George Michael Gill was a television producer

Television producer

The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

 and television director

Television director

A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...

 responsible for creating 'ground-breaking' documentaries for the BBC.

He was born in Winchester

Winchester

Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...

, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

 but was brought up in Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

. He contracted tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 as a child which disrupted his education severely including four years in a spinal chair. He served in the RAF

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 in Intelligence during the war. One of his most memorable debriefings was interrogating a German who had survived a 20,000 ft fall over Holland without his parachute opening.

After the war he studied Philosophy and Psychology at Edinburgh University. After a period as a sub-editor and arts reviewer on The Scotsman

The Scotsman

The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....

, he joined the BBC. He worked first on radio but soon moved to television.

He is chiefly remembered for Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark (1969) (director and co-producer) and Alistair Cooke's America

Alistair Cooke's America

America: A Personal History of the United States is a 13-part television series about the United States and its history, commissioned by the BBC and made in partnership with Time-Life Films. It was written and presented by Alistair Cooke, and first broadcast in both the United Kingdom and the...

(1973) (director and producer). Although the idea for Civilisation and its presenter, Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...

, were given to Gill, 'America' and its presenter were entirely Gill's idea. In total Gill made more than 150 films for television and the cinema and won more than 40 major international awards.

In 1951 he married, the Actress Yvonne Gilan

Yvonne Gilan

Yvonne Gilan is an English actress who is best remembered for her portrayal of Mrs. Peignoir in Fawlty Towers.In 1964 she wrote a short fantasy film, The Peaches, starring Juliet Harmer, with a small cameo role for her son, Adrian as a bespectacled chess player...

, best remembered for her portrayal of Mrs. Peignoir in Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...

. The couple went on to have two sons, Adrian

A. A. Gill

Adrian Anthony Gill is a British writer who uses the byline A. A. Gill. He is currently employed by The Sunday Times as their restaurant reviewer and television critic and Vanity Fair magazine as a restaurant reviewer...

 and Nicholas. The marriage was dissolved and he re-married in 1978 to Georgina Denison, with whom he had a daughter, Chloe. He died in London from Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...

. Obituary

He was the father of writer, journalist and newspaper columnist A.A. Gill.

His younger son Nicholas (Nick), a talented chef, unaccountably disappeared in 1998.