John Peter Tydeman OBE was an English producer of radio and director of theatre plays.
14 Facts About John Tydeman
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John Tydeman was responsible for commissioning and directing the early plays of Caryl Churchill, Joe Orton, Tom Stoppard and Sue Townsend.
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John Tydeman appeared in the radio broadcast of the Cambridge University Marlowe Society's production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.
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Edward II was broadcast on 31 March 1959, and John Tydeman joined the BBC as a general trainee later in the year, working in various parts of the corporation, until he settled into the Radio Drama department.
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John Tydeman put his hand to adapting works such as Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Jane Austen's Emma.
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Early in his BBC career, John Tydeman became inextricably linked with Joe Orton, whom he was widely seen to have discovered.
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John Tydeman saw his championing of Orton as more of a successful rescue from the rejection pile, as he recorded his memories for the BBC at the time of retirement as Head of Radio Drama in 1994.
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John Tydeman told that story to Brian Jarman of the Fitzrovia News in 2011, in an interview when he was still living in his flat in Great Titchfield Street, parallel to BBC Broadcasting House where he had worked for more than 30 years.
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One of the most prolific of radio directors, John Tydeman directed 27 of Rhys Adrian's more than 30 plays for radio, including the Prix Italia winning Evelyn and Prix Futura winning The Clerks.
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Adrian's correspondence with a fictionalised version of John Tydeman after submitting his poetry efforts to the BBC is a long-term feature of Townsend's Mole novels.
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John Tydeman became Assistant Head, Radio Drama in 1979, and succeeded Ronald Mason as Head of Radio Drama in 1986.
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John Tydeman retired from the BBC in 1994, but continued to produce radio plays as an independent.
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John Tydeman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 New Year Honours for services to radio broadcasting.
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John Tydeman received numerous other awards, including the Radio Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010.