Vince Powell

Who was Vince Powell?

Vince Powell was a British television writer.

Powell was born as Vincent Smith to Roman Catholic parents in Miles Platting, Manchester. When he was five, his mother died; two years later, his father remarried. Powell was best known as a British sitcom creator and television writer, active at ITV from the mid-1960s.

With his writing partner, Harry Driver, Powell created and wrote 11 sitcoms for ITV in an eight-year period, including the successful shows Bless This House and Love Thy Neighbour, though other writers contributed scripts to both series. The latter programme, according to The Times, was "intended to debunk racial stereotypes but came to be widely condemned for doing exactly the opposite. ... Powell and Driver were not racists, they merely tried to poke fun at racial bigotry in an era before political correctness would have made such a show impossible."

Other popular series created and written by them for ITV include:

George and the Dragon, starring Sid James and Peggy Mount as chauffeur and housekeeper to John Le Mesurier

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, set in the London rag trade, featuring an ethnically mis-matched pair of tailors, the Jewish Manny Cohen and the Irish-Catholic Patrick Kelly