Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Yvonne BAILEY MBE (1922-2017)
- The first regular edition of This Is Your Life
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Yvonne Bailey, former Special Operations Executive agent, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe she was there to take part in an overseas broadcast.
Yvonne was born and raised in Paris but moved to London with her family in 1936. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a clerk, where her fluency in French attracted the attention of the Special Operations Executive, a clandestine organisation formed to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. Having trained and qualified, Yvonne became one of the SOE's youngest female agents in 1943.
In March 1944, Yvonne was parachuted into France, where she would assist in recruiting and training operatives and marshalling airdrops via her radio to London. Following one of the largest daylight airdrops of the Second World War, she was subsequently captured and interrogated, then sent to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp, where, despite torture and illness, she refused to reveal the names of any of her fellow operatives. Having been liberated by the Red Cross in April 1945, Yvonne returned to her duties in London before moving to Rhodesia after marrying Desmond Bailey of the Colonial Service in 1948.
programme details...
- Edition No: 2
- Subject No: 2
- Broadcast live: Sun 25 Sep 1955
- Broadcast time: 7.45-8.15pm
- Venue: BBC Television Theatre
- Series: 1
- Edition: 2
on the guest list...
- Col Maurice Buckmaster
- Clifford Baseden - father
- Rex Baseden - brother
- Doris Ranwell
- Pearl Cornioley
- Yvonne Cormeau
- Col George Starr
- Maurice Belfert
- Sister Church
- Cdr Charnaud
related appearance...
- Yvonne Cormeau - Nov 1989
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
saluting the armed forces
the show's fifty year history
the applause, laughter and tears
Radio Times previews the second edition
This Is Your Life: The Show that can never be fully rehearsed
TV Mirror goes behind-the-scenes of the first series
Photographs of Yvonne Bailey This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Yvonne Bailey's big red book
The Evening News 24 September 1955
FOR self-assurance there are few TV personalities who can hold a cathode ray tube to Eamonn Andrews. But there was a notable occasion, you may remember, when he stood shattered while the programme whirled round him.
He admitted, emotionally: "I've lost control."
That was the time when the BBC were trying out a new show called This Is Your Life. Eamonn Andrews thought it was Freddie Mills' life they were going to reveal, and when the joke (if that is the right word) recoiled on himself he was visibly affected.
I recall all this because you are now to see This Is Your Life as a regular feature on BBC television. The Corporation has bought the British TV rights from America where the idea originated.
Eamonn Andrews has been appointed resident compere and the show is being produced by Leslie Jackson.
But beyond that there is very little the BBC will release in advance. It is essential to the tension of the programme that the name of the victim is kept secret. That is why, when Stanley Matthews' name leaked out - he was the original choice for the try-out show - the arrangements had to be abruptly altered.
In future only about half-a-dozen people will know whose life the BBC is taking in its hands. The whole thing, indeed, is so hush-hush that I can hardly bear to tell you that the series starts tomorrow at 7.45pm
Kendall McDonald
Western Mail and South Wales News 26 September 1955
ON TV LAST NIGHT
By PETER CHAMBERS
After some of the assaults on human dignity we have seen on Commercial Television during the past four days - such as pouring soup over a man's head in a quiz show - the BBC's new programme This Is Your Life seemed a marvel of tact and restraint.
Credit for this goes to Eamonn Andrews who was himself the first "victim" in the programme on its try-out broadcast some weeks ago.
Andrews, you may remember, dashed a tear from his eye when his mother appeared.
Last night we were spared such emotional scenes and Mrs Yvonne Bailey, a British wartime agent in France, maintained a smiling composure as the exciting story of her life was unfolded.
On last night's showing This Is Your Life looks like being a success.
Evening Telegraph 26 September 1955
GIVEN a smiling, self-possessed victim as competent, composed and confident as Mrs Yvonne Bailey, former helper of the French Resistance Forces and This Is Your Life yields legitimate entertainment (writes RP).
Freed from the oily "goo" of the original master of ceremonies, and without show folk slapping each other on the back between puffs, last night's show came off better than its predecessor.
The Birmingham Mail 26 September 1955
FOCUS ON TV
THIS Is Your Life is proving a tough spot for Eamonn Andrews. The first of the series found him the unsuspecting victim whose life had been investigated. The second saw him just as embarrassed, trying to infuse some life into a script full of clichés but precious little else.
This was a very different Mr Andrews from the confident chairman of our old Sunday night favourite, What's My Line? Starting off with the desperate heartiness of a nervous bridegroom, he was soon down to the forced bonhomie which the cinema teaches us accompanies American weddings. By half-way through he was wiping the sweat off his brow, and from then on he was hanging on like a punch-drunk boxer determined to go the distance.
Yet all the time it was obvious that nobody could have done better in the circumstances. There he was, interviewing a war-time heroine whose story included being parachuted into enemy-occupied France, and being captured by the Gestapo. And his script was loaded with such platitudes as:
"Then war broke out. It really did seem that fate was ready to take a hand in your story... The whole situation called for action. You joined the WAAF."
If stories about the emotional outbursts on the American original of the programme are true, this BBC version is but a pale copy, over-edited and too polite. Probably more consideration is given to people's feelings. But the result is a boneless wonder and such freaks are not worth seeing.
The Scotsman 3 October 1955
...and, in This Is Your Life, there was rather less embarrassment for the observer as Mr Eamonn Andrews unfolded the past of the courageous lady who had helped the French Resistance Movement, than there was when Mr Andrews himself was on display; even so, I rather doubt if this feature, with its formidable dossier and adroitly-contrived reunions, is really worth persevering with. As at present it protests too much, and inclines to be self-satisfied.
Series 1 subjects
Eamonn Andrews | Yvonne Bailey | Ted Ray | James Butterworth | C B Fry | Johanna Harris | Donald Campbell | Joe BrannellyStanley Matthews | Henry Starling | Ida Cook | Lupino Lane | Hugh Oloff de Wet | Elizabeth Wilde | Robert Stanford Tuck