Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Henry STARLING (1906-?)
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Henry Starling, market porter, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe he was there at his wife's request to see the programme being recorded.
Henry was born and raised in Edmonton, London, where his family suffered hardship and poverty after his father was killed in action during the First World War. Henry's first job was making attaché cases, but work in the 1920s for manual workers was insecure, and he sought work where he could.
Henry and his childhood sweetheart Maud got engaged when they were both 18 years old, but it was several years before they could afford to finally marry on Christmas Day in 1933, as the Great Depression meant work and money were scarce. Henry finally secured a steady job at Leadenhall Market in 1939, but at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was called up to serve with the Royal Artillery. After the war, with jobs more plentiful, he found work as a market porter at Billingsgate Fish Market.
"We all say thank you again and again for the wonderful and happy time you gave us"
programme details...
- Edition No: 10
- Subject No: 10
- Broadcast live: Sun 26 Feb 1956
- Broadcast time: 3.30-4.00pm
- Venue: BBC Television Theatre
- Series: 1
- Edition: 10
on the guest list...
- Maud - wife
- Elizabeth Busbridge - mother
- Arthur Burgess
- Daisy Fosbeary - sister
- Fred Fosbeary - brother-in-law
- Charlie - brother
- John - brother
- Emmy Curtis - sister
- Jimmy Waller
- Horace Lee
- Bill Little
- Doris Standing
- Bertha Greenwood
related appearance...
- These Were Your Lives - May 1956
production team...
- Researchers: Peter Moore, Nigel Ward
- Writer: Gale Pedrick
- Director: unknown
- Producer: T Leslie Jackson
Press release 27 February 1956
Star of yesterday's This Is Your Life programme on the BBC television was Billingsgate fish porter Henry Starling (49).
Many of his old friends and relations appeared to tell the story of his life, how he struggled to keep home going in 1917 when his father was killed.
Included in the programme was his wife Maud - who had been blind since she was 15.
They told how they met at the age of 18.
He asked for a rise to get married - and was given the sack.
Their first week's housekeeping was 2/7d.
After the show an Italian airline has offered the Starling's a fortnight's free holiday in Italy.
Daily Mirror 27 February 1956
By CLIFFORD DAVIS
WHEN the BBC sent Mrs Maud Starling tickets for yesterday's This is Your Life programme, her husband Henry thought nothing strange about giving up his afternoon nap to go along too.
They'd always gone to the pictures together, so why not to a show at a TV studio?
'Cor, Stone Me'
But Mrs Starling had been keeping a secret from her husband.
She had been helping the BBC arrange for HENRY'S life to be the subject of the programme.
This was some shock for Henry, a Cockney fish porter from Billingsgate Market, whose home is in St Paul's Cray, Kent.
"Cor," he kept saying. "Stone me," and "Strewth", as each relative and lost friend turned up.
Henry's story was simple enough... How he lost his job on his wedding eve; lived on the dole; joined the Army; and how he once walked home with his Missus from Buckingham Palace after the Coronation of King George VI because they were too poor to pay the fare.
It was a story of lost moments, forgotten incidents.
Compere Eamonn Andrews handled his job with such care and understatement that there was no mawkishness or sadness.
It would have been easy. for him to be both.
For although to millions of viewers Henry is no longer a stranger, the woman closest and dearest to him can never know him by the same rough, cheery, Cockney face which came to Sunday's fireside.
MAUD STARLING HAS BEEN BLIND SINCE CHILDHOOD...
Evening Telegraph 27 February 1956
THE affectionate family loyalty that surrounds Henry Starling, a Billingsgate porter with a blind wife, was paraded for our entertainment in This is Your Life. He survived the ordeal with commendable imperturbability.
Daily Record 27 February 1956
It was wife's secret
"RECORD" REPORTER
WHEN the BBC sent Mrs Maud Starling tickets for yesterday's This Is Your Life programme, her husband, Henry, thought nothing strange about giving up his afternoon nap to go along, too.
They'd always gone to the pictures together, so why not to a show at a TV studio?
But Mrs Starling had been keeping a secret from her husband.
Simple
She had been helping the BBC arrange for Henry's life to be the subject of the programme.
This was some shock for Henry, a Cockney fish porter at Billingsgate Market, whose home is in St Paul's Cray, Kent.
"Cor," he kept saying, "stone me," and "strewth," as each relative and lost friend turned up.
Henry's story was simple enough... how he lost his job on his wedding eve; lived on the dole; joined the army.
And how he once walked home with his missus from Buckingham Palace after the Coronation of King George VI because they were too poor to pay the fare.
Together
The couple first met at Henry's mother's house. An engagement of seven years followed before they had saved enough for a home.
And now, after being 18 years married, Maud and Henry still go everywhere together.
It was a story of lost moments, forgotten incidents.
Compere Eamonn Andrews handled his job with such care and understatement that there was no mawkishness or sadness.
It would have been easy for him to be both.
For although to millions of viewers Henry is no longer a stranger, the woman closest and dearest to him can never know him by the same rough, cheery, Cockney face which came to Sunday's firesides.
MAUD STARLING HAS BEEN BLIND SINCE CHILDHOOD...
Daily Record 29 February 1956
"Record" Reporter
A HAPPY "honeymoon" couple will sail romantically on a gondola down the Grand Canal, Venice, Italy.
The husband will describe all the wonderful new sights to his wife. For she is totally blind.
Lost his job
She was blind when they married 23 years ago... at a time when the young bridegroom was out of work and the cost of a white wedding the bride wanted so much took all the couple's savings and prevented a honeymoon.
But now they have been offered the chance of a blissful delayed honeymoon abroad, and they have accepted.
The story begins last Sunday when Billingsgate fist porter, Henry Starling, 49, told on TV's This Is Your Life, how he and his attractive blind bride, Maud, were married the day after he had lost his job.
The managing director of a London travel agency (Silvio's Italian Tours) was so touched by the story of the lost honeymoon that he got in touch with Mr and Mrs Starling and offered them a fortnight's luxury tour of Italy in June.
Yesterday, 49-year-old Mrs Maud Starling, of Longbury Drive, St Paul's Cray, Kent, told me: "It's never too late for a honeymoon."
Leicester Evening Mail 29 February 1956
BETWEEN THE LINES
BRITAIN'S BREEZIEST COMMENTATOR writes every Wednesday in The Evening Mail, taking you behind the scenes of radio and TV
WHEN the BBC transferred the television programme This Is Your Life to Sunday afternoon instead of Sunday night to make way for an ice show (the weather man must be one of the planners), I never thought it would have a warming effect. Yet it did - even if by accident.
We had a flock of starlings on the stage and the place was alive and a-flutter with the sort of Cockney good humour, wit and sentiment and broad, warm twanging of the heart strings that up to then a lot of people must have thought could be found only in books, films and plays.
But it was very real and an object lesson in cheerfulness.
The man who triggered off this explosion of happy-go-lucky sentiment was Henry Starling, 54-year-old fish porter from Billingsgate Market. His was the life we portrayed.
At first sight
It was a life of hardship, a life of chronic unemployment up to 20 years ago, a life devoid of sensation or of heroics, but with brilliant threads running through it - threads of optimism, hope and unselfishness and better times around the corner.
"What happened when you became engaged and asked for a rise to get married?"
"I got the sack."
"What happened seven years later when you decided to get married in St Mary's Church, Rotherhithe, on Christmas Day?"
"On Christmas Eve I got the sack."
But they got married just the same - Henry Starling and Maud Fosbeary, the girl who went blind last the age of fifteen and is blind to this day, the girl who was able to say to me: "We fell in love at first sight."
The odd penny
IN fact it was Mrs Starling who had made the programme possible.
It was Mrs Starling - blind as she is - who was able to recall, in a wealth of detail and colour, incidents from the life of Henry Starling that made me wonder if we sighted people were really the blind ones.
And it was Mrs Starling who said: "Don’t worry. Henry will be at the theatre all right. I've only got to ask him and he'll take me there. We never go anywhere alone."
We heard how the Starlings had never had a honeymoon.
"The first week's pay," said Mrs Starling. "was 2s 7d. I gave Henry back the penny for cigarettes, but he put it in the gas meter instead."
Fairy tale
SO how wonderful it was to receive a phone call immediately after the programme from Englishman, Kenneth Vale, speaking on behalf of an Italian travel firm, who said:
"WILL THE STARLINGS PLEASE HAVE THEIR HONEYMOON NOW, OR ANY TIME THEY CHOOSE - FOURTEEN DAYS IN ITALY, ALL EXPENSES PAID?"
It makes me want to read Cinderella all over again.
Sylvio Ballasio, the Italian half of the firm, said: "I'll see to it that the Starlings have a honeymoon that was worth waiting for."
When I spoke again to Henry Starling he was all excited. They had been down to see him at Billingsgate.
"We are off to Italy on June 10 - Maud and myself. Milan, Venice, five nights in Rome, Naples, Capri, Sorrento. I keep pinching myself. I don't know whether I’m comin' or goin'."
Leicester Evening Mail 21 May 1956
WEEKEND VIEWING
MANY VIEWERS may at first have been a little disappointed with the much heralded final broadcast of the series This is Your Life.
There were some interesting sidelights on the subterfuges employed to get the "victim" to the theatre, but not many revelations about how background material is built up and how the long-lost links with the past are traced.
The cheerful Billingsgate fish porter Henry Starling, shaken when it was "his life," got another surprise. A travel agency presented him and his wife with a Continental tour to serve as the honeymoon he had never been able to afford.
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