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John Fairley

British television producer

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 2, 2025
Entity authorityQ29061023
Source-derived summary

John Alexander Fairley FRTS (born 15 April 1938) is a British former television producer from Liverpool, who now lives in Yorkshire. With William Allison he wrote the 1978 book The Monocled Mutineer, made into a well-known 1986 BBC One controversial drama series, adapted by Alan Bleasdale.

Early life

He was born in Liverpool. He attended MerchantTaylor's school in Crosby, Merseyside and then went to The Queen's College, Oxford.

Career

Newspapers

He started at the Bristol Evening Post in 1963, then went to the London Evening Standard in 1964.

Radio

From 1965 to 1968, he was a radio producer with BBC Radio.

Yorkshire Television

He worked for Yorkshire Television (now ITV Yorkshire). He was a television producer from 1968 to 1978. He became Managing Director of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television in 1993 until April 1995. He was replaced on 15 May 1995 by Bruce Gyngell, the former managing director from 1984 to 1992 of TV-am.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “John Fairley” as british television producer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Fairley and British.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938, 1978, 1986, 1963—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1938-04-15, 1938-04—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with John, Fairley and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “John Fairley”, the useful work is to connect “british television producer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q29061023. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1978, 1986 and 1963.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John Fairley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John Fairley primary sources, John Fairley archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from John Fairley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.