Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Major Percy FLOOD MBE, MC
THIS IS YOUR LIFE – Percy Flood, charity founder, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith.
Percy, a Major with the Royal West Kent Regiment, was captured by the Germans during the Second World War and imprisoned in Oflag 79, a prisoner-of-war camp in Brunswick, Germany. While in captivity, Percy and his fellow imprisoned officers developed the idea of a boys club, for underprivileged British youngsters, as 'a memorial to the comradeship we have shared in our captivity'.
After the war, Prime Minister Clement Attlee led a national appeal, and the Brunswick Boys Club was officially opened in Fulham, London, by the Duke of Edinburgh in July 1949.
programme details...
- Edition No: 32
- Subject No: 32
- Broadcast date: Mon 29 Apr 1957
- Broadcast time: 7.30-8.00pm
- Recorded: Mon 12 Nov 1956 8.15pm
- Venue: King's Theatre, Hammersmith
- Series: 2
- Edition: 17
on the guest list...
- Albert Manser
- Gerald Lambert
- Maj Bertie Pond
- Capt R A James
- Capt Pip Gardner
- Richard Jennings
- Thomas - son
- Patricia - daughter
- Mrs Flood - wife
- Rev Young
- Capt Newbald
- Lt Mead
- Lt Bannatyne
- Capt Peyton
- Capt Green
- Maj Witheridge Recorded tribute:
- Bill Bowes
production team...
- Researchers: Peter Moore, Nigel Ward
- Writer: Gale Pedrick
- Director: unknown
- Producer: T Leslie Jackson
- with thanks to Piers Player of the Brunswick Club for his contribution to this page
Photographs of Percy Flood This Is Your Life
Daily Express 30 April 1957
BY wrapping his modesty in a cloak of shoddy American-style sensationalism, the BBC last night very nearly ruined the TV story of Major Percy Flood, a man worth meeting.
Flood's inspiration raised £13,000 to found a London boys' club from fellow war prisoners in a German camp. But the false sentimentality poured over the story by Eamonn Andrews in "This Is Your Life" reduced charity to the level of a fairground gimcrack.
Even when the programme is "live" this tawdry exploitation of fine human instincts is painful enough. Done, as last night, on poor quality film and edited to taste - if that is the word - it becomes merely mechanical excitement.
Series 2 subjects
Peter Scott | Ada Reeve | Peter Methven | Sue Ryder | Harry S Pepper | Compton Mackenzie | Maud Fairman | Billy SmartBrian Hession | John Barbirolli | Duncan Guthrie | Esmond Knight | Sammy McCarthy | Edwin Madron | Diana Dors
Parry Jones | Percy Flood | G H Elliott | Stuart Hibberd