The Burnley man bringing the BBC to the North West

The new BBC Director North's CV runs to three pages and there seems to be nothing he hasn't done.

He used to be the boss of EastEnders, for goodness sake!

And in person he cuts quite a dashing figure — tall, slim and sporting a tan.

But thankfully he is friendly, funny and personable.

“Being in Blackburn reminds me of my childhood. We'd come here to buy our shoes from Tommy Ball’s,” he said.

“It reminds me of going to see Burnley play away at Ewood Park and watching David Bowie at King George's Hall.

"I love being here because the smells and tastes and sounds are from a place that I still call home.”

Peter is in East Lancashire to promote MediaCityUK, a gigantic new development at Salford Quays which is to house the BBC’s Children’s, Sport, 5 Live Radio and Learning departments.

The project will facilitate the largest move of staff and departments out of London in the BBC’s history and on completion, in 2011, will house 2,500 staff.

Some of the BBC’s most important and best-loved programmes — including Match of the Day and Blue Peter — will also make the move.

As the first ever BBC Director North, Peter will lead the development of what is being billed as the world's most advanced broadcasting centre.

“The whole point is to do something which will make a difference,” he said.

“This is a really big statement about the BBC’s intentions to serve audiences in the north of England better and if you want to do something world-beating you have to come up with something very special.

"We want the best people in the world to come and work here, so it's got to be very ambitious.”

The BBC will make up one third of the MediaCityUK site — it is the project's first big tenant.

The remaining space is due to be taken up by academic bodies, media companies, independent producers, research organisations, and games companies.

"We want to be at the heart of something really big and really vibrant because it will then feed off itself," said Peter.

"There will be shops, a hotel and we've already got the Imperial War Museum on board. The Lowry centre is nearby and Man United is around the corner.

"Hopefully people will get on the tram and just come out for a gawp because it'll be so fantastic."

For Peter, being at the helm of such a huge project is made all the sweeter as he is from the north himself.

"It's wonderful for me to put something back on this scale.

"I love that. That's a delicious extra element for me," he said.

"The north is a place full of great storytellers, great entertainers, great comedians, great dramatists and extraordinary journalists.

"It's full of curious, friendly, outgoing, warm people and I want to harness that.

"I want to harness the north that I know and couple that with world-beating technology and access to great platforms like BBC1, Children's BBC and Radio Five Live.

Peter's own career path has inspired him to ensure the north is better-served.

"I found it difficult to maintain a career here because there wasn't enough going on, but I don't think it's going to feel like that for our children. They could have a whole life and a whole career at MediaCityUK. Of course, they might not want to do that but the point is that they could. It's what the north deserves."

Born and raised in a small house in Trafalgar Street, Burnley, Peter, 53, was son of an Irish immigrant window cleaner father and a Lancashire mill girl mother.

He attended St Mary Magdalene RC Primary School and later St Theodore's RC High School.

"My first girlfriends and all my best friends were from Burnley and I developed a tribal affection for Burnley Football Club," said Peter.

"Eventually I became the first person in my family to go to university.

"I was lucky that there was free education for people who didn't have very much money and I remember choosing Warwick University because there was a picture of footballer Steve Heighway in the prospectus."

Peter joined the BBC as a general trainee in 1981 and eventually became BBC Bristol's Head of Factual, in charge of shows like Antiques Roadshow and 999.

Along the way he directed the first-ever film shown on Crimewatch UK before going onto produce the series.

He was responsible for more than 40 environmental programmes for Bristol's Natural History Unit; co-created Sport Relief; signed Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park to the BBC; was a producer on David Dimbleby's history series Across The Great Divide; and worked on Blue Peter, Newsnight, and Radio 1's Newsbeat.

He left the BBC in the early '90s to work in the commercial sector, as director of programmes at Granada, and later as controller of factual programmes for Channel 4, where his teams won a record number of BAFTAs, RSA Awards, and Emmys.

Before his latest role he was in charge of all the BBC's in-house TV programmes, from EastEnders to Watchdog, Strictly Come Dancing to Dragon's Den.

Peter attributes his success to "being nosy" and always following his passions.

He said: "I've always been very curious. I'm the kind of person who goes into places and strikes up a conversation. You hear remarkable things that way.

"And I've always tried not to be too sentimental about bricks and mortar.

"You can find some of the greatest stories in the world, but you do have to put yourself out and inconvenience yourself.

"You can't always sleep in your own bed. You can't always go to watch the football team you love every Saturday, and sometimes you're away from your kids, but if your heart is in something you have to follow it.

"Good things don't come easy and it's the people who put themselves out and go for it who are the ones who in the end tend to build interesting careers."

Peter currently lives in London with his wife, actress Sarah Lancashire, and their son.

But when the MediaCityUK site opens in 2011 it is likely he will relocate to the North West — and he hasn't ruled out a return to Burnley.

"There are places now that are trendy that were virtually uninhabited when I grew up," he said.

"Some of the villages were very tiny and there wasn't much going on, but I look at them now and go 'Wow'.

"They're posh and modern and they're near great roads and have great facilities.

"I think modern Lancashire is great, but I haven't figured out where I will live yet.

"I've got quite a complicated family as my wife works all over the place."

But visiting Blackburn sparked Peter's appreciation of East Lancashire's idiosyncrasies.

"We came past a pub this morning and it was like a scene from Shameless," he laughed.

"There were people having a drink at 9am. Someone shouted out to me: 'It's happy hour!'

"I just thought to myself: 'This place is so colourful, so rich and so extraordinary.' I realised what I missed when I saw that."