Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
19 December 1955
a brief biography
Eamonn's first appearance as a subject of This Is Your Life
Eamonn's second appearance as a subject of This Is Your Life
tributes to the original presenter
The Legend That Was Eamonn Andrews
a celebration to mark the presenter's centenary year
Today the 'Mirror' chooses
The BBC PERSONALITY of the Year
By CLIFFORD DAVIS
IT'S not just his Irish blarney, or the shy twist to his smile. Sheer good-natured efficiency makes Eamonn Andrews the BBC personality of the year.
Thirty-three-year-old Eamonn, Dublin-born, is the most versatile freelance broadcaster on the books of the BBC
HE needs no script.
HE is the maker of the impromptu remark.
HE revels in brisk banter.
HIS off-the-cuff sayings are pertinent and punchy.
He Takes a Back Seat
To his credit, he never scores off the people he interviews. He takes a back seat. He is content gently to prod and guide, he never domineers.
Whatever he says and however he says it - there is nothing barbed or spiteful in his remarks.
Eamonn always emerges as a kind person. There is a great warmth about him. He is never superior.
This is why his appeal covers the whole family.
The children know him for his appearances as host of Crackerjack on Children's Television.
The teenagers follow his late-night radio disc jockey programme as the "Pied Piper".
On Saturdays, he endears himself to 18,000,000 sports fans for his spicy radio reviews.
And the whole family know him as the urbane, unruffled chairman of TV's What's My Line? programme.
Such varied appearances - along with the presentation of Strike It Rich on Radio Luxembourg and This Is Your Life on BBC TV - give him a bigger audience than anyone else on the air.
This year has been a golden one for this one-time insurance clerk who took up radio as a living.
The BBC have given him more radio and TV work than ever before. He is becoming one of the wealthiest men at the microphone.
It Was His Mother
But he hasn't changed. He still remains very much the same shy, beer-drinking Irishman who first came around knocking on the door of Broadcasting House just five years ago.
This summer there was a moment when, above all others, he endeared himself to millions.
It happened during the first British showing of the American TV programme, This Is Your Life, when Eamonn's own background was being featured on the screen.
Among the people produced by the BBC to surprise Eamonn was his own mother... a grey-haired widow whom he hadn't seen for months.
Eamonn's reaction was both human and typical.
He wept.