This Is Your Life article

Sound Profile By Alan Morris

With the sun of Jamaica and Hollywood hardly off his shoulders, Eamonn Andrews is preparing for more transatlantic travels - by radio. His "trips" begin tonight in "Sports Report."

The burly, genial Irishman - quiz chairman, compere, interviewer, disc jockey, children's TV "uncle" and bathtub vocalist - has returned from holiday to his early broadcasting job of radio sports commentator.

And to a bigger "facilities" budget than ever before.

"In Sports Report we now aim to cover the world with hook-ups." Andrews told me. "The overseas relays won't be booked just for the major international fights. There should be a continuous stream of information about every kind of sports from everywhere."

The S.A. schedule on the air in the Light programme at noon, 5 and 6.35 p.m. would be an exhausting one for a performer less conscientious than this shy and wryly humorous 35-year-old who tackles his many roles with a smoothness unapproached in broadcasting.

But Andrews is what psychiatrists call an "integrated personality" valued for his refusal to flag or be ruffled.

Already he can look back on a career developed with deceptive ease. Only in 1950, after being an Irish amateur middleweight champion and a radio columnist for a Dublin newspaper, did Andrews broadcast with the BBC. He replaced Stewart Macpherson as chairman of the zany "Ignorance is Bliss."

Boxing commentaries followed, so did, of all things, "A Book at Bedtime" and "Welcome Stranger," a record request series greeting Commonwealth visitors in Coronation year.

By 1955 he was credited with an annual income of £21,000, and with a huge balance of goodwill in his profession. Nobody has heard an unkind word about anyone from Andrews. One thing about American broadcasting did not please him greatly - "There are now so many give-away shows that one wonders whether there is any need of a format except some way of handing over the money," he reported. "Even monkeys do that - and by this time the human race should be able to amuse itself more profitably than watching a chimpanzee."

So, in the bag of ideas Andrews has carried to BBC officials, there are no give-aways. Already his autumn and winter diaries are full - with "What's My Line?", a weekly "This Is Your Life," "Crackerjack," and the sports series.

"The Eamonn Andrews Show" - which holds the record for both the lowest and highest ratings in TV variety - is unlikely to be repeated. To Andrews the singer that is not bad news.

Have he and his lovely wife Grainne a 1958 resolution? "Yes," they chorus. "To make the boy take a day off occasionally."