TONY Garnett, who produced the iconic film, Kes, had a simple philosophy for life and it was this: make the best of the hand you are dealt. And throughout his adult life he stayed true to that principle.

In his long career, Tony was keen to explore a wide range of social problems. This was made possible when, in the 1960s, he was appointed producer for the BBC’s hard-hitting ‘Wednesday Play’. One of his broadcasts, entitled ‘Up the Junction’, featured the sensitive issue of abortion. Terminations were still illegal at the time and were causing the deaths or imprisonment of thousands of females every year. Rich women could find an expensive and safe way around the law, poor women couldn’t. In another play, ‘Cathy Come Home’, Tony and Ken rocked the establishment once again when they tackled the problem of homelessness in Britain.

Tony maintained this type of pressure for social reform, on many issues, over numerous decades.

So what was it that motivated him to want to change the world? As a child he was the victim of two of the most awful and preventable tragedies imaginable that occurred within the space of just 19 days, and for years afterwards, both events remained locked in this little boy’s heart.

When he was finally able to talk about them, this is roughly what he told his listeners:

During World War Two, at the age of five, my mother tucked me up in bed one night with a hot water bottle and a cuddle. Father was on night shift at the local munitions factory and unbeknown to me, my mother had gone through an illegal backstreet abortion only three days before. The botched procedure led to septicaemia and my mother, screaming in agony while I lay awake in the next room, was dead by the morning.

If that wasn’t bad enough, just days later, Tony’s father - guilty under the law for aiding and abetting - could not face the humiliation of prison and took his own life.

Tony explained that “the driving force for my life’s work was what happened to my mum and dad, and then what happened to me as a result’.

Tony was raised by his uncle and aunt but his brother went to live with other relatives. Tony was a clever child and passed his 11 Plus examination to go to the Central Grammar School in Birmingham and then went on to University College, London. His great interest was drama and his ambition was to be an actor and then make significant films.

When he first read Barry Hines’s manuscript, about a boy and his Kestrel, he was so moved by the concept that working class students were grossly under-achieving, he immediately wanted to turn the book into a film. So, he passed the manuscript to his film-director friend, Ken Loach, who also spotted the story’s potential.

Tony was so desperate to find the money to finance the film, he sold his own house to pay for the upfront costs. It could so easily have all gone wrong for him because right up to its release, the success of the film hovered in the balance.

We first met Tony at Barry Hines’s funeral in 2016 and we discovered he was friendly and down to earth. After five minutes in his company, Janet and I felt we’d known him for years. Afterwards we kept in touch regularly and he gave the Kes Group every possible moral and financial support.

I spoke to him for the last time at the unveiling of the blue plaque for Barry Hines in Hoyland when he shared with me his philosophy.

“Ronnie,” he said with authority, “No matter what happens in life, we all have to make the very best of the hand we’re dealt.”

That statement made perfect sense and will always live with me.

How good was Tony Garnett? The former director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, described him as “the best television drama creator and producer there has ever been’.

Thompson’s statement contained not a smidgeon of hyperbole.

Tony Garnett died six months after the Hoyland unveiling, and I can say with absolute certainty that he always made the most of the hand that life had dealt him.