Jim Hitchmough was a TV writer, teacher, academic and former seaman. He was best known for creating and writing every single episode of the long-running and award-winning Granada television sitcom Watching, but he also wrote for Coronation Street, Brookside, Albion Market, the BBC Scotland sketch series Naked Video, as well as a feature-length Screen One TV film The Bullion Boys. He died in 1997 of a brain tumour.