Me & Mum
I grew up in a showbiz family, my mother performed a fire eating specialty act and my dad was a comedian with a successful TV and theater career, I literally grew up backstage in the late 60's/70's summer season theatres by summer, cabaret clubs by winter and panto theatres every December. My schooling was very disruptive with me joining a new school every summer term dependent on what resort my parents where working in that year. 'home' was Blackpool ( the UK's version of Las Vegas ) and my entire up bringing was based around an old-fashioned word 'variety' (now light entertainment ). The variety world looked up to Television as the ultimate and my parents both performed periodically on TV in fact my dad was one of the original Granada TV 'comedians' I would always go to work with my parents and the excitement of doing a TV show rubbed off on me as I stood in the corner of various studios in awe of the ultimate achievement in the variety world.



Me at my Grandparent's house with my prized possession; a fake TV camera built by my Mum
I never developed the urge ( or the guts ) to perform although I play several musical instruments so there is the seed of a talent there. There was a period as a child that I had an obsession with Jim Henson and an ambition of becoming a puppeteer (performing whilst still hidden being behind the scenes). The closest I came to this was when I worked as assistant designer on a Henson project straight out of college and actually performed some of the background Muppets, this was a truly surreal twist of destiny just a few years after dreaming of a Muppet performer career path a different career placed me right in the situation I had dreamt of.


I was obsessed with puppets
As an early teenager I decided I wanted to be a TV cameraman, I had always been fascinated by the camera men who sat up on the crane and I built various fake cameras in the back yard, even a complete working camera crane and set upon practice,. Around the same time I also built various scale model sets out of cereal packets and any old cardboard I could get my hands on, this was intended to be a way of working out camera angles with miniature model cameras and sets.

As school became more serious and exams crept closer it became evident that to become a cameraman in the 1980's you needed degrees in physics, math, A1 eye site etc etc. one thing I didn't excel in was academically smart subjects. The set models I had been making had improved and it seemed a logical step to look into set design as a second best option It was then that the obsession began as I lived slept breathed set design,


I also wanted to be a drummer
as a kid
I began teaching myself by sketching, and photographing sets from the TV writing to and visiting existing designers, and perfecting the models and drawings. 'normal' kids where out playing football down our street (including Chris Lowe later of the British pop group Pet Shop Boys) but I would usually be the loaner sticking bits of cardboard together in my bedroom.


I owe it all to Lego


There was a brief deviation with the advent of home video cameras when I thought directing could be an option, but short of a few ambitious projects shot with school friends in the summer holidays the following event focused my ambition firmly towards set design.












Very early models
At the age of 15 a chance conversation with family friend and the UK's premier Magician Paul Daniels who had worked with my parents many times led to my first professional job designing a TV series for the Magician for transmission in the States. I was essentially thrown in at the deep end putting my theories and home studies in to actual professional practice. I was a school kid working professionally as a TV set designer. and just 15 years old.


One of the proudest moments of my life, operating a muppet on a Jim Henson show
I applied initially for a renowned TV school at Manchester polytechnic in Didsbury but failed to gain a place (they thought it was weird that I already had a good knowledge and experience in TV design pre college) My second choice was an Interior design at Leeds polytechnic chosen only because Nick King (still to this day in my opinion the best TV designer in the UK industry) had been a student there a few years previous.


Me with my Buddy model
Three years at Leeds where spent focused only on TV design (to the annoyance of my lecturers who would prefer me to have been designing hotel foyers)





The Shubert Theater - Broadway
With weekends and evenings working as a stage hand at Leeds Grand theatre on Opera and Ballet and three glorious summer seasons stage handing in Blackpool. I learnt more in a week at the Leeds Grand theater than a term at college. I would recommend all set design students to get work as casual crew/stage hands. putting up massive Opera and Ballet sets taught me a lot about scenery.


Me and lighting designer Joe Atkins flying to New York for Blood Brothers - first class all the way when you are a big time Broadway designer
The stage handing in Blackpool came in useful for building up TV contacts as the summer shows where produced by the TV people associated with the star of the show and so after some hassling from me in 1988 BBC producer John Bishop gave me a break designing a summer show for hugely successful British comedian Russ Abbott. this was a very important show in my career, Russ was a massive star then and the summer shows where already beginning to die out so Russ had insisted on lots of dancers a big orchestra and a big TV type set. The summer shows at that time in Blackpool consisted of a bit of mylar slash curtain and some glittery steps if you where lucky some light bulbs up the sides of the pros. I brought in every trick I had been observing on the TV in the 80's. chrome, star drop, lots of neon, glossy floor, etc. it wasn't hard to stand out from the other shows in town and impress.


2 Broadway shows in 3 years!
The Russ Abbott show (and particularly the set) got a great reaction and I was convinced I'd get an assistant job at the BBC with my new BBC producer contacts who I had clearly impressed in a matter of months, what I didn't expect was a visit to the show by theatre producer Paul Elliott. Paul wrote to me and asked me to see him in his office in London, the producer was synonymous with Pantomime which despite my up bringing is a genre I loathe. I assumed I was about to be offered a design gig in the world of Pantomime but I was in no position to be choosey. I took myself and my college portfolio off to London in dread of a Panto job to meet Paul. what happened next was certainly life changing stuff, Paul gave me a script for a new show he was producing called 'Buddy the Buddy Holly story'. I returned two weeks later with some designs that he hated but he gave me the job anyway, I was asked to waive a fee in leu of a percentage of the show, I had just left college and was trying to pay off a large overdraft so I fought for the fee with no royalty option. Elliot bullied me into the percentage and 13 years later I am still receiving world wide royalties. god bless him.


David Cassidy wearing my costume
Buddy was an incredible experience, the Russ Abbott show was familiar ground basically a TV set on a theater stage but now I found myself designing a major West End musical, something I had never intended to do and I had absolutely no training or experience in that world and I'd only seen a couple of musicals at that point but thank god Pat Moloney Elliot's production manger held my hand. Buddy was an instant amazing smash and no sooner had I re focused on a non yet to commence TV career than along came Buddy Broadway (i hold the bizarre claim to being the youngest designer at 21 to have designed in the West End a title I also still hold on Broadway) then there was a whole string of duplicate Buddy's literally all over the world. i've lost count but there was over 18 running at one time and in 2009 at least 8 productions are rocking around the world.


Meeting the Queen the first time
I caught my breath and focused again on the TV career I had longed for since my early teens, then came along Willy Russell's theater musical Blood Brothers, initially a UK. tour, then Canada and then Broadway. Another show running in New York twice in 18 months and only 3 years out of college. this was getting pretty weird.


Meeting the Queen the second time
I finally managed to achieve a major ambition and worked as an assistant designer at the BBC television centre, this was something I had dreamt of for over a decade and I was in my element, I was also designing a whole string of musicals which I had been offered as a result of Buddy, I remember having come back from the opening of Blood Brothers in New York and being asked to sweep the stage of the dominion by a pompous ( and jealous ) BBC designer whom I was assisting . I now make it a point to sweep all my own sets.


Me with Siegfried and Roy at The Mirage
I was both unlucky and lucky to break into TV when I did, the BBC design department was coming to the end of the glory days and that was a great shame but how lucky I was to be one of the last to work in that magnificent department.. The up side of my TV career starting off in the early 90's was that it was easy to get work as a freelance designer without the obligatory 15 years assisting which had been the norm in the 70's/80's. and so eventually in 1994 I got my first proper TV design job on a British institution called Alright on the night. This was the perfect show, it's pretty hard to get a clip show wrong and the show was high profile enough to get me noticed. All manner of entertainment shows started rolling in, talent shows, music shows, award shows and a real special one. The Royal Variety Performance, this is the ultimate show to a kid from Blackpool with a fire eating mother and a comedian father who installed in me as a kid that this was the zenith. I did the show three years in a row, met the Queen several times, and relished in the whole prestigious affair. I can tell you I am very proud of those shows.


Yes, I used to sweep my own stages - Liverpool Playhouse
I continued to churn the shows out for TV whilst also doing countless musicals for the Theatre working mainly alone from home, then in 1998 I bit the bullet and bought a commercial office building in Richmond which housed four floors geared up to a quick turn over of projects, it was a real sense of achievement to move into the office with all the equipment, and reference samples, and a floor dedicated to model making, my own mini BBC design department. I had been juggling or 'plate spinning' at least four of five shows at a time and the office made it possible to double that capacity, I found a great team of very talented and loyal freelancers who where designers in there own right who periodically worked with me, they where virtually all from the theatre which was essential to me for model making which was a major part of my presentation. With the office and the new team it was time to set up a legit company and get serious, so. A1 SET ltd was born. Shortly after this expansion came the really big one.


Me and James Yarnell at The Emmy's
I had always wanted to do a quiz show and strangely had never actually achieved this when I got a call from a relatively small independent TV production company called Celador, Owner Paul Smith told me how they where making a show called 'Cash Mountain' where there was potential for the contestant to walk away with a million pounds, I had three weeks to design and get this one built, I had figured out that this was likely to be a high profile show but had I have known what I was designing, what the show would become I think I'd have had a heart attack. The show was to become 'Who Wants To Be a Mllionaire ?'


Working at Paramount
The design process was very very quick, I distinctively remember starting with the plan. the circle, I had seen a Nick King quiz called 'Connections' where the audience where in the round and the cameras where cleverly hidden, We started the model with a few days to go until building of the set was due to start, I remember saying to John Stevenson who was helping make the model " oh I don't know why don't you try and make a bowl under the Perspex floor, I can still see him on his knees on the floor sanding down the 1:50 scale bowl, this snap decision was to become a core element of the design, there wasn't time to contemplate it was snap decisions all the way. The rest as they say is legend, the show of course literally became the most successful TV entertainment show in the history of British broadcasting. The show was soon licensed all over the world with Celador breaking with traditional overseas sales by writing in to the contract that the set had to be identical in every country (eventually 108 world wide) the show became the biggest rating show in US history, the set is seen on the Millionaire video games, on the cover of the board games, bar gaming machines, there' was even a complete duplicate of the set in Disney world and Disney land and the climax to the success story was when in 2009 hit movie Slumdog Millionaire which heavily features my set won endless awards and was nominated for no less than ten Oscars.


Notes, notes, notes ... I am infamous for them
It is a very very strange thing to create something that can be seen in any developed country on earth, it is the difference between designing a set and designing a piece of historical popular culture, if only I had known what it was to become I would have worked every breathing minute on making it the best set I ever designed. which it isn't


King production designer or court jester? You decide
A couple of years after Millionaire came Pop Idol, essentially a simple singing talent show but this project also turned into a ratings jug naught knocking Millionaire off its perch. it was inevitable that the show would be reproduced all over the world and it wasn't long before American idol was born.

I was working on a the Bafta Awards show at the Theater Royal Drury lane ( the Emmys of the UK ) in 2002 I was really trying of the TV industry in the Uk partially burned out and partially bitter at a decaying industry a shadow of the one I had fallen in love with as a kid. The experience with Bafta show pushed me over the edge, with general disorganized chaos and long hours working 48 hours without sleep during the load in and a tiny budget to boot. it was the straw that broke my back and right there backstage I announced to the stage hands who I had worked with a lot over the years that I was moving to the States. Enough was enough.. I was out. The morning after I made an appointment to meet with an immigration attorney.

If you believe in destiny ( and I very much do ) imagine when 2 weeks later as I immersed my self in the mountain of work necessary to apply for an American visa I got a call from Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick ( producers of Pop Idol ) they where about to take the show to the states re creating it as ' American Idol ' and would I like to go with them. I was packing before I said yes.

American Idol


12th January 2003 I landed at LAX and took a cab to my new apartment in Hollywood right next to CBS where we where to start taping American Idol a couple of months later, What followed was without any exaggeration the best 6 years of my life. Initially the work came slowly as I was essentially beginning a career from scratch although with Idol on my resume ( the show became literally the most successful TV show in American history ) and with Millionaire still doing well I wasn't too concerned, Eventually after a year o two of a drastically contrasting slow paced life style, a self imposed 2 year vacation I started getting increasingly more work and by 2008 I was back where I had left in the UK spinning too many plates and drowning in work.

A long time ambition of mine was to work in Vegas, I had been in love with the city since my first visit in 1992 and I finally achieved that ambition with the last show ever to play in the legendary Stardust showroom and at the time of writing in 2009 I have now designed more sets in Vegas than any other designer. I loved Vegas so much that in 2007 I moved to sin city full time after a transitional year of living in both L.A.. and Vegas. I still spend a lot of time in Hollywood and I love L.A. but I am most at home in Las Vegas.

As for the future I have a small production company in Las Vegas and hope to fulfill my ambition of producing live theater shows in Vegas having already produced a couple of small scale shows and I own and operate a show ticket web site www.vegasliveshow.com

(310) 210-9222 • andywalmsley@mac.com