Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Donald CAMPBELL (1921-1967)
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Donald Campbell, speed record breaker, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews - with the help of the broadcaster Cliff Michelmore - at the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe he was there to present a competition winner with their prize.
Donald, the son of Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of 13 world speed records achieved during the 1920s and 1930s, qualified as an engineer before becoming a successful businessman. Following his father's death in 1946, Donald decided to try to become a record breaker in his own right.
After an unsuccessful start, and with the help of his father's mechanic, Donald set about reclaiming the water speed record for Britain after it had been lost to the United States. He achieved his goal, firstly in Ullswater in July 1955 with 202.32 mph, and secondly, breaking his own record at Lake Mead in Nevada in November 1955 with 216.20 mph. Both records were set in his Bluebird K7, named after his father's old boat.
programme details...
- Edition No: 7
- Subject No: 7
- Broadcast live: Sun 15 Jan 1956
- Broadcast time: 7.45-8.15pm
- Venue: BBC Television Theatre
- Series: 1
- Edition: 7
on the guest list...
- Peter Carr
- Lady Dorothy Campbell - mother
- Edward du Cann
- Richard du Cann
- Leo Villa
- Teddy Knox
- Jimmy Nervo
- Connie Robinson
- Dorothy - wife
- Graham Sutton
- Billy Cotton Recorded tribute:
- Stanley Sayres
production team...
- Researchers: Peter Moore, Nigel Ward
- Writer: Gale Pedrick
- Director: unknown
- Producer: T Leslie Jackson
- with thanks to Gina Campbell for her contribution to this page
Photographs of Donald Campbell This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Donald Campbell's big red book
My father was definitely becoming a mover and shaker. He had met Marlene Dietrich, the Hollywood film actress and cabaret star, who gave him a cowboy outfit for me so then Dorothy bought me a bow and arrow to add to my Wild West kit. It was in that same year, 1956, that my father appeared on the BBC's This Is Your Life programme, presented by Eamonn Andrews. Because the programme makers always kept it a secret from the person involved until the very last moment, my father thought he was going along to a book signing. I stayed at home with Mr and Mrs Botting - he was the gardener at Abotts and his wife helped Dorothy in the house - and we watched it on our little grainy black and white television. TV was a fairly recent phenomenon and I think we were really posh to have one - the Bottings wouldn't have had a TV.
There was never a suggestion that I should appear on the programme - kids were not allowed on TV then, you had to have an Equity card in those days. They arranged for a little boy about 12 or 13 years old, to play the role of a boy who wanted to meet my father and have his book signed. Years later in the 1980s when I had a coffee shop in Lymington, a man came in and introduced himself and said he was that child. At the time he had been a child actor and had an Equity card.
The Conservative MP Edward Du Cann, who was a friend of my dad's, and the Crazy Gang, a bunch of zany comedians who included Bud Flanagan, were guests on the programme.
Evening Telegraph 16 January 1956
"This is one of the moments" said Eamonn Andrews to Donald Campbell in This Is Your Life, "that perhaps takes your breath away."
If it did, the victim betrayed surprisingly little sign of it. He remained self-assured, confident, at times cock-sure, in the face of this elaborate tribute to his achievements.
One or other of those who took part used the word "indeed" nine times. Does this mean that "indeed" is taking the place of "definitely" as current favourite?
Manchester Evening News 16 January 1956
OUR TELEVIEW
This Is Your Life which tries so hard to be stark and vivid - and, in my opinion, fails - last night presented an amusing life of Donald Campbell. A hint of the show's possibilities came with the man from the fells.
The Birmingham Mail 16 January 1956
Donald Campbell, brought to the Television Theatre on a very flimsy pretext, took to This Is Your Life like a Bluebird takes to water.
Evening Sentinel 18 January 1956
In Sunday's This Is Your Life there was a variation of the opening gambit. The victim, Donald Campbell, was not picked out of the audience, but had been inveigled into an adjoining studio to make an award of some sort to a boy. A tap on the shoulder from Eamonn Andrews and there he - and we - were.
Mr Campbell's character, modesty and humour gave a pleasant flavour to this programme, in which there appeared, to his obvious surprise, his mother, his wife, and his (and his father's) expert engineer and his friends the Du Cann brothers and Messrs Nervo and Knox.
This programme continues to annoy some critics: personally I find it interesting, human and in no sense embarrassing.
Lancashire Evening Post 19 January 1956
MANY television viewers in Barrow were greatly interested on Sunday night, to see Mr Edward Ducann in the This Is Your Life programme, which featured Mr Donald Campbell, the world's water speed record holder.
Mr Ducann was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate in the last Parliamentary election at Barrow, but made himself popular with his supporters. Among those who spoke for him on that occasion was Mr Campbell, who was then waiting for his record-breaking attempt at Ullswater. The story was revealed at that time of how, as young men seeking adventure, they became associated with a commercial expedition by sea, which produced more thrills than prosperity.
Mr Ducann has been adopted as prospective Conservative candidate in the forthcoming by-election at Taunton, and it could be that he will again have the support of his old, and now famous, shipmate.
Surrey Mirror and County Post 20 January 1956
Assuming that Longfellow's pronouncement, "Things are not what they seem" does not apply to BBC television feature programmes, it was a very surprised Donald Campbell who, having obligingly gone up from his Gadbrook home to Lime Grove [Bigredbook editor: the programme was broadcast from the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd's Bush, not Lime Grove] on a Sunday evening to present a prize to a small boy for his faithful model of Bluebird II, found himself being introduced to an applauding audience by Eamonn Andrews as the focus personality in This is your Life. To many viewers, it was a pleasurable experience to look upon him as a very personable real-life figure, and to watch his expression of delight as one after another of the people with whom he has been associated more closely in his progress towards the Water Barrier first spoke from behind the curtain and then came forward to greet him. Those who have read his recent autobiography would be particularly interested to see the man to whom he acknowledges so great a debt, Mr Leo Villa, but for my part there were two big moments in the programme.
One was the appearance of the burly man from the Lakeland fells, all in his regional attire, who said that when Donald Campbell first came to Ullswater the local feeling about the Bluebird enterprise was, "If the young fella wants to kill hissel, that's his own business," but, asked by Eamonn Andrews, "You wished him good luck?", heartily replied, "We did an' all!" The other was not a physical appearance but a voice coming over the ether from the Pacific side of America: that of the man from whom Donald Campbell wrested the water speed record last summer, and who was heard saying how "genu-winely sorry" he was that matters of business prevented him from being present in London that evening.
Nottingham Evening News 20 January 1956
THIS IS YOUR LIFE is to be commended for presenting Donald Campbell's life story. The BBC is so often preoccupied with show business folk that any programme which resists the temptation to feature them merits warm approval.
The News 20 January 1956
Black Bull licensees.
A protection order was granted by the Hawkshead Licensing Justices on Monday to William Fury of Newfields, Coniston, in respect of the Black Bull Hotel, Coniston. The present Licensee is Mr J T Robinson, whose wife Mrs Connie Robinson, took part in the television programme This Is Your Life on Sunday evening, when the life of Donald Campbell was related.
Daily Mirror 21 January 1956
HOAX - Sorry you were all fooled by the bearded stranger who confronted Donald Campbell in last Sunday's This Is Your Life show on BBC television.
He looked and talked like a Cumberland farmer. But he wasn't. He was Graham Sutton, actor.
Weekly News 27 January 1956
Tom Pepys TV and radio topics
The second recanting goes back a week. The programme This Is Your Life took us all by surprise; in fact it did more than that: it really took our breath away. At first it seemed that the basic idea was all wrong; that the show was intrinsically bad. It seemed to be the brain child of a mentally sick moron. But having now passed into the capable hands of Eamonn Andrews who firmly eschews the gushing of Mr Ralph Edwards, it has become a series of graceful tributes to people who deserve tributes.
Show business has been forsaken and at last producers have come to realise that there are interesting people outside the shadowy world of TV, the cinema and the stage. Though it must be confessed that Donald Campbell last Sunday again revealed a personality that should ensure him a place in the world of entertainment if ever he decides to give up breaking speed records.
Evening Telegraph 28 January 1956
One of the few advantages claimed for This Is Your Life is that it brings actual witnesses to give genuine evidence about real people.
But when they had Donald Campbell as victim they cheated by having an actor, Graham Sutton, playing the part of a Cumberland farmer. His phoney evidence was cooked-up to seem like the genuine article, yet it was a fake.
Once they start on the slippery slope with such a programme, where will it end?
If they prefer actors to do the job, why not make it a straightforward, honest-to-goodness feature programme?
Most of the victims squirm so uncomfortably as the compliments are ladled out that they would probably prefer it if they could be portrayed by one of the BBC's repertory players.
Unknown publication and date
WHO was the mystery man supposedly from the Ullswater neighbourhood, who figured in a BBC television program last Sunday night? This has been the talking point of the week among viewers in that area, where there is much puzzlement and speculation about the identity of the anonymous individual whom nobody seems to have recognised. The program - which I did not see myself, but which I have heard about from several eye-witnesses - was the weekly feature, This Is Your Life, in which the subject (always a person with some claim to distinction, but who is said to have no knowledge in advance that he or she is to be chosen) is picked out of an invited studio audience and presented, in effect, with his or her life story in the form of surprise meetings on the stage with people who have played a part in it. In this case the subject was Donald Campbell, holder of the world water speed record, to whom were introduced by Eamonn Andrews - who acts as narrator throughout, providing the connecting links in the story - his mother, his wife, his chief mechanic (Leo Villa) and various other participants in his eventful career, including the lady who keeps the hotel where he stayed during his earlier record attempts on Coniston. There was even a Transatlantic greeting from Stanley Sayers, the American holder of the record which Campbell first broke on Ullswater last July. All these people were announced by name. But last on the list came one whom Eamonn Andrews introduced simply as "a man from the fells." A bearded fellow of massive physique, he appeared in working clothes and leggings, without collar and tie (dressed for fell shepherding, presumably, in order to give a touch of local colour!) and proceeded to talk in broad dialect - perhaps unnaturally broad, say some who heard him - about local reactions to Campbell's visit, also describing how he watched "Bluebird" from Hallin Fell. The Strange thing is that I have yet to hear of anyone who knew him - even among life-long residents on Ullswater-side. Cannot the BBC lift the veil of secrecy which surrounds this mysterious "man from the fells"?
Series 1 subjects
Eamonn Andrews | Yvonne Bailey | Ted Ray | James Butterworth | C B Fry | Johanna Harris | Donald Campbell | Joe BrannellyStanley Matthews | Henry Starling | Ida Cook | Lupino Lane | Hugh Oloff de Wet | Elizabeth Wilde | Robert Stanford Tuck