Karl Beattie

Director Of Photography, Director Of Antix

Born: 20th May, 1963
 
Karl Beattie started his career in television on the set of BBC’s live children’s show ‘Parallel 9’ as a camera assistant. He was quickly snapped up by an outside broadcast company, Visions, and trained there as a cameraman.

Karl has worked on some of the top television shows in Britain: ‘Gladiators’, ‘Blind Date’, ‘TFI Friday’, ‘Robot Wars’, Disney, Jim Henson and the World Music Awards to name but a few. His music credits speak for themselves: Madonna’s Frozen Video, Motown Mania, Sting, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Whitney Houston, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson to name but a few – and he’s no stranger to festivals either, working at Glastonbury, Reading, Phoenix and Brighton.

On a mission to experience the variety of television camera, he had gone as far as Bosnia and with a background in outside broadcast, he has amounted 1000s of hours of live broadcast in all television genre from sport to music, current affairs to light entertainment.

It was while working on a live show, BBC’s ‘City Hospital’, that Karl met Yvette Fielding. They were engaged within 6 weeks and married within 6 months. Both Karl and Yvette had wanted to start a production company to put their ideas into practice and so Antix Productions was born – and their first idea was ‘Most Haunted’.

Karl’s expertise does not only lie in television. He started Martial Arts training under the legendary Otsu Maeda Sensei at the age of 7 and is the current World Traditional Full Contact Martial Arts Champion. He won the title in 1994 and holds it to this day after knocking out the then undefeated champion Tiju Fukura. Karl has never been beaten and holds an impressive record of 85 official fights, 85 wins and 75 KO’s. He is the only person to take the title out of Japan and for his efforts has been awarded a Samuraiship, one of only eight honoured outside of Japan.

Karl brought this claim to the attention of the British media in 2004 and there has been much debate on the authenticity of this.  An article in the Japan Times stated however:

“The Office of the Imperial Household has told The Japan Times that it has no practice or system of granting such titles.

The samurai class ceased to exist 130 years ago, with the abolition of Japan’s feudal system at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868.

But some believe this shouldn’t deter Beattie from pursuing his claim.

“Samurai do exist,” says Vincent Perry from Gallery Samurai in Minami Aoyama.

“Some people are really serious about it and respect the samurai spirit. One of the reasons they buy (armor) is that they have respect for that way of life and want to become a samurai,” he says.”

Matt Barlow

A self confessed super fan of Most Haunted and editor of GhostMag.com. Matt’s passion for ghost hunting began when he moved into a haunted house in his second year of university in Leicester! His favourite location is the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh.