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Simon Campbell-Jones interviews Alec Nisbett, Horizon producer
Alec Nisbett, has been described by fellow programme makers as "the quintessential Horizon producer", never shying away from putting hard science on TV. ing the programme right from the beginning, his most notable credits include The Insect War (1970) and Killer in the Village (1983).
The Insect War was one of the first TV programmes which looked at the resistance of pests to insecticides, and featured a star narrator – the then Labour MP, Tony Benn. Nisbett spoke to scientists in the UK and abroad as they experimented with techniques ranging from subtly interfering with a pest's sex life, to a bizarre use of tin foil to fool unsuspecting aphids!
It was Nisbett's Killer in the Village that made arguably one of the greatest impacts on the British TV viewing public. By the time the film had been made, 1000 men had been affected by AIDS, but was still seen as a 'foreign' disease, of only vague relevance to the UK.
With such a long history of working on the programme, and having been with the BBC since 1953 (he retired in 1990), Nisbett has seen nearly every Horizon programme, which he still enjoys today.
He cites the series' ability to communicate well what initially seems impossible to get across to a non-specialist audience. Challenging orthodoxies and seeking the story behind the obvious, are two areas he believes Horizon has always excelled at.
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