VIOLET BERLIN
After presenting the youth-focused satellite TV show Cool Cube and the kid-focused animal programme WildBunch, Violet Berlin went on to host the CITV videogame show Bad Influence! alongside children’s television stalwart Andy Crane. The programme ran for four series, and concurrently Violet wrote games columns for the Observer Magazine and Digitiser, as well as setting up her own TV company to make programmes for The Children’s Channel. She later hosted science show The Big Bang and Gamepad, as well as writing and presenting the technology series SoundByte for the BBC World Service. Shortly after the birth of her children in the Noughties, she switched focus to become a script writer and narrative designer for interactive and immersive experiences.
So how did you get into games TV after leaving university?
I studied English language and Anglo Saxon and Old Norse at university – because I was obsessed with Tolkien and that’s what he had taught. I wanted to write stories, and I’d grown up without a television, so I was very naive about the TV industry – and in fact about life in general.
Oh you didn’t have a TV, that’s interesting! Did that make you want to be on TV all the more?
No, not at all! I wanted to write children’s stories. And I thought if I want to write for children, the thing to do is to get a job with my audience and understand what they love while I’m doing it. So my grand, ambitious, foolhardy plan was to get a job in children’s television while writing my books. Anyway, by absolute chance I managed to find a TV company that was looking for a runner and researcher, so I applied. And I think that he really liked all my ideas because I was so ‘out there’ – because I hadn’t had a television, I don’t think I really had any clichéd ideas, as I didn’t really know what was expected. I got a job researching, writing and running on WAC ’90 with Michaela Strachan and Tommy Boyd, the successor to Wide Awake Club.
We used to love that show!
Yeah, it was really. I had to get all the kids in, write the questions for Mallet’s Mallet, write the little drama inserts… oh, and I had to make the gunge.
