John Heyman, having been an actors' agent (Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris among others), and a distinguished movie producer, had spent some years in movie finance. But when his old friend, Chris Blackwell, sold Island records (Bob Marley, U2) in the late 1980s they decided to get back into production, and one of the planned companies was to be located in London.
HOW IT STARTED

"They asked me to run the new London Company. It suited me fine to do that."


Coincidentally, Tony Garnett, who had been based in Los Angeles for a few years, was about to settle again in London. By 1990 Tony had known John Heyman for twenty five years. He was asked to run the new company. "It suited me fine to do that", he says.

He soon recruited Margaret Matheson, who had been Head of Drama at Central Television and was now running Zenith, to work with him on the project.

To begin with, they didn't even have an office. The two of them plus an assistant ended up borrowing spare office space at the top of Lew Grade's building in Mayfair.

Tony remembers the first year or two well. "Every time I went to work, there was Lew. He was well into his eighties then. I work very hard and I get to work early, but I could never get to work before Lew." He laughs. "Lew was always there, however early I arrived and I had to walk past his office, up the stairs, to get to mine. I could smell the cigar smoke as I went up at 7.30 in the morning. Lew would have his first cigar on. He would stop me on my way and give me advice about the business. Things like 'Tony... what you've got to remember son, is you've got to have the stars. You have. To have. The stars.' And it was good advice for the kind of things that Lew had been very successful doing, but... I had a great respect for him, and he was a lovely man."
"Tony... what you've got to remember son, is you've got to have the stars."

"I had an option then to continue as a one man band or to expand it."
After a couple of years they moved to offices of their own. Their brief was to create a production company making dramatic fiction for the screen, and mainly for television. "The first production we really got away was a police series called 'Between The Lines'". Other commissions soon followed, as did changes of personnel. "Margaret was with us for a while, and ,in fact, was very instrumental in getting 'Cardiac Arrest' made, for instance. But then she wanted to go off to produce films on her own, which left it mainly with me. I had an option then to continue as a one man band or to expand it. I decided to expand it, train up other producers, and also hire in experienced ones. So Sophie Balhetchet joined us. Sophie already had a very distinguished producing career before she came to us, shows like 'The Manageress' and 'The Camomile Lawn'".

World has since continued the process of training new producers in-house as well as recruiting from outside. The company has developed several projects into successful series' since 'Between the Lines'. 'Ballykissangel' and 'Cardiac Arrest' were followed by 'This Life', 'The Cops', 'Attachments' and 'Ultraviolet', among other smaller scale productions.

World is currently developing more unique drama projects, so stay tuned.
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