GALE PEDRICK... Looking and Listening

THE provocative and much-discussed This Is Your Life programme returns to television on Monday.

The framework is much the same as before - though certain lessons learnt by trial and error will be put to good use.

Somewhere in Britain at this moment are at least a dozen men and women who may have nothing in common except for one thing - that at a given moment in the next six months they will find themselves confronted by a smiling Eamonn Andrews, who will be saying, to their intense astonishment, "This Is Your Life!"

Many "possibles" have already been discussed and discarded. The lives of the more likely ones are already being examined.

The BBC's research team is busy interviewing friends and relatives, examining the background of each "Life", and trying to gauge the probable personal reaction of the subject.

The last programme we saw brought together a number of people whose stories had been considered worth telling. Donald Campbell, Ted Ray, Hugh Oloff De Wet (who had been six years in German prisons, two of those under sentence of death) were among them. So were Henry Starling, the Billingsgate fish porter, and his blind wife Maude.

It was a shrewd move, because these people were so patiently sincere that even the scoffers had to relent. There could be no possible collusion between them and the production staff.

Since the last programme, Eamonn Andrews has been to America and attended several programmes in the still highly popular series which has been running week in, week out, for years.

Transatlantic methods are more direct than ours: the approach to the emotions is more drastic.

But at least it has been proved that the basic idea can be translated into terms which are not offensive to the majority of British viewers - although it is a taste that some of the more fastidious among us will never acquire.

"More than ever," Eamonn said to me, "am I glad that I have been in the Chair of Honour myself." (Viewers may remember that the tables were turned on the master-of-ceremonies when, because of a leakage of information to the Press, the Stanley Matthews programme was cancelled).

"It helps me as the interviewer to know just how these people feel and what their reaction is to my questions, and to the surprise of meeting friends and relatives they may not have talked to for many years."

This Is Your Life - Article: Eamonn Is Back On Monday For This Is Your Life