Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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Following months of press speculation about the future of This Is Your Life, Thames Television announced that the programme would return to screens in the autumn of 1988.

And so, This Is Your Life was back - for its 29th series - with littering new titles, a new variation of the theme tune and a new presenter, and a former subject, Michael Aspel.

Michael recorded his first This Is Your Life as the new presenter in September 1988 – surprising a musician and actor in London's Covent Garden.

However, the first of Michael’s subjects to be broadcast was a Hollywood and Broadway legend who, only four years before, had received the US version of the Big Red Book.

In a shorter than usual series - with all but four editions recorded from the new set at Teddington Studios, without sliding doors - This Is Your Life discarded some of its traditional formalities, and the presentation style is more relaxed.

And in one edition and a first for This Is Your Life, Michael Aspel, who had worked with the subject many times before, interviewed himself as a guest!

related pages...

Timeline

the show's fifty year history

Life as seen by Aspel

Press speculation and announcements on new presenter Michael Aspel

How they asked Aspel

TV Times interviews new presenter Michael Aspel

Secrets Of 'Life': The ones who got away

Producer Malcolm Morris exposes some production secrets to TV Times

The day we lost The Big Red Book

Further secrets revealed by producer Malcolm Morris

Eamonn Andrews by Tom Brennand

Press reviews of the former scriptwriter's new book

Yes, This Is Our Life!

Woman's Own interviews Lizzie Power - wife of Michael Aspel

He Was Their Life...

The children of Eamonn Andrews remember him in a feature for Woman's Own