After studying at Waltham Forest College of Art and the London College of Printing Kevin appeared in the studio one morning in the mid 70s saying he had been "sent" for an interview,
announcing that he'd been told we needed an assistant.
Well, as it happened we had recently started considering that, but hadn't yet got round to doing anything about it.
Rejecting the possibility of extra-sensory perception we tried to extract from Kevin just how he had come to be there. We never really did sort that out but it seems Capital Radio might have sent him. My good friend Pete Tiley, the tall thin hairy surrealist painter from the basement of the house we had shared at college, was at that time working at the Capital Help Line. It was remotely possible that somehow Pete had been involved, but we never resolved it. Sadly Pete is no longer with us - another one gone shockingly early. Anyway, Kevin undertook some hasty tests for us, and as soon as it was verified that he could actually letter in a straight line from an out of date dried up sheet of Letraset and use a Rapidograph to trace on cell he was duly asked to start on the following Monday. The story of how Kevin was involved in our being asked to tackle the first graphics test for Hitch Hikers can be found at background info. He was heavily involved in general assisting, tracing, darkroom work, registering, spotting, and some rostrum camera work. The Heart of Gold sales brochure used in live studio was Kevin's, as were numerous badges and stickers and stuff to be found scattered around on set. The production script title pages were his (pretty esoteric stuff), and it was his intestine that leapt up to strangle his brain in the Poetry scene. In fact, if you look closely, he actually used a self portrait... not of what he was like then but as he became a lot later ! Further evidence of an unusual vision. As our resident H2G2 nerd he also spent much time running to the BBC and often managed to be on the studio floor or in the gallery while the rest of us plodded on over steaming light boxes ! He also somehow managed to be at the weekly production meetings ... how did he do that ? Who knows ? Once the computer was installed and finally working for a living Kevin was instrumental in obtaining and working on material for Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks. Kevin later worked doing effects for Passion Pictures, and on Roger Rabbit, and was involved as part of the team putting together the BBC's Hitch Hiker's DVD. Kevin became established as the H2G2 Guru and had books published on H2G2 and Douglas Adams. There is more related to Kev from external links |