John MOTSON (1945-2023)

John Motson This Is Your Life

programme details...

  • Edition No: 952
  • Subject No: 927
  • Broadcast date: Fri 18 Oct 1996
  • Broadcast time: 8.00-8.30pm
  • Recorded: Mon 30 Sep 1996
  • Venue: Teddington Studios
  • Series: 37
  • Edition: 5
  • Code name: Match

on the guest list...

  • Jimmy Hill
  • Trevor Brooking
  • Garth Crooks
  • Gerald Sinstadt
  • Barry Davies
  • Bob Wilson
  • Jim Rosenthal
  • Graham Kelly
  • Tom McNab
  • Tom Watt
  • Annie - wife
  • Gary Lineker
  • Enid Harrison - aunt
  • Barry Hart
  • Derek Ufton
  • Roy Bentley
  • Freddie - son
  • Gary Newbon
  • Roger Jones
  • Jonathan Lang
  • Bill Field
  • Bill Hamilton
  • Ricky George
  • Tommy Docherty
  • Frank Skinner
  • David Baddiel
  • Ronnie Radford
  • Filmed tributes:
  • Rory Bremner
  • Desmond Lynam

production team...

  • Researcher: Jo Grant
  • Writer: Joe Steeples
  • Directors: Terry Kinane, Paul Kirrage
  • Associate Producer: Sue Green
  • Executive Producer: John Longley
  • Producer: John Graham
  • names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life
related pages...

Match of the Day

tackling football's top names


The Theatre of Dreams

Manchester United's finest


Ratings slump sounds death knell for This Is Your Life

Press speculation on the future of This Is Your Life


Bob Wilson

John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life John Motson This Is Your Life

Screenshots of John Motson This Is Your Life

John Motson's autobiography

John Motson recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, Motty, reproduced here with kind permission of the author...


...even while I was being whisked away to Thames Television studios in Teddington, I still did not believe this was a real This Is Your Life. They kept me in a room on my own well beyond the time the programme should have started. I wasn't to know that the audience was in place, but Jimmy Hill was late arriving at the studio.


Others who have been the subject of the programme will know my sense of shock when the studio doors opened, and I saw a vast collection of family and friends applauding from all sides. Gradually I started to piece it together as I squinted into the studio lights. My wife Annie in the front row with my cousin Jane and two aunties, Mary and Enid from Boston (how the hell did they get here? I wondered) and colleagues from my newspaper days, as well as an array of BBC types.


Before you get a chance to gather your thoughts, the surprise guests are tumbling on to the stage. The fourteen Roving Reporters players had been brought to the studio in an old coach from the centre of Bayswater. Two of the first guests to be announced were Derek Ufton and Roy Bentley, who had played for Charlton and Chelsea respectively in the first league match I saw – as a six-year-old – at The Valley in 1952.


Then my ten-year-old son, Fred, came on in his Derby County kit. Gary Lineker and my old school friend Gary Newbon were next up.


My former flatmate Bill Hamilton came on to recount stories of us playing Subbuteo until three in the morning, and me commentating! This was back in the days when we shared a flat in North Finchley. The table was spread out in the dining room, and we used to solemnly play a cup competition between all the clubs in England and Scotland.


Talking of Scots, I was particularly delighted to see Tommy Docherty, manager of Manchester United in my first Cup Final. Then came the final moment of an unforgettable night.


The Hereford duo Ronnie Radford and Ricky George appeared to present me with a Carling No. 1 Award from the then sponsors of the Premiership, which was only four years old. Altogether there must have been sixty or seventy people in the audience who had touched my life in some way. It made for a terrific party after the show. Even Michael Aspel stayed for ages, which producers told me was very rare.


Besides being a humbling experience, it was an insight into how television worked outside the sports sector. The amount of effort that went into one episode of This is Your Life left me gasping, particularly as the producers reserved the right to scrap the programme if anybody blew the secret to the recipient.


I can reveal years later that it nearly happened to me. Just a few days before Aspel shoved his red book in my direction, David Pleat had come up to me at a function and said, 'Sorry I can't come to your whats-a-thing.' Fortunately I never attached any importance to it at the time.


The red book originally contained the script from which Aspel was working. At the end of the night he presented it to me with a selection of photographs taken during the evening. A wonderful souvenir.

Series 37 subjects

Steve Redgrave | Gary Rhodes | Toyah Willcox | Freddie Young | John Motson | Jeremy Clarkson | John Rands | Jill Dando
Don Black | Sue Nicholls | Lynn Redgrave | Tanni Grey | Noddy Holder | Thora Hird | Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan
Sam Torrance | John Simpson | Elizabeth Ward | Ross Kemp | Julian Bream | Les Dennis | Nigel Davenport
Richard Whiteley | Justin Hayward | Sian Phillips | Chris Tarrant