Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Peter Scott, conservationist, painter, sportsman and broadcaster, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, having been led to believe he was there to take part in a different programme.

Peter, who was born in London, the only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Scott, was a keen artist in his youth and became known as a painter of wildlife, particularly birds. He was also a yachting enthusiast and represented Great Britain at sailing at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, winning a bronze medal in the O-Jolle monotype class.

During the Second World War, Peter served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery. In 1948, he founded the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire. He later led several ornithological expeditions worldwide, and in 1955 he became a household name when he presented the BBC television natural history programme Look.

programme details...

• Edition No: 16
• Subject No: 16
• Broadcast live: Mon 1 Oct 1956
• Broadcast time: 8.15-8.45pm
• Venue: King's Theatre, Hammersmith
• Series: 2
• Edition: 1

on the guest list...

• Yvonne Fox
• Uffa Fox
• Mike Bratby
• Ludwig Koch
• Philippa - wife
• Finnur Gudmundsson
• Lt Paul Mason
• Capt James Southcott
• Lt Richard Hall

related appearances...

• Marie Rambert - Feb 1962
• Uffa Fox - Jan 1963
• Gerald Durrell - Feb 1983

production team...

• Researchers: Peter Moore, Nigel Ward
• Writer: Gale Pedrick
• Director: unknown
• Producer: T Leslie Jackson

• names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

• with thanks to Dafila Scott for her contribution to this page

Life on Earth

an uncharted adventure

Stories behind This Is Your Life

a review of the second series

The Big Red Book

the programme's icon

This Is Your Life by Eamonn Andrews

Weekend Magazine reports from behind-the-scenes

Uffa Fox

Photographs of Peter Scott This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Peter Scott's big red book

Daily Express 2 October 1956

A life trick misfires

By CYRIL AYNSLEY

THE BBC played an odd trick last night in the programme This Is Your Life - an American-style show in which an unsuspecting member of the studio audience is brought on to the stage and presented with people and events from his or her past.

Eamonn Andrews, master of ceremonies, with an air of mystery, said:

"Our subject isn't with us yet. He is actually outside. We are going to put out all the lights and he will be guided on to the stage. I want you all to be dead quiet. Not a sound."

Then with fingers to lips, he asked for the lights to be lowered. For more than a minute millions of screens were blank and silent.

Shush...

Viewers walking into their rooms at this moment must have thought their sets had failed. But "the subject" had not arrived.

After this embarrassing false start, there were more shushes, lights down again, silence from the audience - and there was Peter Scott, the naturalist, blinking in the suddenly switched-on lights and saying to Eamonn Andrews: "Oh you cad."

Peter Scott, being the delightful character he is, took this astonishing piece of malarky in good part.

It was revealed that Scott had been under the impression that the subject was to be not him, but yacht designer Uffa Fox.

This programme can be embarrassing enough without the BBC indulging in such parlour tricks. Next time the subject mightn't take them in such good part. Nor might the viewers.

Birmingham Gazette 2 October 1956

LAST NIGHT

A VICTIM - AT LAST

"OH you cad!" was Peter Scott's reaction when he realised he was Eamonn Andrews' "victim" last night.

For a few extra long seconds after studio and fireside audiences had been briefed it seemed that BBC's new It's Your Life series might lack its first biographee. No lights, silence: lights, no victim; no lights - silence - lights - the victim at last.

After an unsteady start, so many interesting personalities whose lives had impinged upon Peter Scott's were introduced that this production whetted my appetite for more.

Evening Telegraph 2 October 1956

'Telegraph' Teleview

THIS Is Your Life skated safely over thin ice and a film of synthetic snow after a false start in which Peter Scott failed to emerge from the darkness. Announcing to Mr Scott that his friend James Robertson Justice was in hospital after a car smash was another hazard Eamonn Andrews only just cleared.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner 5 October 1956

Apart from two "technical hitches," one of which caused a false start to the programme and the other which robbed us of a recording by film star James Robertson Justice, the first of the new series of This Is Your Life was fine entertainment. Peter Scott, who is by now a TV personality in his own right, was the subject of this programme, and those who appeared to pay well-deserved tribute to him were of the same type - men who love out-of-door life and all associated with it. T. Leslie Jackson's judicious use of film added immensely to the enjoyment of the programme, and Eamonn Andrews was an object lesson to comperes (if that is the right description) who talk too much. Mr Andrews was content to let others do the talking, trimming the conversation only as the limits of time dictated.

Lincolnshire Free Press 9 October 1956

Bridge lighthouse was left out

THIS IS YOUR LIFE, the feature introduced by Eamonn Andrews on television last week, the life being that of Mr Peter Scott, painter, author and naturalist, who lived in the lighthouse at Sutton Bridge for some time prior to 1939, was a little disappointing for local viewers who fully expected to see the lighthouse on the screen.

Instead, a lighthouse at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, was pictured. Many viewers thought it was that at the Bridge from the fleeting glimpse given, and knowing Mr Scott's keen interest in the wildfowl of the Wash.

They also remembered his love for the Sutton Bridge lighthouse which he once described as a very romantic place standing as it does in a corner near where the River Nene joins the Wash.

In the circumstances, it is rather surprising that the lighthouse was not featured, comparatively few in this district, it seems, having heard of the one at Slimbridge.