This Is Your Life article

In a filing cabinet at the BBC TV centre there are 400 names. Some are famous. Some are unknown. But all share the distinction of having been listed as possible victims for the This Is Your Life programme.

Very few of these people will actually get as far as the screen.

For a start, four out of every five life stories which are investigated by the programme's staff are dropped for various reasons.

There might be domestic trouble. Or the facts don't match the popular legend.

Then, the show is now eight years old and when the present series comes to an end in March there are a lot of people, myself among them, who will think it has had its day - that was it's life.

More Life?

To be fair, if you place any reliance on audience figures then the show has more life in it yet.

Producer Leslie Jackson finds most of his victims as a result of letters from viewers suggesting likely names. Say about 40 to 50 such letters each day.

Of these an average of two are worth serious consideration. Too often the suggested stories are parochial or exaggerate the circumstances.

To-night's edition will be the 204th - and has an "unknown" as the victim.

This question of whether or not to have a big name is a regular headache. Half of the audience want celebrities rather than "unknowns." The other half say forget the star names and concentrate on ordinary people.

In the long run - and it seems to have been a very long run - the latter must win. So far there have been 78 celebrities whose stories have been told.

"Our ideal subject," says Mr Jackson, "is a big name who has travelled, has a strong personality, radiates warmth, and enables us to spring at least one surprise on him."

This Is Your Life has finished in America. There the policy was to concentrate on star names.

JAMES GREEN