Paul Atherton (born 20 March 1968) is managing director of Simple (TV) Productions and its sister not-for-profit company, Q&D Productions Limited. He is the first producer/ director to have his work broadcast on the Coca-Cola billboard in Piccadilly Circus, London with his film The Ballet of Change.
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Paul Atherton was just three months old when he was abandoned in a tent at a disused Airport in Cardiff. He was placed with a white foster family[1] in the small village of Ystrad Mynach, he left home at 15 where he spent time in children's homes and completed his "O" Levels. At 16 he set up home on his own, against the wishes of Social Services. After a traumatic event at the age of 18 he became homeless and lived on the streets, but by 20 he'd recovered his life and bought his first flat.[2]
In 1992 Atherton was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, often called myalgic encephalomyelitis in the United Kingdom).[3]
He attended Cardiff Business School, and obtained a BSc Honours Degree in Business Administration as a mature student in 1994.
Whilst studying he set up a mail order company specialising in silk lingerie called “A Touch of Silk”. This was the first non-blue-chip company in the UK allowed to take credit cards over the phone without a retail premises.
He moved onto a career in Public Relations with Systems Publicity, Harvard Communications and finally Propeller Marketing where he Account Directed clients CNN, media buyers OMD (Omnicom Media Directions) and The Daily Telegraph.
From here, his television career began at Prospect Pictures working on their live five day-a-week cookery programme Good Food Live before setting up his production companies in 2004.
In February 2009 he worked with Wil Johnson (BBC Star of Waking the Dead) and Robert Cavanah (Tomb Raider / Sahara) on a short film entitled Colour Blind, to bring attention to a UK audience, the dangers of seeing racism everywhere. He made-up his White lead in Golliwog (Black Face) Make-up to make the point.
On Sunday 2 August 2009 Atherton started Pre-production on "A Thousand Voices for a Broken System" a new format of documentary film that will originally take place on the Web and eventually be edited for cinema.
Prompted by his own experiences [4][5] the premise of the film is to interview a 1,000 people from across the UK who have been failed by the Welfare, NHS or Social Services in the past 10 years, in order to highlight the issues of the most vulnerable people in society.
It's referred to as a patchwork film because rather than one film-maker doing all the interviews, documentary crews from around the UK have been asked to submit their own interviews with subjects of their choice, so Atherton can sew them together like a patchwork quilt.
On Monday 6 September 2010 Atherton announced that he had signed video games writer Rhianna Pratchett to write his first feature film. Vigilia (a working title) is due to shoot in 2011 [6]