Peter Beard, late of Anglia Television

A set designer and television producer, Peter Beard, who has died in Norwich aged 68 after a long illness, devised and launched Children’s ITV.

He spent the final years of his television career working in the Anglia region, where he produced programmes for the BBC and also ITV.

Born in Cambridge in 1944, he grew up in the Cotswolds. At Oxford, he was president of the Oxford Experimental Theatre Club and designed sets for the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor production of Dr Faustus.

As a producer at Granada television, Manchester, he worked on sets for Coronation Street and University Challenge and then became head of promotion.

He was promotion director for Lew Grade, of ATV, and also the launch of Central Independent Television. After 1982 he worked for several production companies in London, including his own, making corporate and commercial films.

From 1990, he became a freelance in Norfolk working from Scottow. He produced programmes including Green Veins for BBC East’s Matter of Fact series and also Anglia’s King Romance on the work of Sir Henry Rider Haggard.

He proposed a stunning new version of the Anglia TV knight but the late Marquess Townshend’s iconic medieval silver knight was replaced.

With Ian Weekly, the military model maker, he built a large-scale replica of the Tuilleries Palace for an American war gaming conference – a task that once again brought all his set-building skills into play.

He leaves his wife, Vicky Manthorpe, three sons Marcus, Tim and George.

A funeral has taken place.

Michael Pollitt