Hannah Springham, MD of Farmyard handcrafted foodservice, has gone back to her TV directing roots with new YouTube series Louie Spence in Care, Here, Hannah explains why the bold comedy series about music and dementia is very much a personal project
Can you remind readers who you are and what you do?
I’m a founder and MD of a company I run with my husband called Farmyard. We make bespoke food products for first and business class international airlines.
I’m also a TV Director on the side. I’m a mum of two lovely neurodivergent kids and I’m also a school Governor for a brilliant school in Norwich called Future Education. That’s a small voluntary role but I love it.
We last featured you in August 2021 – what has been happening in the last half a decade?!
Quite a lot! We had a restaurant and a hotel back then and during lockdown I was having fun directing Made in Chelsea, TOWIE and Rob and Romesh V.
We had a family visit us a few times at our Michelin-listed restaurant in Norwich, Farmyard, who were flying out on their private jet. They used to take a load of our food back with them every time, to warm up on their jet. Their PA told us we should get into airline food as much of it lacked quality. So, when a year or so later we were sat at an awards ceremony with a huge coldroom company called Dawsons and they asked me what contacts I’d like in the whole industry, I asked if they had any contacts in first or business class air travel. He told me to call him on Monday and get two numbers from him. One was Emirates and one for our brilliant agent, Brown Sugar. We sent samples, the conversations began and another year or so later we began our first large scale contract for an international airline, shipping into Heathrow twice a week.
Farmyard Frozen seems to be going from strength to strength – congratulations. What are the latest developments?
Thank you! We moved from the restaurant into posh ready meals and have now left both of those industries behind and are purely focused on mass volume B2B work with first class airline cabins and large-scale food service contracts. Last year was all about keeping our existing customers happy and slowly getting to know a few more, from here on in we’re poised for some exciting growth. We’ve just won two new significant contacts which are this time based outside of air travel which we’re very excited about.
How has Louie Spence in Care come about? Is it something of a personal project for you?
Yes very, for me but also for Louie. My mum, Brenda Springham, had Dementia and I’d witnessed the connection between music and memory particularly near the end when most other memory had left her. My mum could recite the Beatles lyrics for longer than most other memories would hold. I knew there was a TV format in there and got quite close to something about a decade ago with Universal Music. It’s tricky through as it’s a fundamentally sad subject matter, even though music brings joy.
Then last summer I was with Louie, and he was telling me about his Friday night pensioners club which he’s been doing religiously since 2013 when his mum died, and he moved his dad in. He has all his pensioner relatives over for dinner and a ‘health check-up’ every Friday. Such a heartwarming thing to do. I also discovered that most of his family work in care. They’d been pestering him to help them with the entertainment side and ‘join the family business’. I knew this had legs, and with Louie we’d make the audience laugh hysterically, and occasionally cry because of the magical music scenes. Perfect. So, we started filming and it’s been miraculous for all of us.
Was there something surprisingly joyful about filming in a care home?
Yes, it’s beautiful. Sometimes I’m in tears but usually I’m laughing. When I was a child, I wanted to work in a care home. My grandma lived with us so perhaps that’s why. When I was in London in my twenties a pal and I used to help put on some entertainment for a care home near us using our TV contacts. It just felt such an important thing to do. You’d see people come back to themselves. It’s honestly magical.
How have you enjoyed going back to your roots as a TV director?
Yes, it’s an itch I have to scratch. If you come up with TV ideas as a career, then you can’t turn that tap off. I adore running our business but even if I can direct something just once a year, that would keep me going creatively.
How can people watch the series?
It’s all on YouTube. We release clips every few days and a long video every Tuesday – in one of them we got West End star John Partridge to come and perform for the residents.
What other projects have you got coming up?
I’m working on a couple of ideas with my pal Helen Serafinowicz who writes Motherland and Amandaland. She’s a comedy genius and when we work together it’s like being back at school and you can’t stop laughing. Like two naughty schoolgirls on the back of a bus. Pure joy.
Watch Louie Spence In Care – YouTube
Featured image of Hannah Springham (second right) with Louie Spence (second left) – supplied
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