Hat Trick Productions

Background Info~ Hat Trick Productions was founded by Jimmy Mulville, Denise Donoghue and Rory McGrath in a cramped office in SoHo in 1986, the era of Filofaxes and huge mobile phones, the companies first contract was for ‘Chelmsford 1, 2, 3’ McGrath and Donoghue have since left the company, the old Filofaxes have been digitised because the Filofaxes have since became outdated and obsolete they now use much more conventional methods of storing data and writing down information. The company replaced Filofaxes with iPads and all of the company’s technology has been updated. The company has successfully been around for 30 years and are now based in a much more spacious office in Camden Town, London.

What the company is known for~ Hat Trick productions are known for the lighter side of television producing shows like ‘Outnumbered’, ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’ and ‘Have I Got News for You’ among other successful television shows that are still airing today. The company had such a successful show that they aired in in America that show was ‘Whose line Is It Anyway? They aired it in 1997 which ran on ABC for seven years and was the very first British series to be recreated for American network by a British producer.

Current TV shows~

In 1999 Jimmy Mulville received a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Television. Jimmy is a Fellow member of the Royal Television Society and recently received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool. Before moving to television in 1982, he produced for BBC Radio, where he developed and produced the award-winning Radio Active.

Awards / Highlight how prestigious

Jimmy Mulville~ Claire Broughton is the development producer; Before joining Hat Trick, Claire worked at Potboiler Productions and Thin Man Films on a variety of projects including ‘The Constant Gardener‘ and ‘Vera Drake‘. Prior to this, she worked at Big Talk Productions as assistant to Nira Park, and as part of the production team on ‘Spaced ‘and ‘Black Books‘.

The Team behind the company~ Paul Cohen is the group commercial director Paul oversees the Group‘s commercial activities including business and legal affairs, rights exploitation, production finance issues and business development. Paul has also been a member of the PACT Council since 2011 and is currently Vice-Chair of Pact.

The Team behind the company~ Laura Djanogly is a joint director of production along with Jessica Sharkey Laura joined Hat Trick as Head of Production in 2001 before joining forces with Jessica in 2004. Prior to this she was Programme Finance Manager at Channel 4 looking after Arts, Sport and Entertainment, a role which followed 14 years in the freelance production world working in Comedy, Entertainment and Documentary. Andy Dugdale is the director of finance Andy spent almost ten years at Virgin Media, where he became the Financial Controller at Virgin Media Television, before joining Hat Trick as Finance Director in June 2009. He leads the finance team and is responsible for all areas of financial management and governance.

Stu Mather is the executive producer of comedy entertainment Stu Mather is an executive producer in Comedy Entertainment. He started his career as a researcher on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ in 2003, taking over as producer in 2007. As a freelancer he had development stints at Talkback and BBC Entertainment and series-produced several series of 8 Out of 10 Cats and Would I Lie to You.