On Tuesday 5 February, Old Queenswoodian, Mellie Buse, presented an animated and engaging talk to the Sixth Form about her experiences as a writer and producer of books and programmes for children.  Mellie is a prolific writer and her credits include popular characters Angelina Ballerina, Bambaloo and Charlie and Lola.  Her latest project, “Grandpa in My Pocket”, is about to be screened in the UK soon.  Mellie’s props for this evening’s talk were one of her puppet characters and the scaled down model of Grandpa’s house, both of which were admired by the attentive and appreciative audience.

Mellie enthralled the audience with her tales and advice about the creative and non-creative opportunities in television including: broadcasting, production, design, research, sound, special effects, accountancy, law and marketing and other related areas.  Breaking into this enormously competitive area is notoriously difficult and Mellie’s advice to the girls is to build their CV-ie do useful jobs in the holidays, be prepared to start at the bottom, network and learn from others.  We shall be on the lookout for Mellie’s name in the credits of many more programmes.