Do we like Neville Astley?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words, acts or court trouble turned up, but the record is thin, so this is a cautious middle-to-good score.
Neville Astley is one of the three people behind Astley Baker Davies, the London studio that made Peppa Pig. He is credited as co-creator alongside Mark Baker, with producer Phil Davies as the third founder. He's a quiet backroom name, not a celebrity, so there's not much reporting about him personally.
The backstory is a classic British animation one. He met Davies and Baker while studying animation at Middlesex University. His short film Trainspotter was nominated for a BAFTA and won the Edinburgh Festival's McLaren Award, well before a small pink pig made him a household name in nurseries.
On the business side, the studio was sold to Entertainment One in 2015, and Romper reports it reportedly netted each creator £47 million. That's a reported figure, not a confirmed one, and it isn't a scandal. Plenty of creators cash out and then leave the show to others.
On the harm check, I searched for his name alongside LGBTQ issues, climate, lawsuits and accusations and found nothing: no harmful statements, no campaigning, no court cases and no allegations in the sources I could read. His public work is children's television and picture books, and that work includes writing Peppa books such as Peppa Goes Swimming. That's a clean result, but a quiet record is a thin basis for a verdict.
Nothing in the last few months turned up either. Nothing new on him lately. I also couldn't open a longer feature on the show's rise, so his own words are missing from this card, and I won't put quotes in his mouth.
The good stuff is mostly the work itself. Peppa has been a big, gentle, funny part of countless childhoods, and the creators' work has been a family favourite for two decades. That's a real contribution, but it isn't charity or activism, and I found no records of either.