User:Ladybythebeck/Michael Leonard Healey

‘Mike’ Healey (born 18 July 1941) is a stage, radio and TV Director/Producer, Writer, Teacher and professional Painter.

Healey was Associate Director of Meadow Players (Oxford Playhouse) and a BBC staff director/producer in Manchester. He later worked as a freelance director at Granada TV and BBC Scotland where he created a raft of award-winning drama-documentaries.

With Marshall Lee he created Sportraits ’for Mark McCormack’s International Management Group. This sports show featured profiles of fifty-two elite athletes. It was aired in forty countries with weekly viewing figures in excess of 60 million.

His television work for the BBC includes The Early Life of Beatrix Potter starring Helena Bonham Carter and A drop in the ocean - the true story of ‘Whiskey Galore’.

Early life and education 1941-1964

Mike Healey was born in Watford, Hertfordshire to Squadron Leader Leonard Robert Healey DFC, DFM  and Jessie Tait. He spent most of his childhood abroad - Egypt, Cyprus and Germany. In total, he attended eleven school - including The Junior English School, Nicosia, Cyprus (1952 -1954) and Windsor School, Hamm, Westphalia (1955 - 1958).

Windsor School was an early experiment in co-educational, comprehensive education under the auspices of the British Forces Education Service. It was also a boarding school housed in a former army cavalry barracks. The three years he spent here was the longest period of uninterrupted education he had thus far experienced.

He took his ‘A’ Levels at Simon Langton Grammar School, Canterbury. Here he appeared as Coriolanus in a school production. The part of Aufidius was played by Mike Ratledge who later formed The Soft Machine.

In 1962 Mike Healey attended Wadham College, Oxford where he read English Language and Literature.

At Oxford he wrote and directed two student shows (Masquerade and The swiftly, swiftly catchee monkey show), both of which subsequently resurfaced on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also appeared in his own mime adaptation of Joseph von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel , staged in the Holywell Music Room.

He also directed a student production of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair in the grounds of Wadham College, Oxford during which he was loudly admonished by the Warden - Sir Maurice Bowra - for damaging his rhododendrons in the course of an over-exuberant sword fight executed by fellow cast member Paddy Scannell.

Formal qualifications

Master of Arts, Oxford University; The Diploma in European Humanities, The Open University (31 December 1995) ; Bachelor of Arts, The Open University (14 October 2004).

Career

Theatre

Front of House Manager (University Theatre, Oxford) 1965-1966

In 1965 Mike Healey began his professional career as Front of House Manager at the Oxford Playhouse, at that time under the management of Elizabeth Sweeting. The following year Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor arrived at the Oxford Playhouse to rehearse Nevill Coghill’s production of Dr Faustus.

Since first appearing together in Cleopatra (1963), the Taylors were probably the most famous couple on the planet. It was, therefore, his primary job to keep the paparazzi away from rehearsals. He failed miserably and the Burtons moved to the safest rehearsal place they could find - the police gymnasium on Carfax.

Meadow Players (Oxford Playhouse) 1966-1970

In 1966 he became assistant to Frank Hauser, Artistic Director of Meadow Players - the Oxford Playhouse’s resident professional company. The following year (1967) he was made Assistant Director.

He made his professional debut as stage director at the Fortune Theatre in London’s West End where he supervised the cast change in Hauser’s celebrated production of ‘The Promise’  by Aleksei Arbuzov, starring Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Ian McShane. When Dench left the show to rehearse Cabaret in the West End she was replaced by Eileen Atkins, who then joined McKellen when the production moved to Broadway. Meanwhile, back in London, he re-rehearsed the play with McShane, Prunella Scales and  Derek Fowlds.

In his role as Assistant Director, he worked on Hauser’s productions of Anouilh’s Ardèle, starring George Pravda and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, starring David Dodimead,  Francesca Annis, Norman Vaughan and Harold Lang as ‘Caliban’. He later (1970) assisted Minos Volanakis on his controversial production of Genet’s The Balcony - starring Barbara Jefford and Janet Suzman.

His own stage productions at the Oxford Playhouse as Associate Director in the late sixties include  David Halliwell’s Little Malcolm and his struggle against the eunuchs;  Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight; Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man; Ibsen’s An enemy of the people; Molière’s The Miser; and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. featuring Lewis Fiander. Choreography was by Leo Kharibian with music by Michael Dress.

Peer Gynt went on tour to critical acclaim. Its financial success - and that of The Miser with its 90% audience attendance - helped mitigate Meadow Players’ increasing financial difficulties.

When the Arts Council refused to increase their grant to Meadow Players in 1973, Frank Hauser resigned and Meadow Players came to an end.

Radio and Television

BBC Manchester 1970-1983

In 1970 Mike Healey left Oxford and moved to Manchester, joining the BBC as a trainee television director. Within days of arriving he was (to his alarm) on location filming short news stories for BBC North and Nationwide.

Soon thereafter he found himself directing live, studio transmissions - including Manchester’s real-time Saturday contributions to Grandstand.

Early television dramas/entertainment

Get the Drift (1974/1975) - witty musical cabaret, written and performed by Henry Livings and Alex Glasgow with guest appearances (mostly in pubs) from Bernard Cribbins, Roy Kinnear, Carmel Cryan and Bryan Pringle. Producer/Director credits.

A Christmas Collection of words and music: ‘It is Christmas Day in the workhouse…’ (1972) starring Trevor Peacock and Zoe Wanamaker. Modern adaptation of poem by George Simms (1877). Director  - Mike Healey

The Treatment (1974) by John Bosco, starring Georgina Hale. It tells the story of a young woman suffering from anorexia and the brutal treatment she experiences. It is based on true events. Director - Mike Healey.

Sense of Place

Sense of Place (1978-1981) is a series of 12 x 30-minute regional dramas, featuring especially commissioned work by contemporary writers - including Beryl Bainbridge, Shelagh Delaney, Henry Livings, Bill Morrison, Claire Luckham, Chris Bond, Janey Preger, Alan Garner and Alan Bleasdale.

Sense of Place was produced by Mike Healey for BBC North West, Manchester. Healey also directed five episodes.

Series 1 (1978-1979)

Pennine Man  by Jim Andrew, starring Bryan Pringle. Director - Harley Cokeliss.

The day Dumbfounded got his pylon by Henry Livings, starring Roy Kinnear. Director - Mike Healey

From the roots came the rapper by Janey Preger, starring Tommy Boyle. Director - Colin Bucksey.

Dangerous ambition  by Alan Bleasdale, starring Daniel Massey. Director - Mike Healey

Seawrack  by Elisabeth Bond, starring Bernard Lee. Director - Giles Foster.

Kasper’s last stand by Graeme McCaig, starring Roy Kinnear. Director - Mike Healey

Series 2 (1980 -1981)

We had some happy hours by Henry Livings

Tuebrook Tanzi by Claire Luckham. Director - Mike Healey

Lamaload  by Alan Garner. Director - Mathew Robinson  

Joggers by Bill Morrison. Director - Chris Bond

Find me first by Shelagh Delaney. Director - Matthew Robinson

Somewhere more central by Beryl Bainbridge. Director - Anne-Louise Wakefield

This second  series was partly made in association with The Everyman Theatre Company, Liverpool. Alan Bleasdale’s play Dangerous Ambition (1978) was his first TV script and the start of an illustrious career as a television dramatist. Sense of Place won a Royal Television Society award for best regional drama in 1979.

Television documentaries, dramas and documentary-dramas

Cousin Phillis (1982) is a four-part costume drama based on a short story by Elizabeth Gaskell and  with a cast led by Ian Bannen, supported by Tim Woodward, Dominic Guard and  Anne-Louise Lambert. It was shot on a farm in Shropshire and in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. Screenplay written and directed by Mike Healey.

The Black and the Grey (1983) is a BBC Radio 4 drama-documentary telling the true story of a prisoner-of-war camp in Perthshire for Germans (mostly Nazi submariners) in which a murder takes place in 1944. It was produced by Peter Everett with research by Julie Simmons. It was directed by Mike Healey and was the BBC’s Prix Italia nomination for 1983.

Ransome (1984)  - 30 mins. x 2 television drama that reconstructs the career of Arthur Ransome as a young journalist during the early days of the Russian Revolution.  The part of Ransom is played by David Shawyer and that of his wife (Trotsky’s secretary) by Petra Markham. It was written and directed by Mike Healey.

Beatrix - the early life of Beatrix Potter  starring Helena Bonham Carter, was first broadcast on BBC 2 in 1990. It recreated Potter’s formative childhood vacations in Scotland and her later interest in mycology. It was mostly filmed on location in Comrie, Fife. Its cast includes Ernest Blake, Carol Brannan, Carolyn Bonnyman, David Langton and William Lucas. Music by Orlando Gough and John Lunn.

This drama-documentary - written and directed by Mike Healey - was later shown in the USA where it won gold medal at the New York Television Festival in 1992.

Freelance work for Granada TV (Manchester) 1983-1987

Mike Healey began work as a freelance director at Granada TV in 1983 where he directed regular shows, such as What the papers say; Late Night from Two; and Union World with presenter Gus MacDonald.

Television (1985) - GTV’s celebrated history of global television. Healey directed two episodes, one of which (The Third Age of Television) added futuristic TV antenna to the roofs of ‘Coronation Street’.

Scarman Returns (1984) - three years after his report on the Brixton Riots, Lord Scarman returns to Brixton. Documentary made by Granada TV for Channel Four. Directed by Mike Healey.

For Granada TV/Channel Four he also wrote and directed two biographical films:

James Mason: the star they loved to hate (1984). Producer Trish Kinane.

Spike (1986) - a celebration of the life and work of Spike Milligan.

Although never part of the production team, Mike worked as studio director for World In Action ‘specials’ and, from time to time, directed short location sequences for them, often in America.

Other freelance work elsewhere includes Bouncers (1986)  - a documentary filmed in Brighton and a children’s fantasy drama by Nigel Baldwin called Cannondrum (1987) - part of TV South’s Dramarama series (Series 5, 1987).

Freelance work for BBC Scotland (Glasgow) 1979-1990

Mike Healey also had a long and productive association with BBC Scotland for whom he created a raft of award-winning documentaries:

Mountain Days: Buttermere Ballads (1979) features poets Roger McGough and Liz Lochead on a surreal trip to the English Lake District.

The Persuaders (1979)  - a four-part documentary series examining the history of advertising, with reporters David Tindall and Charlotte Allen.

The Pinch (1980) - dramatic (and at times, humorous) reconstruction of the ‘liberation’ from Westminster Abbey of the Stone of Scone by young Scottish nationalists on Christmas Day, 1950. It was written by George Reid and directed by Mike Healey - and shot entirely in black and white in the style of newsreels of the 1950’s. Camera - Stuart Wild.

The Glorious Effect (1981) celebrates the history of piobaireachd (ceòl mòr) - the ‘classical’ music of the Great Highland Bagpipe. Narrated by Rory MacPherson and produced by Neil Fraser for BBC Scotland, it was shown twice on BBC 1 and once on BBC 2.  Camera - Andrew Dunn.

Drop in the Ocean (1982) is a dramatic reconstruction (in black and white) of the fate of the SS Politician which ran aground off the Hebridean island of Eriskay in 1941 with a cargo of 264,750 bottles of whisky. It was written by Finlay J.MacDonald and seeks to tell the true story behind Compton Mckenzie’s much-loved but misleading novel Whisky Galore (1947) and Alexander MacKendrick’s equally celebrated film of that name, released in 1949.

Drop was directed by Mike Healey using Gaelic-speaking young fishermen from South Uist, many of whose fathers had been involved in ‘liberating’ the Politician’s whisky in 1941. This drama-documentary won a Radio and Television Industries award.

Return to Tutankhamun (1990) is a documentary in which Margaret Orr, daughter of archaeologist Arthur Mace, is taken back to The Valley of the Kings which she first visited as a ten-year-old in 1923/24. In 1990 Margaret was the last, living witness to Howard Carter’s remarkable excavation. She died in 2000.

This film, directed by Mike Healey with Maria MacDonell (researcher) as Margaret’s on-screen ‘travelling companion,’was made for BBC Scotland. Music by Jim Sutherland.

Freelance work for International Management Group (London and Los Angeles) 1998-1990

Between 1998 and 1990 Mike Healey worked for Mark McCormack’s multi-media corporation (IMG) from their London base in Richmond and in Los Angeles.

With IMG producer Marshall Lee, he devised a new documentary sports series that was part of the Trans World Sports franchise. In its first two series Healey created 52 short documentary profiles of elite sportsmen and women. These included  Billie Jean King, Emil Zátopek, Pele, Martina Navratilova, Bob Beamon, Gary Player, Eric Heiden, Greg Norman, Rod Laver, Eddy Merckx, Dorothy Hamill and O.J.Simpson.

Sportraits was transmitted weekly in 40 countries, with viewing figures in excess of 60 million. In the UK it aired on Channel Four. The programme’s researcher/narrator and later Assistant Producer was Erica Hanson.

Marshall Healey Productions 1989-1996

This limited company was formed in March 1989 by Mike Healey and Marshall Lee, specialising in documentaries for Channel Four. Its programmes include:

Visions of Sport (1992) explores the way in which art reflects the cultural importance of sport - from ancient Greece to modern, commercial events. It was narrated by Glenda Jackson. It was partly filmed during the Barcelona Olympic Games, following photographer David Hiscock.

During this time he also devised and wrote an interactive computer ‘game’  (CD-ROM) for Philips. It allowed gamers to progress through an elaborate Egyptian pyramid and in so doing learn about ancient Egypt. Although it had a budget of £400,000 it was never completed, partly due to the speed with which gaming technology was developing at that time. In short, it was out of date before it was half-way finished.

Sixty minutes that will shake the world (1994) is a documentary that looks critically at Tokyo’s preparedness for a major earthquake. It was directed by Paul Woolwich. During Its first broadcast in Japan it received the highest ratings that year in the history of Japanese television.

Although the earthquake many had predicted did not happen in Tokyo that year, the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake struck Japan on 17 January 1995, only a year or so after this documentary aired. Hanshin was one of the worst earthquakes in Japan's history, killing 6,433 people and causing more than $100 billion in damages.

Marshall Healey Productions was formally dissolved in March 1996, following the untimely death of Marshall Lee.

Teaching 1995-2006

Theatre-in-education

Throughout his professional career, Mike Healey regularly lectured, ran drama-workshops and created TIE projects to encourage young people to engage with drama.

These include: Director of week-end residential courses at Thamesfield, Henley-on-Thames for Berkshire Education Authority; Assistant Director of Extra-Mural Delegacy, Rewley House, Oxford University; Part-time Lecturer at English Department, Teachers Training College, Culham, Berkshire; Associate Lecturer, Oxford Polytechnic, Headington; Drama Supervisor, Fermain Youth Club, Macclesfield, Cheshire; Guest Lecturer (Drama), Manchester Polytechnic.

For six weeks each spring - 1970 to 1971 and 1973 to 1976 - he ran drama workshops in Venice as part of John Hall’s pre-University Course. Productions here included an experimental Tempest; a candlelit Macbeth staged in the Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal; and a Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Palazzo Priuli in which Titania and her retinue arrived by gondola. Costumes for The Tempest were designed (and built) by Dutch artist Ysbrant van Wijngaarden, resident  in Venice at that time.

It was during his time in Venice that Mike had lunch with Ezra Pound (in silent mode) and Pound’s partner Olga Rudge (entertainingly voluble). He also dined with Peggy Guggenheim (pleasantly drunk) at her villa on the Grand Canal. Her guests that night were served chicken salad on dishes hand-painted by Pablo Picasso.

University teaching

Following the untimely death  in 1996 of his business partner, Marshall Lee, Mike Healey left television and became a Senior Lecturer in Media Production, first at The University of Lincoln and Humberside and then at the Cumbria Institute of Arts, Carlisle.

In Carlisle he ran the Media Production Department and created a new degree in Journalism with NUJ affiliation. In association with Nicos Souleles (Digital Animation), his Media Production and Journalism students won no less than 17 Royal Television Society awards between 1999 and 2006 - more than any other media production course in the UK during that period.

At CIA, he also collaborated with choreographer Gill Roncarelli and others, enabling students to participate in richly creative, inter-disciplinary work, hitherto discouraged or rendered impossible by overly narrow curricula demands.

He also introduced a range of ‘real world’ educational/best-practice innovations that gave his students a  better understanding of the actual world of radio and television production and broadcast journalism to which they aspired. These included a ‘Communication Skills’ module that ranged from basic conversation tactics when approaching a client to a full, multi-media project pitch. Role-play, understanding ‘body language’, lateral thinking and problem-solving techniques formed an integral part of this module.

He was also External Examiner (Media Production) at the Edinburgh College of Art and for the Media Production Department at The University of Glasgow. During his time at CIA he also created a new MA in Media Production.

Art

Exhibitions at Brantwood, Coniston

During his time at the Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Carlisle Mike Healey established a close working relationship with Brantwood on Coniston - the former home of John Ruskin:

The Tempest (1997) - an exhibition of some 50 works (including dioramas) inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The opening of this exhibition on 10 July 1997 coincided with a performance of the play by the Illyria Theatre Company in the grounds of Brantwood.

This  exhibition was widely reviewed, including a detailed analysis by Alan Davis in the ‘Ruskin Studies Newsletter’ (August 1997). Mike later contributed two works to an exhibition about Ruskin held at the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, Lancaster University.

Gardens of Persephone (1998) - an exhibition that explores the Persephone myth in ancient Greek culture, drawing on rock, plant and tree forms. This exhibition was partly inspired by the work of Martin Bernal -Black Athena (1987).

Alice Revisited (1999) - an exhibition of some 60 works that sought to answer the question: If Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’ were to return to Wonderland as a young woman, what would she find?

He also exhibited at the Lowood Gallery in Armathwaite, Cumbria in 2007. This exhibition further explored the Persephone myth:

Curator

Mike Healey retired from teaching in 2006. Later that year he devised and curated an exhibition in Carlisle, Cumbria (UK) commemorating the Carlisle floods of January 2005.

It included dramatic footage taken by residents recording - on their i-Phones or tablets - their own, direct, often traumatic experience of that flood in which over 6,000 people were rendered homeless.

Writing

Short stories

Apart from the many radio and TV scripts he has devised during a long media career, He has written and published a range of fictional works - including short stories, novels and stage plays.

Tales of Odd (2007) written under his pseudonym James Tait consists of fourteen short stories, somewhat surreal in nature. These include The werewolf of Bethnal Green; Fairies at the bottom of my garden; Antonio’s revenge; and My Uncle Alf - a dramatic reconstruction of the last dying minutes of Adolf Hitler’s lover (and niece) Geli Raubal.

Journey to the dark side of the moon (2009) is a surreal short story in which a number of intrepid Victorian explorers travel to the dark side of the moon by balloon to discover an entire civilisation that lives almost exclusively on boiled cabbage. It is illustrated by Mike with a series of black and white collages in the style of Max Ernst.

Crime fiction

Mike Healey’s interest in crime fiction also resulted in three crime novels, all set in Scotland and featuring Elspeth Grant - an eccentric Criminologist and Fellow of All Souls, Oxford:

But who killed Caroline? (2012) is set on the Isle of Skye where Grant has to deal with a number of grizzly dismemberments.  

The Beasts of Rannoch Moor (2012) is set in a remote part of Scotland, in an exclusive hunting lodge where Grant has to rescue the book’s heroine Cecelia from a family of Scottish cannibals.    

Cri De Coeur (2014) is set in Edinburgh. Isabella Hetherington is a respectable spinster and distinguished art historian. Following a heart-transplant, she starts having terrible nightmares that appear to foretell or relate some fatal catastrophe. In her fear and despair, Isabella turns to her Edinburgh neighbour Elspeth Grant for help.

Historical fiction

Kofi and the Climbing Boy (2016) is a historical thriller set in the early reign of King George III. It tells the (true) story of a young sweep who, in 1765, gets stuck up a chimney at Buckingham House (later to become Buckingham Palace). Although they try to ‘smoke him out’, the boy somehow survives and hides in that chimney for six weeks, coming out at night to steal food and drink - and anything else he can lay his thieving hands on.

In a parallel narrative, a young black boy (Kofi) is enslaved, brought to Jamaica, separated from his mother and taken to Britain where he becomes ‘blackamoor' to the King’s cousin, Lady Evelyn Lowther of Kirkby Lonsdale. Later, the two boys become secret friends and run amok at night in the palace, swinging on the chandeliers and sliding down the marble bannisters. They eventually escape into the ‘stews’ of London, hotly pursued by bounty hunters.

Stage plays

Mike Healey began his career at the Oxford Playhouse devising and scripting TIE projects for members of the company to take to schools in the area, thereby encouraging an interest in theatre.

Such projects include a fifteen-minute introduction to Brecht and an interactive drama in which a mobile army communications unit arrives at the school in a jeep, ‘occupies’ a classroom and then re-enacts (via radio transmitters and the help of co-opted students) the unfolding events of the English Civil War battle that took place at Edgehill, Warwickshire in October 1642.

Since then, he has published three stage plays:

The Tempest - A  Prequel. This evolved from drama workshops with students in Venice and later at the Carlisle Institute of the Arts. It dramatises the period before Prospero’s arrival on the island - when the witch Sycorax gives birth to Caliban and when Ariel is imprisoned in a pine tree.

Beware the Jabbewock is a kind of musical cabaret/pantomime based on the limericks of Edward Lear and the parallel writings of Lewis Carroll.

This play was written for The English Theatre Company, Corfu and performed (with a cast of sixty) in the Municipal Theatre, Corfu Town in 2014 - the year Corfu celebrated the150th anniversary of its freedom from British rule. Edward Lear was living in Corfu in !864 and witnessed these momentous events.

The Angel Maker (2016) tells the true story of a remote village in Hungary in the years immediately after the Great War. As their menfolk return from the war - many crippled or still shell-shocked - the women of the village begin to poison them, one by one. They are helped by the village midwife who supplies poison distilled from fly-paper. Despite the grizzly subject matter, this play is a dark comedy, full of traditional Hungarian music, laughter and dancing.

Film treatments

In 2012 Mike Healey began work on a historical novel about Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt and his relationship in Cairo with a young girl originally from Carcassonne, (SW France). Pauline Fourès, the pretty young wife of a French cavalry officer, becomes Napoleon’s ‘official’ mistress; he called her ‘his little Cleopatra’.

Film producer François Ivernel (The girl with a pearl earring; Slumdog Millionaire etc.) came across this project on Mike’s blog and invited him to submit a film treatment for consideration.

After several drafts nothing came of this potential association with Montebello Films but in 2015 he published his film treatment, now called Napoleon’ s Little Cleopatra - partly to protect his copyright and in the hope that one day he might finish the novel he started some years before while living and working in Carcassonne where this strange yet true love story began.

Stage design

Mike Healey first embarked on a parallel, professional career as an artist when working as stage director at the Oxford Playhouse. It began when he designed his own sets and costumes for The Miser; Peer Gynt, and An Enemy of the People..

His set for The Miser was modelled on Vermeer’s The Little Street (1657-58) which then opened up His production of Peer Gynt was inspired by kabuki theatre

In his interpretation of Ibsen’s epic drama, he created stage-wide cloths on wires that changed with each scene, together with many wooden tables that could be formed into multiple shapes and forms representing houses, mountains or a ship. He also employed many of the formalised acting techniques used traditionally in Kabuki theatre:

Drawings, collages, paintings

During a full-time career in television and later while teaching, Mike managed to hold at least two ‘one-man’ art exhibitions a year.

He describes himself as a ‘self-taught Surrealist’, drawing on rock, tree and plant forms for inspiration. Because of his theatre background, he has also developed a series of large, three-dimensional, boxed ‘stage sets’ or dioramas.

His interest in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Greek mythology (particularly Dionysus);18th Century history (and Argentine Tango) informs all aspects of his work.

His first exhibition in Manchester was at the Arts Council’s Gallery in King Street. His first exhibition in Greece was at Stoa Technis 13 in Athens in 1976 during a sabbatical year away from the BBC. This exhibition was due to open on Monday 13 September but that weekend a Greek businessman bought everything. With the money from this unexpected windfall, he rented a villa on Corfu for the next six months - the start of a long, creative association with that island and its people.

Art books

Mike Healey’s published art books include:

William Wordsworth’s best-loved poems, illustrated by eighteen contemporary Lakeland artists, including abstract painter Andy Wild who co-edited this book. It was published in 2017 with cover illustration  by Japanese artist Hideyuki Sobue.

Quotes  consists of work by 68 contemporary artists from around the globe. They were invited to select a short quote by someone who had inspired them, explain why or how and provide a relevant sample of their own work. Quotes was devised and edited by Andy Wild and Mike Healey and was published in 2019.

Independent music publisher

Strawlitter Productions is Mike Healey’s Kendal-based, independent publishing company. It specialises in spoken-word recordings, often set to music.  Releases thus far include:

Voyager Redux - 80’s rock music, written and performed by Mick Byard and first recorded in 1989. In 2019 Mike remastered these vintage tracks and, working closely with Byard, gave his original compositions a contemporary, ‘space-age’ twist.

The title references the Voyager space probes, first launched in 1977 and still transmitting their music and messages  even in interstellar space. This CD was released on CDBaby on 4/1/2019.

The shorter poems of William Wordsworth - set to music and performed by Louise Du Toit, Roland Fudge and others. This CD was released on CDBaby on 4/6/2020

no other gods is a selection of contemporary poetry written and performed by John Alexander Scott and set to music by Martin Dewar. This CD was released on CDBaby on 4/6/2020.

Carcassonne, France  2006-2011

When he retired from teaching in 2006, Mike Healey moved to Carcassonne in South West France to concentrate on his writing and painting. His first exhibition in France was in a smart restaurant in Carcassonne called L’Ecurie - which also  turned out to be Johnny Depp’s favourite watering hole.

Clomotiana, Corfu (Greece) 2011-2015

In 2011 he moved to Corfu, Greece and, for the larger part of five years, lived and worked in the tiny village of Clomotiana.

In Corfu he became an active supporter of the curatorial work of Michail-Angelos Vradis and his wife Sofia at their Corfu Art Gallery in Corfu Town.

This gallery contains work by Corfu artists dating back the19th Century. It also shows contemporary Greek art and it was here that he twice exhibited new work, later donating dioramas, paintings, drawings and many art books from his collection to the gallery and its owners who had been so generous to him on his arrival in Greece.

He also created a ‘Pirate Trail’ in sound and music for the small fishing village of Pentati, on the west coast of Corfu. He subsequently created other promotional projects for the Corfu Tourist Board in association with the Music Department of The Ionian University under Professor Demos Dimitriadis and jazz pianist George Kontrafouris.

He also devise, wrote and directed a series of Murder Mysteries, one of which involved forty diners, a wealthy Russian oligarch and the illegal purchase of an island in the middle of Corfu harbour. The event opened with the arrival of their host  (villain and inevitable victim) in a luxury speedboat.

He also managed Louise du Toit’s eight-piece, professional swing band - ‘Sha Sha and the Dukes’ - helping to develop its repertoire and overall stage presence.

Kendal, Cumbria 2016 -

In 2016 Mike Healey returned to the UK and moved to Kendal, Cumbria where he continues to write and exhibit his art work. His art has been shown at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal (three one-man exhibitions) and at the Severn Gallery at ‘Brantwood’ near Coniston - the former home of John Ruskin.

He has also exhibited at the Biscuit Factory in Newcastle and at local, smaller venues in Cumbria - such as Kurt Schwitter’s ‘Mertz Barn’ near Elterwater in Langdale (September/October 2017) and at The Lake Artists’ Summer Exhibition in 2019 - in the village hall in Grasmere. He is a former member of Green Door (artists’ collective) and a Trustee of Kendal Players (amateur theatre group). He has also exhibited (twice) at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick and at the Heron Theatre, Beetham.

It was in the village hall in Grasmere that Mike Healey’s father - then in retirement - regularly designed and built stage sets and helped display the work of local artists - over 45 years ago.

Personal life

Healey married Juliet Garson (1951- 2020) in 1980 but was divorced in 1992. He has two children - Thomas and Charlotte. He currently lives and works in Kendal, Cumbria where he has his art studio. He continues to write for radio, television and the theatre.

External links

Mike Healey at IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1556104/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1

Mike Healey’s website: https://mike-healey.blogspot.com/

Mike Healey’s Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Mike+Healey&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

Mike Healey’s art: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/mikehealey109/_created/