Stephen Lambert

Chief Executive, Studio Lambert Ltd.

Stephen Lambert is one of Britain’s best known creative television executives, responsible for creating award-winning documentary formats such as Faking It, Secret Millionaire and Wife Swap.

He is the chief executive of Studio Lambert, a fast growing independent production company based in London and Los Angeles. His most recent hit format is Undercover Boss, which he is producing for Channel 4 in the UK and for CBS in the States, where it is the most popular new series of the 2009-10 television season with an average audience of more than 17 million viewers.

Studio Lambert current shows include Three in Bed, The Fairy Jobmother in the UK and US, Notting Hill and The Village in the UK and The Mel B Project and Southern Fried Stings in the US. Recent work includes the acclaimed Benefit Busters documentary series, the celebrity travel show All at Sea for ITV1 and the company has recently completed a feature documentary about the origins and consequences of the financial crash called The Flaw.

Prior to setting up Studio Lambert in 2008, Lambert was the chief creative officer of the RDF Media Group. For nine years he spearheaded its editorial development as it grew rapidly in both Britain and America. During his time with RDF the company received the industry’s trade magazine Broadcast’s ‘Best Production Company of the Year Award’ for 2002, 2004 & 2006; the only company to win this award three times.

Lambert began his career at the BBC in 1983 where he worked for fifteen years in its Documentary Department. He produced and directed more than a dozen films for the award-winning series 40 Minutes and Inside Story. His films told the human stories of people in many of the world’s most troubled places in the 1980s and 1990s; from Sri Lanka, Bosnia, and South Africa, to Kuwait, Gaza and northern Iraq. In the early 1990s, he produced and directed a major BBC2 documentary series inside the British Foreign Office.

In 1994, he founded the ground-breaking BBC2 documentary strand Modern Times, which he ran for four years as a home for authored, innovative, contemporary documentaries. He was executive producer of several award-winning BBC documentary series including BAFTA-winning The Mayfair Set, The System and Premier Passions. He was also responsible for some of BBC1’s first docu-soaps such as The Clampers and Lakesiders.

He lives in London with his wife, Jenni Russell, a columnist for the Guardian and Sunday Times and their two children.