Film and television director; Born September 27, 1945; Died December 8, 2008.
Bob Spiers, who has died of a long illness aged 63, was a TV and film director who made his name working on such BBC classics as Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers and Absolutely Fabulous. He also helmed the commercially successful Spice Girls' movie, Spice World, when the band was at the height of its fame in the late 1990s.
Spiers was born in Glasgow but moved to London at the age of 13 and attended Southgate College, where he gained a love of acting. On leaving school, he took to the stage with amateur companies and directed his first play while working for an audience research company.
He joined the BBC in audience research but soon became an assistant floor manager, initially on Dad's Army, before being promoted to production manager of the same show. He ended up directing most of the final series of Dad's Army. He had fond memories of the classic sitcom but was aware that, as the cast was becoming increasingly infirm, its days were numbered.
Spiers went on to direct episodes of BBC hits such as The Goodies (1977-82), It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (1976) and Are You Being Served? (1977-83) before directing what was probably his greatest success, the second and final series of Fawlty Towers (1979).
He won a Bafta for directing John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs and Connie Booth in the second series of the comedy, which was a daunting challenge coming four years after the first hit series. The same year he was working on Fawlty Towers, Spiers also directed the unscreened pilot of Not the Nine O'Clock News, featuring Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson, Mel Smith and Chris Langham.
As the 1970s became the 1980s, a new wave of so-called alternative comedians was gaining popularity and Spiers, by now freelance, was much in demand.
He was in at the beginning of The Comic Strip Presents, the series made for the new Channel 4, and directed eight stories (1982-88), beginning on its opening night with probably the best of the lot, Five Go Mad in Dorset, starring Adrian Edmondson, Peter Richardson, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
Spiers also worked on the children's series Press Gang (1989-93) and 15 episodes of French and Saunders (1988-93), including the sketch that inspired Absolutely Fabulous, for which he worked on more than 20 episodes (1992-95, 2001). He also directed French's comedy-chiller series Murder Most Horrid (1991-94) and a bit of Fry and Laurie (1995).
His friend Jennifer Saunders persuaded him to take on the Spice World movie with the Spice Girls (1997) and he also directed two other films, Disney's That Darn Cat (starring Christina Ricci in 1997), and Kevin of the North, (with Skeet Ulrich, Leslie Nielsen and Rik Mayall in 2001).
He had spent several years living in Mexico but recently returned to live in Widecombe, Devon. His wife, Annie, a make-up designer, died last year. The couple had two daughters.
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