Tony Hart

Tony Hart, who has died aged 83, used his immense creative range to sow the seeds of artistic
interest in generations of children as a presenter of several hugely popular and long-running
television series.

Whether using paints, clay, textiles, foodstuffs or a cast-off object of almost any description,
Hart had the magical ability to produce competent, entertaining pieces of work at impressive speed
and in an unpatronising fashion. His avuncular, mildly eccentric manner made him the ideal host for
children of all ages; indeed, at the height of one of his popularity in the mid 1980s, Hart's
request that viewers send in their own pictures to exhibit in 'The Gallery', a large wall showcasing
their efforts, generated 6,000 submissions a week.

In a television career which spanned more than fifty years, the majority of them spent on the screen
wearing his trademark cravat, Hart demonstrated artistic techniques both elementary and advanced
while never forgetting his motto "Show them don't tell them".

Norman Anthony Hart was born at Maidstone on 15 October 1925. His father was a local government
official whose own artistic leanings were actively discouraged his parents; his mother was an
amateur singer. Their mutual devotion to the arts meant that they adopted a liberal attitude to
their children's careers. "My father always said to me don't work in an office," Hart once recalled.
"So not working in an office became very important to me."

After attending All Saints, Margaret Street, a London choir school with Dickensian attitudes to
discipline (beatings routinely took place on Sundays), and then Clayesmore in Dorset, the seventeen
year old Hart applied to be an air gunner with the RAF. A minor eye defect prevented him being
assigned flying duties, however, so he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Indian Army
instead, training for a commission with the 1st Gurkha Rifles. It was throughout his four years in
India that Hart first nurtured serious ideas of becoming a professional painter: dazzled by the
colours and patterns of the subcontinent, he spent much of his off-duty periods at an art school in
Madras.

Following India's independence in 1947, Hart returned to England and took up a place at the
Maidstone College of Art, from which he graduated in 1950. He then moved to London where he worked
briefly as a window display artist at a department store on Oxford Street before turning his hand to
freelance graphics work in cinema, television and newspapers. He was happy to paint murals on
restaurant walls in return for free meals.

A chance meeting with a television producer at a party in 1952 resulted in a BBC interview which
took place over lunch. At the end of the meal Hart was called on to demonstrate his draughtsmanship
by drawing a picture of a fish on the napkin which accompanied his coffee. The deftness of this
sketch was enough to secure him a job.

Initially he worked on an early Eammon Andrews show, before advancing to the position of graphics
artist on the Tonight programme. Soon after he was engaged as resident artist on the children's show
Saturday Special. He stayed on it for two years before moving to another programme for the young,
Playbox, which ran until 1959.

Throughout this time Hart also worked on the original Blue Peter programmes, the first of which was
broadcast in October 1958. In the weekly transmissions he told and illustrated stories, invariably
about a little white elephant called Packi. His loose involvement with Blue Peter continued into the
1960s with the creation of the galleon which became the programme's well-known logo . Aware of Blue
Peter's enormous popularity, Hart asked for a penny for every time his design was used. His request
was turned down and he was paid a flat fee of £100 instead.

Stints throughout this early 1960s on Ask Your Dad, Disney Wonderland and Stories in Pictures
followed, and led to Hart's first appearance on the long-running puppet programme Titch and
Quackers, in which he operated the latter. Then, in 1964, came his breakthrough programme, Vision
On.

Originally screened for the deaf, Vision On was a milestone in children's television and gave a
platform to Hart's natural vivacity. Whether drawing a huge profile on an empty beach with the
wheel-tracks of a motorcycle or making a 180ft picture of a tractor on a Sussex hillside using 144
roller towels, this quirky and sometimes surreal programme soon successfully stretched the
boundaries of every child's imagination – regardless of their ability to hear. Vision On ran for
over twelve years and introduced the world not only to "The Gallery" section of Hart's shows, but
also to the groundbreaking talents of artists Peter Lord and David Sproxton, the former of whom went
on to co-create the Wallace and Gromit series. By the time Vision On ended in 1977 it was being
screened around the world and Hart's genial manner was winning international acclaim.

The following year, Hart was given his first solo vehicle, Take Hart. It too was an instant success
whose overwhelming attraction lay in the presenter's inclusive approach and positive attitude at the
drawing board. Hart's desire to encourage by example and by humour meant work of all standards
appeared on the wall of "The Gallery" – from children as young as four to that of older teenagers.
It was during this series that Morph, a six inch Plasticine figure created by Lord and Sproxton, was
born. As his name suggests, Morph was capable of extraordinary and amusing feats of metamorphosis.
The cleverness of his creation was that the seemingly unintelligible language he spoke in fact made
perfect sense and he and Hart could converse with each other. Morph was later joined in his
adventures by his irascible friend Chas and a host of other miniature creations. Morph was also
granted two series of his own in the early 1980s and continues to enjoy enormous popularity.

Tony Hart was awarded his first BAFTA for the series in 1984. Unaware that he had won, he did not
attend the ceremony because his wife, Jean, had not been invited to it with him. It was only as he
sat at home watching the BAFTAs on television that he realised he should have been there, a fact
that always amused him.

Hart Beat, a variation on the same theme as Take Hart, followed. It ran between 1985 and 1994 and
continued to show 'The Gallery' and to chart the fortunes of Morph. Mr Bennett, an accident-prone
caretaker, was introduced as a character to add some comedy value. Hart was also helped over the
course of these shows by a series of young female artists.

Throughout the 1990s Hart continued to present other television programmes, the most recent of which
include Morph TV and Smart Hart

In 1998 he was awarded a second BAFTA, this time a lifetime achievement award acknowledging his
contribution to children's television.

Tony Hart was active in a large number of charities throughout his life. Among the beneficiaries of
his efforts was the Gurkha Welfare Trust to which Hart donated pictures which were later auctioned
for "substantial" amounts of money.

Hart once described himself as "a loner who can't wait to get back to my squirrel's nest", referring
to his cottage in Shamley Green, deep in the Surrey countryside where he lived for many years. In
the years after his retirement in 2001, his health began to fail and he suffered two strokes, which
robbed him of the use of his hands. In an interview in 2006 he described no longer being able to
draw and paint as "the greatest cross I have to bear".

Tony Hart, who died on January 18 2009, married Jean Skingle in 1953. She predeceased him, and he is
survived by their daughter, Carolyn.