This Is Your Life: Peter Methven

Photographs of Peter Methven This Is Your Life

Edinburgh Evening News article: Peter Methven This Is Your Life

Edinburgh Evening News 30 October 1956

MILLIONS SEE FORMER FIREMASTER'S 'LIFE' ON TV

After chatting with several members of the audience last night, Eamonn Andrews, interviewer in the BBC's TV programme, "This is Your Life", spotted Mr Peter Methven, Edinburgh's firemaster until he retired in 1941.

Mr Methven was sitting in the audience with Colin Neil Mackay, the Scottish BBC reporter, and there was a look of complete astonishment on the ex-firemaster's face as Eamonn Andrews told him, "Yes, Mr Methven, this is your life."

Before his eyes, his life from the place where he was born in Pilrig was unfolded before him. The audience and millions of viewers were told of his early life as a youth on the naval training ship, the Caledonia, at South Queensferry and of his days as a footman in private service.

During the programme, which lasted 30 minutes, reference was made to the fire at the Leith rope works and to a fire at an Edinburgh pork butcher's.

The kilted and somewhat embarrassed Mr Methven told of his early days in the fire service when the machines were horse-drawn. Mr Andrews paid tribute to Mr Methven's work in making Edinburgh Fire Brigade one of the leading services in the country.

FOXED THE PRESS

There was laughter when Mr and Mrs Methven related how they had foxed the local Press in 1933 when they were secretly married a day in advance of that officially planned. Before her marriage Mrs Methven was the Edinburgh Brigade secretary, and last night, when the curtains parted to reveal that she was there, she said: "It's the only secret I've ever kept from you."

Mr Andrews told the audience that in 1919 Mr Methven had been responsible for saving eight lives during a fire in Candlemaker Row. He had been awarded the Corporation Gold Medal for bravery. Could he remember anyone he saved? After a moment's thought he mentioned the name of a ten-year-old girl and as the curtain parted once again there she was, now a married woman, living in Dunbar.

There was related, too by Mr Methven, the occasion, in a fire assessor's office, when he found himself pretty well cut off by the fire. So he curled himself up in a ball and "booled" himself down the stairway and out of danger.

It was Eamonn Andrews who gave the twist to the story by adding that when he rolled to the foot of the stairs, a fireman who bent down to help his "chief" up burned his hands on the belt round his waist.

Others who came into the life of Mr Methven included Dave Willis and James Rolland, the former amateur boxing champion.

Mr Methven, who was firemaster for 14 years, now resides in West Kilbride, Ayrshire.

The Birmingham Post article: Peter Methven This Is Your Life

The Birmingham Post 30 October 1956

A Personality Who Could Stand the Strain

By Our Television Correspondent

It was refreshing last night to meet a real personality in the BBC Television biographical feature This is Your Life. The subject was Mr Peter Methven, former firemaster of Edinburgh Fire Brigade, and the friends gathered to greet him testified to many deeds of bravery and resource.

There are several features of this programme that arouse misgivings in many minds. It is hardly good manners to publicise a person's private life without his consent. Last week's elderly victim looked so overcome with emotion that one feared for the results. At any rate, the firemaster appeared robust enough to stand the strain. It would be interesting to know on what pretext the BBC managed to get him and his wife from Edinburgh to the studio in London.

Daily Express article: Peter Methven This Is Your Life

Daily Express 30 October 1956

The voices baffle fire chief

By ROBERT CANNELL

KILTED Peter Methven, retired Edinburgh fire chief, proved last night that there is nothing more embarrassing than BBC sentiment which goes wrong.

He was the victim of TV's "This Is Your Life". And he turned the whole thing into absurdity by failing, time after time, to recognise the "momentous" voices from his past introduced by Eamonn Andrews, using every tear-jerking device in his repertoire.

Some of the voices went back 50 years or more, so it was not surprising.

"A voice you have known for 30 years or more - you cannot miss this one," declaimed Eamonn Andrews. But Mr Methven did not recognise the voice of his old orderly.

He did, however, recognise his wife's voice, to save the BBC's show from collapse.