Mari Griffith

rdf:langString Mari Griffith

rdf:langString Mari Griffith (1940 – 13 May 2019) was a Welsh radio announcer, as well as a singer, presenter, independent producer and novelist later on in life. Griffith was born to a Welsh-speaking family in Maesteg, the Llynfi Valley with a passion for music. She first appeared on All Your Own, a Sunday night BBC children's television programme, direct from London, singing with accompaniment by her harpist sister Anne. Griffith said about her childhood "Few people in Maesteg had TV sets in those days, so they all crowded into each other's houses to watch. They then crept shamefacedly into chapel late for the evening service, hoping the minister wouldn't notice." In the mid-1960s she left Maesteg and went to college in Cardiff, later joining the Manchester-based BBC Northern Singers. She divided her time between presenting children's programmes and attending folk music concerts. She gained her own BBC Wales series, With A little Help. Griffith sung in both English and Welsh. After returning home, she worked with comedians Ryan and Ronnie, and Max Boyce, along with appearances on Disc a Dawn, Poems and Pints, and Music for your Pleasure. She took up work as a bilingual continuity announcer at BBC Wales. After starting with promotional work, she established her own production company, MovieJack. Moviejack filmed in the US and Bulgaria. Throughout her life, Griffith worked in the RTS and spent more than ten years as the secretary of the Wales Centre Committee. When she grew older, she started writing and successfully published two medieval romance novels, Root of the Tudor Rose and its sequel, The Witch of Eye. Griffith died on May 13, 2019, at Bridgend, at the age of 79.