My name is Rupert Davies-Cooke (first name Philip) which I have rounded down to PD Cooke. I have always felt the name a bit of a handful and unnecessarily long. So I looked for ways of making it short. PD Cooke suits me for the time being.
My life has been quite varied. My first job was in 1982 as an assistant to the photographer Sir Geoffrey Shakerley. Geoffrey was Patrick Lichfield’s brother-in-law, and they shared a studio on Aubrey Walk in Holland Park, where I worked as the darkroom assistant for a year.
In 1983, I was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to write and present a radio programme about my great-grandfather, who worked as a cowboy in Wyoming and Colorado in the 1880s. After the program was broadcast, I looked for a job in film production and got myself a job working as a ‘goffer’ in a commercials film production company ‘Lewin and Matthews’.
Barry Matthews was the producer, and among the directors were Nick Lewin (who directed the original Levis Rivets commercial) and Dewi Humphreys (who worked on such great films as Chariots of Fire and Quadrophenia and then went on to work with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders). Dewi was a brilliant teacher, always explaining what he did when preparing a script.
After fifteen months, I felt the time was right to move, and my next job was with a fledgling advertising agency called Horner Collis and Kirvan. I began as an assistant to the TV producer, learning the ropes of making commercials. I worked there for ten years. The agency merged with a new agency every two years and slowly grew. Unicom, Havas, Dentsu. Some clients I worked with were Peugeot and Citroen, Sony, Cadburies, Proctor and Gamble. I became the commercials editor when they set up an edit suite and cut about three hundred commercials a year. They even had a name for my work. They called them ‘rupermatics.’
Then, in 1994, I realised the time had come to make another move. I was 34 years old, just about to marry and wanted to be in control of my life, so I set up Acorn Films.
1983 BBC Radio 4 Letters from a Cowboy
I was commissioned by the BBC to write and present a radio documentary based around my great-grandfather’s letters, written when he worked as a cowboy in Wyoming in 1883.
The finished programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1983 on Tuesday 12th July and repeated on Saturday 3rd September as well as featuring on BBC’s Pick of the Week.
1988 Winner 10th Study tour of Japan
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised the 1988 Study Tour of Japan, for which participants are chosen on the basis of an essay competition. I was one of fifty winners from EC countries to be offered the opportunity to visit Japan to study Japanese politics, economics, society and culture. Former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda initiated the scheme after his visit to the EC in 1978, with the object of contributing to mutual understanding between Japan and the EC.
1990 Telebi Asahi Tokyo
In 1988, a Japanese Goodwill Association, called the Nippon Seiyu Kai, advertised an essay competition. They asked us to propose projects to be completed in thirty days in Japan. The only condition was that the participant had already been to Japan. I offered to conduct research for a potential documentary about the Heisei Era.
They chose fifteen prize winners from around the world, and on 12 January 1990, I was in Tokyo, meeting my fellow prize winners. While in Japan, I wrote and filmed two short documentaries for Telebi Asahi. One was about ‘Salarymen’, and the second was about Politicians campaigning in the Japanese election.
1993 The Tenderfoot Documentary
In 1993, I produced a documentary based on the letters written by William Hugh Cooke and his time in America, along with interviews with ranchers I interviewed when I visited the ranches in 1992.
1994 to 2013 Acorn Films
I founded Acorn Films in 1994. Filming has taken me to fascinating places, from working with prisoners at Wandsworth and Ashwell prisons to producing work for the Royal Opera’s ‘Tempest’ and ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
2004 Royal Opera – The Tempest
The Tempest is an opera by English composer Thomas Adès with a libretto in English by Meredith Oakes based on the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The Tempest held its world premiere to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House in London on 10 February 2004. The opera received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.
My work involved the creation of a backdrop of waves that was projected on to the stage.
2006 The Original Writers Group
I set up the group to meet writers. It was a simple objective, and as luck would have it, it has worked. I look back to all these evenings since that first meeting in May 2006. Over the past seventeen years, many talented writers from all walks of life, including poets, scriptwriters, historians and novelists, have been part of the Original Writers. Thank you to everyone who has been part of the group. You are all Originals. Click here to go to the group website.
pdcooke.com 