Driana Jones

Founder and Co-Director

It was Driana Jones’ passion and talent for art which led her to Maidstone, and an accomplished career in television.

She completed a foundation course in art and design at Manchester Polytechnic before attending The University of Kent where she applied for the opportunity to work on a children’s television series. She was selected by Tim Edmunds and Neil Buchanan of The Media Merchants and the show they were making was Art Attack. Driana went on to work on it for seven years – and it was there that she first met Nic Ayling.

“I first met Nic when he came to work on the third series of Art Attack”, she remembers. “I was immediately impressed by him. We have very different personalities – I’m spectacularly messy, whereas Nic is totally ordered and very organised. But editorially we think the same way, and I think that’s why we work so well together”.

The Media Merchants made a lot of shows for Children’s ITV, with Driana working on many of them. “I made my way up from Junior Researcher to Producer on shows including How 2, Terror Towers, Animal Crazy, It’s a Mystery and the legendary TV comic Zzzap! which I produced for a number of series.

“Children’s factual programmes are still my passion”, she reveals. “Having the chance to inspire a child to know or learn something, or do something new, is hugely fulfilling”, she says.

In more recent years Driana created the hugely successful Mister Maker, co-devised I Can Cook, the first ever cookery show for pre-schoolers, and the smash hit Let’s Play – all for CBeebies. And she’s recently spent a year in Teletubbyland on the reboot of Teletubbies, as Series Producer.

Driana established Terrific Television with Nic in 2016 and she’s proud of their company’s progress in such a short time. “Between us we’ve worked on dozens of hit shows for some of the major Indies and broadcasters. It’s great to now be doing it for ourselves!”