This Is Your Life: Ian Wright

Ian WRIGHT (1963-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Ian Wright, television personality and former footballer, was surprised by Michael Aspel - with the help of the singer Lulu - while recording his television talk show Friday Night's All Wright at the BBC Television Centre.

Ian, who was born in Woolwich, signed with Crystal Palace FC in 1985 at the age of 21, and in his six years with the club, he scored 117 goals, making him the club's record post-war goalscorer. In September 1991, Ian transferred to Arsenal FC for £2.5 million, which was a club record fee at the time.

During his seven years at Arsenal, Ian won the Premier League title, both major domestic cup competitions, and the European Cup Winner's Cup, becoming the club's most successful striker ever. In addition, he earned 33 caps with the English national team before retiring from football in 2000 to take up a career in broadcasting.

programme details...

Edition No: 1036
Subject No: 1011
Broadcast date: Mon 24 Jan 2000
Broadcast time: 8.30-9.00pm
Recorded: Thu 16 Dec 1999
Repeated: Sun 25 Jun 2000 9.50pm
Venue: BBC Television Centre
Series: 40
Edition: 11
Code name: Lefty

on the guest list...

Deborah - wife
Nesta - mother
Nicky - brother
Morris - brother
Dionne - sister
Herbert - father
Bradley - son
Brett - son
Jeremy Beadle
Bob Wilson
Clive Anderson
Maxi Priest
Tony Davies
Errol Palmer
Ron Noades
Mark Bright
Jerome Anderson
John Barnes
Paul Ince
Arsene Wenger
David Seaman
Jeff Weston
Dale Winton
Beverley De-Gale
Daniel De-Gale
Esther Rantzen
Clive Prescott
Sandra - sister-in-law
Stacey - son
Bobbi Lee - daughter
Lennox Lewis
Steve Coppell
Shaun Wright-Phillips - son
Caprice

production team...

Researcher: Jo Grant
Writer: Ian Brown
Director: John Gorman
Associate Producer: Helen Gordon-Smith
Executive Producer: John Longley
Series Producer: Jack Crawshaw
Producer: Sue Green

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

Match of the Day

tackling football's top names

Screenshots of Ian Wright This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Ian Wright's big red book

The Observer article: Ian Wright This Is Your Life

The Observer 30 January 2000

Doing the Wright thing

Men wept, women wrote about it in their diaries. Did you see Ian Wright on This Is Your Life?

TELEVISION

Kathryn Flett

This Is Your Life BBC1

LAST TUESDAY so many people were talking about Ian Wright's This Is Your Life - one of the proverbial office water-cooler TV moments - that when the tape finally turned up I had made sure there was a box of Kleenex to hand. I'd been warned: 'I don't want to oversell it to you, but it was like...' and here a colleague dabbed cartoonishly at his eyes and mimed an exaggeratedly sad clown expression - male shorthand for the process of feeling emotions. (Wondering if small boys really do learn their communication skills from clowns is almost as disturbing as imagining that little girls define their adult body image courtesy of ballerinas.) 'And it also made you realise, with a bit of a shock, that you never get to see that many black people on prime-time TV.'

'You talking about Ian Wright?' interjected another male colleague. 'Oh, Amazing! I mean, I cried!' Later that day, in a newsagents, I overheard the proprietor talking to a male customer about 'that Ian Wright on That's Life [sic]. Fantastic. I tell you, it made me a little bit moist-eyed. And I'm a Spurs fan, nahwotamean?' Something was definitely going on, but what precisely? And was it a male thing?

'Don't suppose you saw Ian Wright on This Is Your Life on Monday?' I inquired of my very female, twentysomething neighbour the following day. 'Oh yeah! I cried!' she said. 'And when Paul Ince came on! And Maxi Priest! Oh it was wonderful.' Right. So not just a male thing, then. Later, on the phone to a girlfriend who had once worked on a TV commercial alongside Gary Lineker without knowing who he was, I said, tentatively: 'I don't suppose you saw Ian Wright...?'

'Oh! Don't! I even wrote something in my diary about it. It was the most brilliant programme and I'm so glad I watched it. It was life-affirming!'

'Life-affirming? And I thought you'd say "Who's Ian Wright?" What on earth did you put in your diary?'

'I thought it was great that even though Ian Wright has buns of steel he is married to such a lovely... big girl who obviously hasn't! And did you see the bit with Paul Ince? They were just so sweet together...'

And on and on. So, eventually, I got the tape. At the beginning, when he caught sight of Michael Aspel walking on to the set of his own, chat show, Wright's handsome, wide-eyed face broke into a predictably surprised but happy grin and then, just as quickly, it crumpled into the sort of overwhelmed and teary expression you might see on the face of a small boy who has just opened a yearned-for present on Christmas Day and discovered that it contains whatever it is a small boy most wants on Christmas Day. Head in hands, Wright was visibly moved as his audience whooped and hollered, their fists punching the air in circles - 'Awwwwright!' - before he was led to the studio next door and a second audience. By this time, he was clutching a balled-up handkerchief. He wasn't the only one.

'Big up!' said Lennox Lewis - probably the only black British sportsman who calls football 'soccer' - on his filmed message. And was that Clive Anderson, the famously acerbic and not obviously very soppy chat show host, wiping away a tear? And 'he's got me all emotional, man!' said old schoolfriend, a sniffling Maxi Priest. While, for the record, this critic cried because during last week's This Is Your Life - yes, that silly old time-warped. crushingly banal charade, a TV retirement home for old golfers and last-gasp comedians - you got the sense that these people really cared for Wright and he really cared for them and that he was an awful nice guy; And while there was a complete lack of fashionable metropolitan cynicism about the proceedings, there was no icky sentimentality either - just a big, warm celebration featuring an awful lot of very unwhite, un-middle-class touchy-feeliness. Suddenly, in living colour, England looked like another country, and it was good.

'I tell you why it got to me,' admitted a (thirtysomething white, male, middle-class, not knowingly sporty) friend a couple of days after he had surprised himself by bubbling on the sofa. 'I was jealous of Wright. Not of his footballing skills, but of' - big pause, small sigh - 'of his intense-looking friendships and his family and the way he talked so proudly about his adopted son, the one who plays for Manchester City, and the way that boy is so obviously proud of him too, and...' But I knew exactly what he meant. All that demonstrative love. 'Don't get me started,' I said.

Series 40 subjects