Simon Welfare obituary

Simon Welfare worked on the 1970s prime time ITV science series Don’t Ask Me, which launched the small-screen careers of Magnus Pyke, David Bellamy and Miriam Stoppard. Photograph: none

My friend and former work colleague Simon Welfare, who has died aged 78, was a writer and pioneering TV producer whose programmes aimed to make science accessible to all.

Together with the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke and a fellow producer, John Fairley, in 1980 he cooked up the format for the British TV series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, which examined unexplained phenomena around the globe and became a huge success, with bestselling spin-off books.