This Is Your Life article

BRITAIN'S BREEZIEST COMMENTATOR WRITES EVERY Wednesday in The Evening Mail and takes you behind the scenes of TV's most popular programmes

EAMONN ANDREWS

NEXT Sunday we present another edition of the Ralph Edwards Television show This Is Your Life and already the team involved are beginning to bite nervously at their finger-nails.

I know of no other TV programme that depends so completely on one person. In a boxing match, even if the principal contestant becomes ill there is always the hope of a good substitute or at worst another contest altogether.

Even a leading figure in a play will have an understudy. Someone can at least read the lines.

But with This Is Your Life, if the principal figure fails to arrive or resists whatever complicated lure we place before him to get him to the right place at the right time, then - despite all the backstage preparations and the dozen or so people ready and rehearsed - despite all that, there is just no show at all.

Laying the trap

TRICKS used so far to get subjects within range of the cameras and microphones have been:

1. He looks after someone else who is supposed to be the subject.

2. She arrives as a member of the studio audience.

3. He is invited to an important conference in another building and a last-minute hitch is relied upon to switch him to the right building.

4. He is taken on a mysterious car ride - the driver "loses his way," and the subject finds himself at the Theatre.

What we have arranged for next Sunday must, of course, remain a secret; but, in the meantime, we try not to think of things such as illness, traffic jams, train failures or private and long-standing engagements we have been unable to find out.

The one person, of course, we cannot consult is the subject himself or herself. This secrecy is an essential part of the programme.

If any of our astute readers have ideas for getting the unsuspecting subjects to the theatre, I'll be glad to hear them - all, that is, short of sandbags or knockout drops.