Whether crafting 007 trailers, credits for a Stanley Kubrick classic or Arthur Daley’s titles, one man has worked on them all. Roger Crow meets The Shining star who sold blockbusters and cult classics to the world…

Above: Chris Wood

There are many unsung geniuses of the movie and TV business. Chris Wood is definitely one. If you grew up during the eighties, chances are you know his trailer work on Time Bandits, Ghostbusters, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen alone, not to mention Terry and Arthur’s weekly adventures. So, how did he start in the business?

To paraphrase Pulp, he’s not from Greece, but had a thirst for knowledge. Chris studied animation at St Martin’s… School of Art. That’s where Wood caught the eye… of a couple of potential employers at the degree show.

“I was offered two jobs on the same day,” he recalls as we enjoy a couple of beverages in a quaint York pub. “One was doing the backgrounds for (animator) Bob Godfrey on the film Great, which would have been good fun. The other was a contract job at the BBC, graphic design. I chose the BBC job. I thought, ‘Glamour!’. And it was up at remote and windswept Alexander Palace, two years at the Open University. Which actually was brilliant. I did some silly animation for a maths course, and that got seen by someone at children’s television, which was great because they were looking for someone to work on Play Away.”

A fun kids show, especially during dull Saturday afternoons in the 1970s.

“Yes, so I worked on Play Away for four-and-a-half years. It was like end of the pier meets pantomime. I did it 36 to 39 weeks of the year; never seemed to get any time off, but that was okay because we were all one big happy family.”

Host Brian Cant and Chris became such good friends, Brian actually babysat for the Wood family in York while he was appearing in rep at the local theatre.

“As a spin-off from that came Think of a Number with Play Away regular Johnny Ball. I designed and worked on that too. Sadly they wiped most of the Play Away tapes.”