This Is Your Life (British TV series)

Notable guests[edit]

Lynn Redgrave, in December 1996, was caught while taking her bow in her one-woman show on stage at the Haymarket Theatre, the only time the Redgrave family was seen together on stage at the same time. Bob Hope and Dudley Moore have been the only subjects of two-part editions of the programme, in 1970 and 1987 respectively. Both were broadcast over two weeks.


Clive Mantle's profile included a post-credits sequence, in which he thanked the audience for coming.


Footballer Danny Blanchflower turned down the "red book" in February 1961. Author Richard Gordon (of Doctor in the House fame) in 1974, and Bill Oddie (of The Goodies) in 2001 initially turned it down, but then relented and appeared on the show. Actor Richard Beckinsale was featured on the show at the age of 30, just sixteen months before his death.


Football manager Matt Busby was the first person to be featured twice, first on the BBC in 1957 (after his Manchester United team had just won the Football League title) and then on ITV in 1971 following his retirement.


Hattie Jacques appeared in 1963, with her husband John Le Mesurier who had helped set up the surprise; however, much to her extreme discomfort, she was at the time living separately from Le Mesurier with her lover John Schofield.


Ronnie Barker was planned to be one of the show's subjects and his wife Joy Tubb was helping the producers with the set up and pre-production, but Barker revealed in his autobiography that he had become extremely upset by his wife's obvious secrecy and even began to suspect she might have been having an extra-marital affair. Barker confronted his wife and she had to explain to him about the programme, leading to its cancellation. Barker took the opportunity to impress upon his wife that he never wanted to be featured on the show, so future attempts to plan an edition around him were thwarted.^[5]


Maureen Lipman revealed in her first autobiographical book that she had made an arrangement with her agent and her husband that she would never participate in the programme should they ever be approached, with her husband Jack Rosenthal also agreeing he would never be the subject. Both were willing and happy to appear as a guest on other editions featuring their friends. Lipman light-heartedly revealed that her refusal to be featured was the thing that upset her mother the most about her career.^[6]


Christopher Lee was the subject of the show in April 1974. He was surprised by Eamonn Andrews during a fencing match that was being filmed for the children's TV series Magpie.^[7]


Peter Davison was the featured celebrity in March 1982. He later revealed in interviews^[8] and his autobiography that the planned finale of his edition was to be the appearance of actress Beryl Reid, but Davison's then-wife Sandra Dickinson objected and persuaded the producers not to end the show in this way as Davison and Reid barely knew each other, having worked together only once for two days' recording. Reid's inclusion was to maximise publicity for the two episodes of Doctor Who that the BBC were airing at the same time as Davison's This Is Your Life. Dickinson won her argument, and although Reid appeared, the edition ended instead with the reunion of Davison and his Guyanese aunt.^[9][10]


In May 1971, Googie Withers was the featured guest, but the surprise planned by host Eamonn Andrews did not go according to plan, when Withers arrived in the studio, thinking she was going to be interviewed by Godfrey Winn. When Andrews stepped forward with the red book, Withers asked him why he was working as a floor manager and no longer as a presenter. This was in part due to her living in Australia where the show was not known.^[11][12]


In 1996, the Sunday Mirror reported that a planned show for Cockney comedy actor Arthur Mullard was pulled after researchers contacted his eldest son. The same report featured claims that Mullard had terrorised his family and had sexually abused his daughter for many years.^[13]


The programmes originally included non-celebrities who had done extraordinary things in their lives. In later years, following a persistent criticism of only celebrities being featured on the show, non-celebrities were featured again. These included business people, military personnel, the clergy and those that had performed outstanding community or charity service but who were not well known to the general public. Examples include: paramedic Allan Norman; Cromer lifeboatman Henry "Shrimp" Davies; Colonel Tod Sweeney; Mary Ward, community nurse to the boat people of the canals; Chay Blyth; Sir Nicholas Winton; and Sir Fitzroy Maclean. The series never profiled serving politicians, although retired politicians were occasionally featured.


Forty-two celebrities have been featured on the show twice – including Honor Blackman, Dora Bryan, Bob Monkhouse and Eamonn Andrews himself.


David Butler was 17 when he became the youngest-ever subject of This Is Your Life (episode aired 5 March 1962).^[14] He was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the headmaster's study of Hemel Hempstead Grammar School. Butler lost both his legs and a hand when, aged 11, he found an unexploded bomb on Ivinghoe Beacon.


Ant and Dec presented a one-off episode on The Chris Moyles Show in 2012 celebrating his second-to-last day on BBC Radio 1 with special guests Billie Piper, Roy Walker and Gary Barlow live from the BBC Radio Theatre.