In March 2026, Samira Ahmed and Graham Kibble-White visited the home of Joy Whitby to talk about her 60-plus years making children's television.

Starting in BBC Radio as a studio manager in the 1950s, Joy moved into television in 1962, where she would go on to create Play School in 1964, devising the series and casting the presenting line-up. The following year, she launched Jackanory. She moved to London Weekend Television in 1967, where she produced The Growing Summer (1969) and Catweazle (1969). In 1970, she set up her own freelance company, Grasshopper Productions, and created the drama Grasshopper Island. Moving to Yorkshire Television in 1975, she oversaw a range of children's programmes - including The Book Tower, Behind the Bike Sheds and The Giddy Game Show, as well as A Pattern of Roses, which featured Helena Bonham Carter in her first screen appearance.

Our conversation covers all of these programmes, plus Joy also talks about her difficult relationship with the BBC following her departure, facing down sexism in her career, and working with Tom Baker.

For more on Joy's work, visit her website, www.grasshopper.co.uk.

If you would like to contact us, please drop us a line on email@squarewindow.co.uk

Our website is: www.squarewindow.co.uk

This is a Square Window production, with music by Local Teenagers. Podcast logo by Stuart Manning.

This month Samira Ahmed and Graham Kibble-White are looking at programmes from July 1996...

05:26: The satrical show The Friday Night Armistice, hosted by Armando Iannucci with Peter Baynham and David Schneider.

20:40: The Carol Vorderman-presented delve into the occult, Out of this World.

32:44: An episode from the fifth series of the sitcom Men Behaving Badly.

42:29: The opening instalment of drama Takin' Over the Asylum.

If you would like to contact the podcast, please drop us a line on email@squarewindow.co.uk

Our website is: www.squarewindow.co.uk

This is a Square Window production, with music by Local Teenagers. Podcast logo by Stuart Manning.

To (belatedly) mark the publication of Samira Ahmed's BFI Film Classics book on A Hard Day's Night, she and Graham Kibble-White look at a quartet of Beatles TV shows...

05:22: Around the Beatles from May 1964 - Rediffusion's racuous and stomping studio celebration.

21:41: James Paul McCartney from 1973 - an hour-long special with Macca and Wings, made to settle a dispute with ATV's Lew Grade.

39:18: The Music of Lennon and McCartney from 1965 - a Granada showcase of the songwriting duo's compositions.

50:49: Magical Mystery Tour from 1967 - the surreal Beatles-helmed film that aired on Boxing Day.

If you would like to contact the podcast, please drop us a line on email@squarewindow.co.uk

Our website is: www.squarewindow.co.uk

This is a Square Window production, with music by Local Teenagers. Podcast logo by Stuart Manning.