Big Red Book

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Lord Deedes, journalist and former politician, was surprised by Michael Aspel while interviewing former footballer David Ginola about his involvement with the Red Cross Landmines Campaign at the Tottenham Hotspur FC training ground in Enfield.

William Francis Deedes, known as Bill, was born into a landowning family in Kent and educated at Harrow. Denied a university career after his family suffered heavy losses in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, he became a newspaper reporter with the Morning Post in 1931 before joining the Daily Telegraph in 1937. Having served with the King's Royal Rifle Corps during the Second World War, he was awarded the Military Cross for action in the Netherlands in April 1945.

He was elected as the Conservative MP for Ashford in 1950 and served as a junior minister under Winston Churchill. He later became Minister without Portfolio for Harold Macmillan in 1962. After standing down as an MP in 1974, he became editor of The Daily Telegraph, a position he held until 1986, when despite being made a life peer, he continued his career as a journalist, still working full time at the age of 85.

"Oh god! What am I supposed to do about this?"

programme details...

• Edition No: 1014
• Subject No: 989
• Broadcast date: Mon 14 Dec 1998
• Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
• Recorded: Mon 9 Nov 1998
• Venue: unknown
• Series: 39
• Edition: 15
• Code name: Quill

on the guest list...

• Jeremy - son
• Anna - daughter-in-law
• Lucy - daughter
• Juliet - daughter
• Jeremy - son-in-law
• Bob - son-in-law
• Hilary - wife
• Jill - daughter
• Johnny - son-in-law
• Paul Burrell
• Margaret - sister
• Brook - brother-in-law
• Auberon Waugh
• Michael Maloney
• Denis Thatcher
• Charles Moore
• Max Hastings
• Anne Allport
• E W Swanton
• Alan Whicker
• George - grandson
• Henry - grandson
• Sophia - granddaughter
• Drummond - grandson
• Rosie - granddaughter
• Henry - grandson
• Sam - grandson
• Simon - grandson
Filmed tributes:
• Hermione - sister
• Lord Runcie
• Richard Ingrams
• Jack Nicklaus

production team...

• Researcher: Ruth Malone
• Writer: Joe Steeples
• Directors: John Gorman, Steve Docherty
• Associate Producer: Helen Gordon-Smith
• Executive Producer: John Longley
• Series Producer: Jack Crawshaw
• Producer: Sue Green

• names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

Life on the Hustings

a cross-party celebration

Stop Press

headlining Fleet Street's finest

Alan Whicker

Screenshots of Lord Deedes This Is Your Life

Stephen Robinson recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes..

Further evidence of his growing national status appeared when he was ambushed for an appearance on This Is Your Life. 'Some people write the headlines, some people make the headlines, and some people do both,' Michael Aspel intoned over the opening credits. 'The man I'm after today is a legend, still working at the age of eighty-five.'

The resulting programme was memorable chiefly for the incongruity of the rather grand guests being shoe-horned into a tired format which was, by then, more often deployed for the family and friends of a star of Coronation Street. But the wider Deedes clan played their parts gamely, and even the 21st Baron FitzWalter, the husband of Bill's youngest sister, Margaret, managed to look as though there were no place on earth he would rather have been.

Jeremy had been the contact with the makers of the programme and agreed to do it with an alacrity that was not obviously shared by the subject. The conceit of This Is Your Life was that the victim must be unaware, or at least must pretend to be unaware, of what is going on until Michael Aspel springs the trap. The cover on this occasion was that the Telegraph needed Deedes to interview the French footballer David Ginola about his role as a goodwill ambassador for the Red Cross. As the two men chatted in a back room at the Tottenham Hotspur training ground, Aspel burst through the door with his red book. Deedes adopted his familiar look of theatrical astonishment, which he would break into at parties when presented with a gift; the expression was designed to convey surprise and the sense that he regarded himself as wholly undeserving of the honour. Deedes's mouth was fixed open, his head inclined slightly backwards, an expression he maintained for most of the subsequent recording in the studio. At this distance it is difficult to know if his surprise was genuine or not. He confided to Anne Allport that he had his suspicions he was being set up during the laboured interview with Ginola and he later, and rather ambiguously, told the Daily Telegraph reporter covering the event, 'I had no serious inkling anything was afoot.'

He managed not to show it, but his main reaction to the ambush was fury - towards Jeremy for putting him through the ordeal, and Sue Ryan, who had arranged the interview with Ginola. Deedes icily told Aspel to leave the room while he completed the interview with Ginola, and was only partially mollified when he was assured that the article about the Red Cross was wanted and would actually be appearing in the paper. After subjects are ambushed they are generally taken by limousine directly to the recording studio so they do not get cold feet and pull out of the programme. Deedes refused to do so, and insisted on returning to the office: he wanted to write up the Ginola interview and he had Clare Hollingworth, the Telegraph's famous Second World War correspondent, coming for tea. He was certainly not going to let down an old journalistic pal for the sake of a television programme. It was the only time in their sixteen-year association that Ryan experienced Deedes being genuinely angry with her, and she felt wounded that he was taking it out on her rather than confronting Jeremy, who had originally accepted on behalf of the family. Ryan sent Deedes a message on the Telegraph's Atex computer system making that point, and he swiftly apologised.

Meanwhile, matters at the studio were deteriorating as the guests waited impatiently for the star of the show to arrive. Because of some alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour in the past, the green room serving This Is Your Life was dry, by order of the producers. After toying with glasses of fizzy water while the studio was made ready and the audience warmed up, Denis Thatcher and Auberon Waugh grew increasingly disgruntled. Eventually they formed a formidable alliance: protesting at the programme makers' bad manners, they said they would leave unless proper drinks were produced. After a certain anxious consultation the green room regulations were swiftly amended, a bottle of gin materialised and good humour was restored. At around this time Sue Ryan, still feeling some iciness from Deedes as she accompanied him to the studio, rang ahead and warned a production assistant to ensure a strong whisky and soda was ready for his arrival. Thus the This Is Your Life alcohol ban, which had survived intact through countless programmes, collapsed under a sustained assault from Fleet Street veterans.

The programme was odd in another respect, for it was made only a year after Hilary - whose cancer was then in remission - had left the marital home. Obviously no reference was made to this on the show, but it was strange that Jeremy had agreed to the making of a programme showing Bill surrounded by his reverential family at a time of crisis between his parents. To those outside the family who knew what had happened in the marriage, the programme seemed artificial and faintly absurd, especially when Hilary - who had been specially brought down from Scotland for the programme - related rather stilted anecdotes about their courtship during the war.

Deedes seemed not to care too much about that on the night. The star mystery guest was his daughter Jill, who had been flown over from Melbourne with her family by Thames Television. As she moved in to hug him Bill's voice could be heard over the audience applause, asking urgently, 'Did they pay your fare?' and then repeating the same question to her husband.

Auberon Waugh gave a rather rambling account of working with Deedes on the Peterborough diary in the early 1960s, and Max Hastings, looming over all the guests like an elongated cavalry officer, spoke of Deedes's exploits as an octogenarian reporter. Lord Runcie appeared via a video link-up, talking about the Berkshire pigs that had run around New Hayters, and the producers had even persuaded a rather bemused Jack Nicklaus to speak by satellite about their joint admiration for Bobby Jones.

The comic and emotional highpoint was achieved when Denis Thatcher walked through the sliding doors and seemed close to choking up as he recalled his golfing exploits with Bill: 'Golden years Bill, and you're a golden man to play with.' Deedes looked slightly wary at the emotion in Denis's voice - conceivably the gin had done its work - and replied: 'No, no, do you remember we didn't always get off the first tee so we gave ourselves a Mulligan?' By then the emotional force had gone and the two had reverted to a comic double act. 'That was because of the night before.' Denis shot back, as the studio audience began to enjoy the exchange between two elderly men who were fully conscious of their comic potentials. 'I wouldn't have put it that way, but you are quite right,' Bill replied, to more laughter.

This Is Your Life took Deedes's celebrity far beyond the traditional middle-class confines of the Daily Telegraph and marked an important step in his transformation from a Fleet Street character to a national figure. The W. F. Deedes 'brand' was getting into parts of the national consciousness that the Telegraph could not reach.