Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Robert McIntosh, aviation pioneer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe he was taking part in a programme about flying.

Robert, who was born in London, became an Army despatch rider on the battlefields of Flanders during the First World War, before joining the newly formed Royal Flying Corps. As a pioneer of civil aviation, having gained his civil pilot's licence after the war, he became known as 'All Weather Mac' after making the world's first ground-controlled approach in aviation history at a foggy Croydon airport in 1923.

During the Second World War, Robert trained young pilots before joining the Air Sea Rescue service. After returning to civil flying after the war, he tried his hand at racing, winning the Daily Express Air Race in 1952. He was still flying in his late 1960s, demonstrating new planes to business executives.

programme details...

• Edition No: 203
• Subject No: 204
• Broadcast date: Tue 20 Nov 1962
• Broadcast time: 7.55-8.25pm
• Recorded: Mon 12 Nov 1962 8.00pm
• Venue: BBC Television Theatre
• Series: 8
• Edition: 8

on the guest list...

• Ronald MacDonald
• Hugh MacDonald
• Robert Law
• Geoffrey Dorman
• Col James Fitzmaurice
• Florence Westenra
• Evan Edwards
• AVM Frank Hopps
• Flt Lt Ian McIntosh - son
• Mrs McIntosh - daughter-in-law - live link
• Richard - grandson - live link
• Madeline Roessler
Filmed tribute:
• Sybil Thorndike

production team...

• Researcher: unknown
• Writer: unknown
• Director: Vere Lorrimer
• Producer: T Leslie Jackson

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

Military Life

saluting the armed forces

Sybil Thorndike

Photographs of Robert McIntosh This Is Your Life

Robert McIntosh recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, All-Weather Mac...

Once a week in the season of the year the BBC have a custom by now almost traditional. They pick on a poor inoffensive chap, bribe his best friend to spin him a yarn and then, with a complexity of organisation and timing, they lead him as a lamb to the slaughter.

On the way to the Television Centre ("to make some informal recordings for sound radio, old boy") we had passed the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Seeing the placards I had wondered idly who the victim for that evening was to be. Later and suitably fortified I stepped through the door of the recording studio and saw Eamonn Andrews advancing. I reckoned that he had just finished the This Is Your Life programme and was making way for the next lot of activity in the studio. But it wasn't like that at all.

Once it started I think I really rather enjoyed the programme. They had brought on everyone, and for twenty-five minutes fragments of my life came back into sharp focus - an extraordinary experience. There was dear old Bob Law, and Dame Sybil Thorndike, Fitzmaurice of the Atlantic attempt, the Hon. Mrs. Westenra of Sahara memory. The two little evacuees that I'd fished out of a river in Scotland in 1941 - now grown men, and so many others, not least my son Ian and a direct visual line to Southampton to see his wife and the grandchildren on their way to bed. It was all rather touching, but even as the past unfolded I half wondered what they would bring out of the bag for the final few minutes. I knew well enough that the BBC did their level best to do something pretty startling.

Then Eamonn Andrews was saying the words with a rising inflection. "She has never forgotten you for the very good reason that you were her very first romance. Flown over three thousand miles from her home in Florida to be with you tonight - Madeline Gildersleeve Roessler!"

I hadn't seen her for over 30 years. The programme is sometimes described as corny and decried as such. But as Madeline walked on to the stage that all dropped away for, quite simply, it was one of the most moving moments in my life.