Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
9 November 1956
Many people have written to us asking about the programme This Is Your Life – some wanting to know if it is genuinely unrehearsed, others suggesting it is unfair and even unkind to pitch some unsuspecting person into the glare of such publicity.
To the former question, we can give a confident 'yes' and to the second, let Eamonn Andrews himself give the answer. 'All the people I have interviewed have been more than happy about it, and are pleased and flattered that their life history has been considered worth the telling.'
A month ago, the spotlight focused on that grand old trouper Ada Reeve, and last week she wrote to us: 'I have received many letters expressing sympathy with me for the shock I must have felt at hearing my daughter's voice and seeing a film of my granddaughter and her family. The whole thing was (as intended) a great and genuine surprise to me, and I am afraid that I allowed my very natural emotions to show, and had difficulty in holding back tears; but they were tears of joy, and I am most grateful to the BBC for giving me the opportunity of hearing and seeing my family, which would not otherwise have been possible.'
On Monday, Eamonn Andrews will be in the Television Theatre once again to introduce the subject of this week's programme.