Aardman’​s Peter Lord and David Sproxton: ‘At the Oscars, I went to the gents and had a pee with Jack Nicholson!’

The ​s​tudio’s co-founders on ​accidentally creating Morph, not wanting a yacht in the Maldives and being each other’s best ally

Peter Lord and David Sproxton are the founders of Aardman Animations. The pair began animating as teenagers, selling their first short – starring a superhero called Aardman – to the BBC’s Vision On in 1972. In 1977, they created Morph for the children’s programme Take Hart. The studio’s breakthrough into adult audiences came via Channel 4’s Conversation Pieces series, and its animators, including a young Nick Park, went on to make Wallace & Gromit, whose films have won multiple Academy Awards. Aardman became employee-owned in 2018, with Lord and Sproxton transferring majority ownership to staff to safeguard the company’s independence. They were knighted earlier this year.