I thought I’d tell you a little about Pidduck Productions, the company I’ve set up with my sister, Polly Pidduck, to develop content for the preschool market.
OK, that’s not her real name but if I’m going to be our grandmother, Kitty (What’s in a name?), it makes sense for her to be our great-grandmother, Polly!
Maybe I should go back to the beginning…
We started life as Catherine and Philippa Tozer – I was named after my mother’s mother and Philippa was named after the cousins our Dad was visiting in the US when she was born – the Philips!
Growing up, we loved to perform. We made up pop songs and dance routines and dressed up to sing them with hairbrush microphones. We wrote plays, set up pretend fetes and sports days in our garden and learned to play the piano with the redoubtable Miss Pepper – or Madam Poivre as our Dad nicknamed her.
I went on to study theatre and jazz singing and to perform and teach while Philippa balanced a career in musical theatre with a relationship management role in the corporate world.
Eventually, we married and changed our surnames but we always felt something was missing. We felt close to our Tozer roots but craved a connection to our mother’s side of the family – the Pidducks we’d heard so much about but never met.
They too were a family of actors, singers and writers. Polly, our great-grandmother, met her husband, Harry, at the stage door while Kitty, their daughter, toured the North-West of England with the grandly named Jack Fortescue’s Strolling Players.
So when my children’s writing began to take off, it made sense to honour the Pidduck clan.
I’m Kitty, Philippa is Polly. It feels like we’re still playing all these years later – and isn’t that what children’s writing is all about?!
But of course, we’re not playing at being a production company. While I bring 30+ years of experience as a performer, songwriter and early years music educator to the table, Polly brings decades of theatre and production experience and a wealth of business nous.
So here we are – Pidduck Productions. Brimming with ideas and raring to go. We’ve got two shows in development and more in the pipeline. Give us a shout if you’d like to know more!