the media lunch club was established in 1994, by producer Martin Cahill, as a non-profit making, and politically neutral, networking society and has grown to become the film, tv and media industry's premiere café du commerce.
Monthly lunches are held in London's West End (and a Brighton away-day lunch during the summer), with an invited guest speaker. Some of our previous speakers include:
Producers: Tim Bevan, Stephen Evans, Rebecca O'Brien, Nick Manzi, Richard Holmes, Jeremy Thomas, Duncan Kenworthy, Michael Kuhn, Nik Powell, Marc Samuelson, Richard Holmes, Michael Deeley, Simon Channing-Williams, Simon Oakes (Hammer films), Paul Brett, Anne Beresford and Jeremy Bolt.
Directors: Sir Alan Parker, Dame Beeban Kidron, Stuart Baird, Waris Hussein, Roy Ward Baker, Vic Armstrong, Robert Young, Jack Cardiff, Ronnie Neame, Lewis Gilbert, John Glen, Guy Hamilton and Ray Harryhausen and John Irvin.
Executives: Daniel Battsek (former Film4 and Miramax), Duncan Reid (Ingenious), Greg Dyke (TV), Ian Hutchinson (Silver Reel), Lord Michael Grade, Amanda Nevill (BFI), Stewart Till (former UK Film Council Chairman), Lenny Crooks (formerly of New Cinema Fund, UK Film Council), David Thompson (formerly BBC Films), Steve Christian (Pinewood Films), Peter Bennett-Jones (Tiger Aspect), Dave Bishop (Protagonist), John Woodward (former CEO, UK Film Council), Jane Lighting (former CEO Channel 5), Simon George (Ealing Studios Productions), Lorraine Heggesey (ITV/BBC), Dr Kim Howells MP & Shaun Woodward MP (former Film Ministers), Sara Geater (all 3 media) and Robert Duval, David Cooke & David Austin (directors of BBFC), Mia Bays (BFI), Anna Higgs (Facebook) and Elliot Grove (Raindance).
Sales agents: Hilary Davis (Bankside), Mike Goodridge (Protagonist), Martin Myers (Miracle Communications), Andrew Loveday (Carnaby), Maura Ford (7 & 7), Alex Hamilton (former E One, now Pathe), David Grumbach (Juliette Films, Luxembourg), Michael Ryan (formerly J&M, now independent).
Actors: Sir Roger Moore, Britt Ekland, Honor Blackman, Judy Cornwell, Jenny Hanley, Sally Geeson, Virginia McKenna, Ray Brooks, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Bruce Montagu, Brian Capron, Victor Spinetti, Richard Kiel, Madeline Smith and Dame Virginia McKenna.
Writers: Dick Clement, Sir Ronald Harwood, Rob Sprackling, Jimmy Perry, Brian Clemens, Raymond Allen, Jimmy Sangster, Allan Scott, Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran and Dominic Minghella.
And others including: lyricist Don Black CBE, broadcasters Tony Blackburn OBE and Dame Joan Bakewell, director of photography Phil Méheux BSC, Ossie Morris OBE and composer David Arnold. …. to name but a few!
The media lunch club also hosts occasional evening networking events, from 2009 additional and occasional 'Briefing Lunches', (to focus on a more specialised subject in an intimate board-room setting) and during the Coronavirus pandemic switched to online podcasts, with guests in discussion with committee member and broadcaster Olly Smith.
Membership is inexpensive and open to all in the media business.
On April 19th 2013 Sir Alan Parker joined us for our 200th lunch, and cut the special birthday cake!
Timothy Burrill is an Oscar-nominated producer and film executive whose career spans 70 years!
Starting out as a documentary filmmaker he soon progressed to a career in feature production. Perhaps most notably, Timothy produced many of Roman Polanski’s films including Macbeth (1971), Tess (1979) - for which he was Oscar nominated, Bitter Moon (1992), The Pianist (2002), Swimming Pool (2003), Oliver Twist (2005), La Vie En Rose (2007), The Ghostwriter (2010), Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (2011), and Weekend of a Champion (2013).
Among his earlier credits as an assistant director are the superb Stanley Baker-starring The Criminal (1960), Christopher Lee-starrer The Hands of Orlac (1960) and Steve McQueen’s The War Lover (1962).
As a production manager he worked on such films as Superman (1978), with Richard Attenborough on A Severed Head (1971), with stars Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris on The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Peter O'Toole in Lord Jim (1965), Ingrid Bergman, Shirley MacLaine, Alain Delon, Rex Harrison, George C. Scott, Omar Sharif, and Jeanne Moreau in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), and even Charlie Drake in The Cracksman (1963) after going On the Fiddle (1961) with Sean Connery.
His other producer credits include Laurence Olivier’s The Three Sisters (1970), Supergirl (1984), The Fourth Protocol (1987), Two Brothers (2004), French Spies (2004), the Daniel Craig-starring Renaissance (2006) amongst others. Curiously, he has worked with 4 James Bond actors (on non-Bond projects) – Craig, Brosnan, Moore and Connery.
In the late 1970s Timothy was appointed Managing Director of Allied Stars, the company responsible for financing Breaking Glass (1980) with Hazel O’Connor, and the Oscar winning Chariots of Fire (1981).
Timothy was also a key figure in one of the three UK film franchises funded by the National Lottery in 1997. As the Managing Director of Pathé Productions in London, he helped manage the producer-led mini-studio with a share of £92 million in funding and delivered 15 films by late 2002. Pathé was widely considered the most stable and successful of the three original lottery franchises and the only franchise with fully integrated in-house development, production, and distribution.
Some of Pathé's franchise-backed films included the Oscar-winning An Ideal Husband (1999), Ratcatcher (1999), The Hole (2001) and later projects like Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Magic Roundabout.
With a wealth of experience involving some of the biggest names both in front and behind the camera, plus being a past Chairman of BAFTA and Governor of the National Film School, Timothy certainly has some fascinating stories to share and wise words of advice and insight to offer.
