SONGWRITER
Based in London, Megg is committed to giving back to the Songwriting community that has supported her career by leading workshops such as THE BIG DEMO LISTENING EVENT, SONGSHOP & TALK TO MY MANAGER to give developing songwriters commercial opportunities for their work to be heard.
She also lectures on the postgraduate MA Music Management Degree at London College of Music and has sat on the Songwriter’s Executive of the BRITSH ACADEMY OF SONGWRITERS COMPOSERS AND AUTHORS for many years. Currently she serves on the committee of management for the MEMBER’S BENEVOLENT FUND of PRS FOR MUSIC.
Her first publishing deal was with SPARTA FLORIDA with a song she co-wrote with HAL SHAPER.
She says:
"I’ve been writing songs since I got my first guitar at fifteen, but I didn’t get paid for doing it until my third year at Drama College in Edinburgh, when the score hadn’t been sent with the parcel of scripts for an end of term semi-musical production of John Arden’s ‘THE ROYAL PARDON’ . Apparently the publishers had none left and to re-order would be too late. Seeing the director was in a tight spot I volunteered to compose new music to go with the original lyrics and played them to her at the next rehearsal. The director was highly delighted and bought me a bottle of wine...result!
I had no idea at that point that you could actually make money doing what I had just done. I was simply being helpful.
Then in my first radio play for Radio 4 as an actor in CORRESPONDENCES with Marius Goring, I over heard the producer saying they couldn’t get clearance for a song they wanted to use in the play. I cheekily asked what the song was and went home and wrote a new song with the same sentiment. The producer liked it, recorded the song with me singing and this time I got actual money and a contract.
Suddenly, the penny dropped, people needed specially written songs for all sorts of things and producers didn’t always know who to ask to do the job."
Fast forward till now and Megg’s got hundreds of songs under her belt written for BBC and ITV including lots of children’s programs such as LISTENING CORNER.
This daily program ate up lots of material and she often presented it as well as writing the music and scripts.
‘ The show was such a delight to do, especially if it was with someone who had a jolly sense of humour like MICHAEL ROSEN for instance . In that case we presented the program together and I wrote music to some of his fabulous poems and we sang them’
....And there were many others too such as HOPSCOTCH, JIGSAW, KNICKITY KNACKITY, all long running series plus LETS SEE and GATHER ROUND.
Perhaps the most ground breaking was being included on the songwrtiting team of YOUR MOTHER WOULDN’T LIKE IT . This was a naughty teenage light entertainment program that prided itself in doing funny and outrageous sketches that often inlcuded spoof Pop songs. The show was very popular and won a BAFTA in the 'Best Light Entertainment and Drama' Category.
In fact Megg made children’s music a specialty and she has written and produced numerable “Edutainment” products. Such as KID STUFF RADIO, THE SING N” DO SERIES and INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA. Scripts for the animation series THE SECRET LIFE OF BENJAMIN BEAR.
