition to become a foreign correspondent.
Houldey’s early work put on screen the realities of daily life faced by those struggling in Britain. The first example of this was Ebbw Vale, an episode in the 1968 BBC series Anything Legal Considered, about two school-leavers on a gap year. In Houldey’s film, one worked in the steelworks, the other in a centre for people with learning difficulties.
