NICK BAMFORD
TV, Film and Theatre Director, Writer and Academic
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Nick's play Come Out Fighting completed a tour of Devon, Cornwall and London in 2023.
The tour was produced by What Now Productions, the new company he has set up with his partner Richard Curnow. In May 2025 his new play Junkies will open at the Brighton Fringe prior to a short tour |
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Born in 1952 Nick grew up in Kent and was educated at Gravesend School for Boys and Christ Church, Oxford where he read English, obtaining an M.A., 2nd Class Hons.
He moved to London to begin his career at the BBC as a Studio Manager in Radio, soon moving to Television as an Assistant Producer in Presentation.
In 1983 he took a year out to work as a Flotilla Skipper in the Sporades Islands of Greece before returning to the BBC to take a Producer job in Presentation.
In 1986 he left again to pursue his other love – the theatre – and moved to the West Country to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School on a Director’s Attachment. For the next 24 years he worked freelance in both television and theatre before beginning an academic career on a part-time basis for both Bournemouth and Aberystwyth Universities. In September 2010 he took up a full-time post as Senior Lecturer in Television Production at Bournemouth University. .
In 2016 he completed his PhD by practice entitled Emancipating Madame Butterfly: Intention and Process in Adapting and Queering a Text. Bangkok Butterfly was the resultant artefact.
From 2019-20 he was Senior Lecturer, TV Drama at Falmouth University and he remained an Associate Lecturer there for several years.
He lives with his partner, actor Richard Curnow, in Mullion Cove, Cornwall, and they are both Artistic Directors of What Now Productions.
He moved to London to begin his career at the BBC as a Studio Manager in Radio, soon moving to Television as an Assistant Producer in Presentation.
In 1983 he took a year out to work as a Flotilla Skipper in the Sporades Islands of Greece before returning to the BBC to take a Producer job in Presentation.
In 1986 he left again to pursue his other love – the theatre – and moved to the West Country to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School on a Director’s Attachment. For the next 24 years he worked freelance in both television and theatre before beginning an academic career on a part-time basis for both Bournemouth and Aberystwyth Universities. In September 2010 he took up a full-time post as Senior Lecturer in Television Production at Bournemouth University. .
In 2016 he completed his PhD by practice entitled Emancipating Madame Butterfly: Intention and Process in Adapting and Queering a Text. Bangkok Butterfly was the resultant artefact.
From 2019-20 he was Senior Lecturer, TV Drama at Falmouth University and he remained an Associate Lecturer there for several years.
He lives with his partner, actor Richard Curnow, in Mullion Cove, Cornwall, and they are both Artistic Directors of What Now Productions.
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Throughout his directing and academic career Nick has pursued his interest in creative writing with 3 produced stage plays and 3 screenplays to his name.
In 2018 he was commissioned to write the screenplay for CLP Productions' Free to Be (W/T). His beginner’s guide to TV production - Directing Television - A Professional Survival Guide - was published by Bloomsbury in May 2012. It is available in paperback and on Kindle. And his chapter on creating Bangkok Butterfly was published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan in Queer Adaptation. His academic research has led to 5 published international conference papers His novel, Sea Change, is available through Waterstones, Blackwells and Amazon Books 
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Nick was Programme Leader for the BA Television Production course at Bournemouth until 2016.
He subsequently led the MA Directing Film and Television course before moving to Falmouth University in 2019 to teach TV Drama. |
Throughout his life a love of sailing has dominated Nick's leisure time as well as sometimes being a source of income.
In 1983 he was Flotilla Skipper for Island Sailing in the Sporades Islands, Greece. He has been RYA Yachtmaster Offshore since 1985, and was an RYA Cruising Instructor from 2009-12. In 2003 he sailed the Atlantic from Las Palmas in the Canaries to St. Lucia in the Windward Isles. In 2006 he sailed his current yacht, Such Stuff, to Sardinia. In 2017 he sailed her from there, via Croatia, to Venice, and, in 2021, Greece. In 2022 he brought her home to a mooring in the Helford River. |
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He has regularly written articles for Yachting Monthly, and the story of the homecoming was published in Sailing Today