This Is Your Life article

Conscientious to the degree of perfection

THERE'S one bet I'll take with anybody. Today is January 3, and a new untrodden and untarnished year stretches before us. Television will go on shooting out entertainment, madly firing on all cylinders. Both channels will satiate the viewers until they are punch-drunk and in a proper old tizzy.

On December 31, 1958, some present household names will be lost forever. Other bright hopefuls will have taken their places. The man and talent-eating machine will have done its now accepted job of grinding to dust or polishing with gold.

But one name will be as heavily sprinkled with stardust as it is today - as it has been for six years. That's the bet I'll take with anybody. And just because the name is Eamonn Andrews.

Let's take a closer look at this man who has licked television with the ruthless efficiency of a Roman gladiator. This man who has the magic touch of the blarney about him, the charm of a leprechaun on a midsummer's night. Mixed in with the fey unpredictability of those from the Emerald Isle is a quiet command of any situation, any programme in which he appears. He is all Irish and he has the English at his feet. And that, without mincing matters, must be fun for any man from Eire.

But, you know, it isn't all smooth going for the man from Dublin. He never felt less like laughing on the night we crossed paths for exactly two minutes. He was backstage at the BBC's Television Theatre in London, it was 30 minutes from a This Is Your Life transmission, and three people hadn't turned up.

At that moment he couldn't have raised a smile for his own mother. And he didn't raise one for me. Only one demanded by social convention, of course.

It is amazing, however, how much one can observe in a mere fleeting point of contact.

Eamonn Andrews is clearly conscientious to the degree of perfection and is emphatic that he has no one favourite among the programmes with which he is closely associated – This Is Your Life, What's My Line? Playbox and Crackerjack. Each is as important as the others and each commands the same devoted attention to detail.

He, with producer T Leslie Jackson, decides whose face will get all screwed-up with emotion and surprise in each Monday's presentation of This Is Your Life.

The name is chosen three weeks before transmission is due, the closest relative is taken into the strictest confidence and keeps the secret under the tactful (but firm) threat of immediate programme cancellation in the unfortunate event of a leakage.

Wasn't the programme too sentimental? Too full of embarrassingly demonstrative affection? I asked the question in only a general way.

But Eamonn Andrews came back at me like a tiger defending its young. Viewers liked it, limelighted guests were always delighted to see their friends and, anyhow, it is how old chums greeted each other in broad daylight in a busy street. Nothing was forced. Everybody appearing on the programme was told to do what came naturally. He thought it was fine, just fine.

On reflection I get the uneasy feeling that I left the impression that I was carping a bit. Not true, I plead, not true. I like This Is Your Life. I have boundless admiration for Eamonn Andrews. Doubtless that admiration will be undiminished when we have climbed through 1958.

And who could say fairer than that?