06 February 2021, 7:30 PM
While Middleton resident Jenifer Watts had an idyllic childhood, the creator of noughties TV show The Fairies certainly didn’t ‘inhabit’ fairyland, like many fanciful children worldwide do as they grow up.“I was such a tomboy, I had two brothers and was never really into fairies,” she said. “When my brothers played cricket I was always the wicket. We spent a lot of time outdoors and along the River Murray at Morgan during our holidays.”Born and bred in Adelaide, Watts met her husband Mark at the Sussex Hotel in 1990.“He was with the Formula 1 team and I was singing,” she said.“He picked me up and we’ve been together for 31 years since that night.”Jen was performing in a duo which was “closed down three times that night for noise”.“I loved singing, though I was good but never great,” she said.“We were singing things like The Beatles, Cold Chisel, Carole King, the Rolling Stones… it was as ‘rocky’ as you could be with a guitarist and a vocalist”.While Jen had started a journalism degree she ‘hated it’ and dropped out.“I’ve never got a degree, it really has been the School of Life,” she said.As Mark is English, soon after they met, Jen moved overseas to be with him.“We got engaged in May and married in October almost one year to the day we met,” she said.“We lived near Milton Keynes, about one hour outside London, in a town called Stony Stratford.”The couple moved back to Australia in 1997 when their eldest daughter Abbie -- now 26 -- turned one. “But when Abbie was two and I had a five-week-old son I was watching The Wiggles and I thought ‘what a great job that would be,’” Jen said.“I was a writer, that's what I did, I was a copywriter for pharmaceuticals, Mitsubishi.“And at the time, there were so many things around for boys, Fireman Sam, Postman Pat and Bob the Builder, but nothing really for girls.“Abbie was the kind of girl that at two liked prancing around in high heels, and dancing, and I said to my husband: “I have an idea” and that’s a phrase that he’s hated ever since”.Jen said it took “years and years” and many meetings and rejections for The Fairies to get off the ground.She made a five minute pilot video, ‘hawking it around Australia’ until it was commissioned for two episodes, which she acted in as the fairy Harmony.“But when we got to the edit suite after filming, I thought I was the ugliest fairy I’d ever seen, so I pulled myself out,” Jen said.“I realised that there was room for someone else to play Harmony… sadly, because I really enjoy that buzz that you get when you’re performing and making people smile and laugh”.In 2005, Jen pitched The Fairies to Channel 7.“I remember the Head of Children’s Development rang me and said: ‘If you can make 26 half hour episodes by October 30, we’ll run them’. And I said ‘give me 24 hours to think about it’. “At that stage, I had no money, no script, no cast and no set. That was in May. We filmed in Adelaide with the whole crew and were ready by October 30.”To get to that point, Jen brought in private investors, managing to raise $1.6 million to get The Fairies off the ground.“And I had an absolutely brilliant producer David Hancock in South Australia, and we just muddled through.”The first season of The Fairies went to air in 2005, with a second season in 2007 and a third season in 2009.“The Fairies outrated Play School on a number of occasions, and was picked up by Nickelodeon in the UK,” Jen said.The pre-school fantasy series was also nominated for four ARIA Music awards.“I wrote all the lyrics, I don’t write music, although I did write three songs,” Jen said.“I’m a wordsmith, I’m a lyricist, I love words.“The lyrics children listen to, especially now with Spotify are so inappropriate. It’s important that songs have diction that can be understood, and that are fun and poppy with tunes that make sense for that preschool age group.”While the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis is a tough time that Jen doesn’t like to dwell on, she’s proud of her achievements, and vows she’ll write a book about her life one day.In the meantime, she’s written two biographies, and is currently working on a novel, while spending as much time with Mark and her children as she can.“They think their mother is mad. The queen of mad,” she laughs. “But Mark and I are really lucky to have a fabulous relationship with our children.“They are all caring, kind, thoughtful human beings; they’re definitely the best thing we’ve produced.”The family moved to Middleton eight years ago, and love it.The two youngest children went to Investigator College and Jen became involved in the surf life saving community through her children. She’s also a volunteer driver for the Fleurieu Peninsula Cancer Support Foundation.“My husband has stage four metastatic melanoma,” she said.“He’s stable and on new super drugs.”But Jen says she realised when Mark was diagnosed, and she was driving him to Adelaide for treatment, how tough it was for many others.“You’d drive to Adelaide for a five minute appointment and you’d then drive home again,” she said.“I thought how the hell do people who don’t have someone to drive for them do this? It’s really hard to get up to town.“So I started volunteering with the foundation. I only volunteer one day a fortnight, there’s people who do a lot more, but it’s a lovely way to give back and it grounds you.”Jen’s experiences with The Fairies have honed her organisational skills, and she’s definitely great at fundraising.When her Mark’s surgeon, Clayton Lang, and his father Dick Lang were killed fighting the Kangaroo Island bushfires in January 2020, Jen wanted to do her bit to give back. “That was one of my ‘I have an idea moments,’ she said. “In two-and-a-half weeks, I pulled together the inaugural ‘Black Tie and Boardies Ball’ and we raised $43,000 recovery efforts.“In doing that, I met a lot of local community members that we hadn’t met before. This time I decided “we’ll do it for a local organisation.”The 2021 ball at Middleton Pioneer Hall on January 22 raised $22,000 for the Fleurieu Cancer Support Foundation.“I had a plan, so I was following a plan, and it was much easier,” she said.“The formula worked really well.“The only sad thing was that I couldn’t advertise it, and we could only have a certain number of people due to COVID restrictions.”Given her life experiences, her tenacity, creativity and success on the national stage, it’s worth asking what Jen’s life motto is. “Persistence,” she replies.“I wore a bracelet with ‘persistence’ engraved on it for years and I would just look at it constantly.“When I was trying to pitch The Fairies, I had so many meetings and rejections.“I had a meeting and I was told by the head of Channel 9 in South Australia at the time that I would never succeed with The Fairies because I was a woman, I wasn’t in the industry, and I wasn’t prepared to sell the copyright. “I walked out of there in tears. I went home and went to bed, and the next morning I woke up and I thought ‘no, you don’t get to tell me that’. That was a red rag to the bull and I wasn’t going to let it stop me. The big people try to oust the little people. “As I’ve got older, ‘kindness’ is my motto. It’s a bit cliche but everyone has kindness in them and it’s such a good word”.Kindness is something that Jen found in spades when her brother Mike Westley died from prostate cancer in 2016. His death inspired her to become a funeral celebrant.“Mike was the local head of sea rescue,” Jen said.“He loved Victor Harbor and was an advocate for everything local. I remember the celebrant we had at his funeral was really lovely and calming, and allowed us to give him a really good send off. So I thought: “I’d like to do that. What a really wonderful thing to do.”Jen said she doesn’t officiate at many weddings and doesn’t advertise.“I enjoy weddings but it’s not my career,” she said.“If people find me, then it’s meant to be”.
