• 1936 - Born in Birmingham, West Midlands, England, 3 April. Attended local primary and grammar schools.

"I was born and bought up in Birmingham. My parents were born in Aston and lived in the Black Country. As a boy I explored the region on my bike: scrumping apples in Eversham, racing over Cannock chase, and bathing in the River Severn.

My Uncle Fred had a milk round in the City Centre. I helped him on Saturday and spent my wages on all the Shakespeare productions at Stratford."
 

• 1954 - Studied psychology at the University of London.

• 1963 - Following a brief career as an actor, (Incident at Echo Six, Z Cars) his career began to take shape when he was recruited by Sidney Newman, Head of BBC drama, as a script editor for a new BBC drama series The Wednesday Play.

British television drama in the 1950s had been dominated by classic theatrical texts done in the studio, normally live, with occasional 35mm film inserts. The coming of videotape meant only that these productions were done live-to-tape.

The Wednesday Play, with a commitment to new talent and new techniques, changed all that.

Ken Loach said "At the time, you were allowed about four days filming (with cumbersome 35mm equipment) just to show a car pulling up or driving away. So we used those four days to whizz round and shoot half the script with a hand-held 16mm camera ø about 35 to 40 minutes screen time."
 

• 1964 - Producer of The Wednesday Play. Meets longtime collaborator Ken Loach.
• 1966 - First collaboration as producer with Loach, on Cathy Come Home.

In a Britain complacent that its welfare system was among the best in the world, this documentary-style film of the devastating effects of homelessness on one young family had enormous impact. Never before or since has one single piece of drama had such an effect on an entire nation.

The stark realism of Cathy Come Home led to angry calls for action to prevent such circumstances from happening. The changes in social attitudes and awareness were significant, and the issues addressed were discussed in Parliament. As a direct result of the play the homeless charity, Shelter, was founded a week later as a national campaign for the homeless, and quickly became an important voice in housing matters.
 

• 1967 to 1969 - Garnett was in charge of 11 productions ranging in subject from the plight of contemporary casualised building workers (The Lump by Jim Allen, directed by Ken Loach) to aristocratic corruption in Nazi-era Germany (The Parachute by David Mercer, directed by Anthony Page).

• 1969 - After the filming of Kes, produced by Garnett and directed by Ken Loach, they co-founded Kestrel Films.

Kes is the unsentimental story of a working-class boy who manages to find a rare release from his drab life training and caring for a kestrel. The film is regarded as a classic of its time, with Loach commenting poignantly on the lack of opportunities for the working classes. It is based on Barry Hines's novel, A Kestrel for a Knave. It was recently voted No.7 in the top ten British films of all time.

In the 1970s the pace slowed somewhat but not the combative quality of the work.
 

• 1975 - Days of Hope, a Jim Allen mini-series, rewrote the history of the decade before the 1926 General Strike as a betrayal of the working class by its own leaders.
• 1978 - another Allen mini-series, Law and Order, caused an uproar by treating professional criminals as just another group of capitalist entrepreneurs trying to turn a profit.
• 1980 - Directorial debut with Prostitute.
• 1980 to 1990 - Left for America due to feeling ÔArtistically and politically out of place in BritainÕ. Produced amongst others Earth Girls are Easy, Follow that Bird and Shadow Makers. He also produced, wrote and directed Handgun.
• 1990 - Returned to England and set up Island World Productions with John Heyman. Their brief was to create a production company making dramatic fiction for the screen, and mainly for television.
• 1992 - Collaboration with writer John Wilsher on Between the Lines, an award winning police corruption series. This was followed by Cardiac Arrest, a bitter examination of the state of Britain's socialized medical system, but in the form of a black situation comedy series.
• 1996 - This Life, an aspirational, non-political drama series about twenty-somethings which had the nation hooked by the end of its second and final series. This was also the year Ballykissangel began its long run.
• 1998 - Tony produced the hard hitting police drama The Cops, which has continued into a third and final series.
• 2000 to 2001 - Attachments.

"If I were 30 years younger, I would probably on be working on the Web now. It has the excitement to me that going to the BBC had in 1963 ø the feeling that we donÕt know whatÕs possible, but anything might be."

Tony holds a Professorship in the Development of Media Arts at Royal Holloway College, University of London and is co founder of the producing film and television M.A. Course. He was also recently made a Doctor of Letters at Reading University.

A second series of Attachments is due for broadcast in Autumn 2001

He remains an avid supporter of Aston Villa Football Club