by Eamonn Andrews as told to Wilfred Greatorex

I nurse TV's biggest secret - part seven of a continuing interview

The greatest television show of all brought snags, risks and nerve-shattering panic. One slip of the tongue could wreck it.

On that cool San Francisco night in 1955, in the pressurised atmosphere of Don Cockell's brave defeat at the hands of world heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, it seemed that my mission to America was foundering to a fine anti-climax. I felt that Cockell's glorious attempt to stand up to the bulldozing Rocky had enabled me to make the commentary of my life – I had been completely carried away and was soaked with sweat – yet I still did not know for sure that the broadcast had even been received back in Britain.

Now, to make things worse, I couldn't get within hailing distance of Cockell for the interview I needed to cap the commentary. The ringside had erupted with a spontaneous display of admiration for the British champion's courage, and I had managed to get only as far as the ring parapet just outside the ropes.

I shouted to Cockell, but my voice was lost in the din. I waved, but no one took any notice. Then, as I leaned heavily over the ropes to get a little nearer, two beefy American cops man-handled me back. It was one of those terribly frustrating moments that are the commentator's lot, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.

Up to now everything had gone far better than I had expected. I had made my pilgrimage across the Atlantic with a fourfold purpose: to study American television methods; to run the rule over Ralph Edwards's television show, This Is Your Life, preparatory to its introduction in Britain; to have an overdue real holiday with Grainne; and to cover the big fight. I had seen so many television tricks and gimmicks that I could not possibly absorb them all, and the one This Is Your Life programme I had seen convinced me that it was the greatest idea to have come out of television on either side of the Atlantic.

The subject of the "life" was Rene Beldenoit, the Devil's Island escapee, and I was excited by the surprise inflicted on him by the slick, fair-haired Edwards. As Edwards moved down the studio aisle throwing out misleading "hints" as to whose life was to be covered, the cameras cut to three men walking down the street outside.

Ultimately, they reached a point just below the studio windows, and Edwards, with perfect timing, spotted them on his monitor screen and called: "Rene Beldenoit – this is your life."

Beldenoit's astonishment was something to behold. His friends, who were in the know, escorted him up to the studio. It was brilliant, imaginative and breathtaking. After the show I wrote an effusive letter to Ronnie Waldman, head of BBC television light entertainment, saying I would be available for This Is Your Life as soon as he was ready to put it on.

In New York and San Francisco I had also met a lot of people whom I had long admired from a distance – and the fight was one in a lifetime. I was caught up in the tremendous emotion generated by Cockell's gallantry and, in the moment of his defeat, I promptly moved forward for that vital interview. I was delayed for a few precious seconds when a stranger pushed through the crowd and excitedly demanded to be allowed to say something. I tried to thrust him aside until someone whispered that he was one of America's foremost boxing columnists, and I let him pay his brief lip service to Cockell.

Now, precariously perched on the ring parapet, it seemed that I would need a fifty-ton tank to get anywhere near Don. For one moment his manager, John Simpson, looked straight at me; but he was evidently not focusing right and the chance was gone. Then, amid the clamour, Marciano's manager, Al Weill, saw me gesticulating and, beckoning Rocky, he called: "He wants you to talk to London."

"Sure!" said Marciano. He moved towards me, and miraculously those cops fell back like ham before a slicer. As Rocky spoke, I caught Cockell's eye, and he came over, too. The interviews clinched what I still regard as the broadcast that gave me the greatest kick. Next day there was a cable of congratulations from the BBC and another from my manager, Teddy Sommerfield, reporting that the Electricity Supply Board had announced a leap in consumption during the time of the broadcast because so many people had got up in the early hours of the morning to hear it.

I flew off to Miami, and thence to Jamaica with Grainne, with a happy heart. We arrived just in time for the christening of Grainne's sister Siobhan's first child, and there was a further surprise. Awaiting us was the public relations man for Abe Issa, a Jamaican hotelier whom I had interviewed two years earlier in Britain for the Welcome Stranger programme. Then Abe told me that if I ever got to Jamaica I should stay as his guest in one of his hotels; I had almost forgotten the offer, for things like this are often said but rarely come to anything.

Abe was away, but he had left instructions that Grainne and I should stay at one of his places, a lovely, palm-fringed spot with excellent service. It meant that our travel allowance, which was running dangerously low, stretched out. Despite the climate, the idyllic atmosphere and the easy-going ways of Jamaica, I was soon pining to return to London and work, and, I hoped, the start of This Is Your Life.

My hopes were soon realised. Back in London, I lunched with Ronnie Waldman, who told me that the BBC had an option on the programme and were prepared to go ahead. To ensure his interest in the show, Ralph Edwards came over to do the first one himself. A calculating go-getter with a flair for seeing the drama and emotion in people's lives, he soon showed us the Americans' totalitarian approach to TV.

We had decided to make Stanley Matthews the subject of the first programme but two days before it was due on the air the news leaked out. I went to talk it over with Edwards, who all along had stressed the need for absolute security, and the way he moved into action was a revelation. Finding that Matthews was on a fishing holiday, he suggested that the village where he was staying should be ringed round so that Matthews would be isolated from the news. It was typical American big thinking, but impractical under the circumstances, and we had to get another "life" in the bag within forty-eight hours.

Later that day, at a conference to decide whom this should be, Edwards saw an evening newspaper column I had written. Suddenly, he seemed to clam up on me; I guessed he was thinking that here was another newspaperman, a viper in his own bosom. "We'll go on," he said, collecting the team together. "I'll ring you later." I could only take this to mean that I was no longer trusted, but what happened was that producer Leslie Jackson, in the moment when we were throwing names of likely subjects around, had pointed behind my back to me.

As I went back to my flat, I little knew that a researcher had been sent off urgently to Dublin to pick up stories about my past. So began the procession of gentle deceptions in which I was later to share.

For those connected with the programme, This Is Your Life is fraught with snags, alarms and risks right until the last minute; even the best-laid plans to get the subject to the television theatre can go astray.

In Ted Ray's case, the first deception failed completely. The idea was to have Ted present on the pretext that his son Andrew was doing a telerecording in another studio. When Leslie Jackson rang him to suggest casually that he might like to bring Andrew along, Ted said he liked to put his feet up on Sundays and that Andrew knew his way, anyhow. This meant a second approach, which is more risky, and this time the excuse was that several Australian radio executives were visiting the studios and that they would like to meet Mr Ray.

Just to rule out any suspicion, every studio clock at Lime Grove was put forward ten minutes, so that Ted, if he had any seeds of suspicion, would have none when he saw that it had already gone eight o'clock. It worked.

An even more elaborate plan was laid to get Mrs Johanna Harris, the Red Cross nurse, into the studio for her life. It was arranged that an English-speaking Swedish girl should become Mrs Harris's patient. A doctor encased her leg in plaster, and the Red Cross instructed Mrs Harris to take her to a London hotel before escorting her to Sweden. In the hotel, the girl played up to her brief and said she would like to see This Is Your Life.

When Mrs Harris suggested that they might watch it on the television set in the hotel lounge, her patient replied that she had tickets for the show and wanted to see it broadcast. There was almost a slip up when the girl, who was supposed to speak no English, promptly answered a waiter who asked if she wanted a large or small orange juice. Mrs Harris seemed satisfied when her charge explained that she had learned a little English. As soon as the programme was over, the girl had her plaster removed.

Not one This Is Your Life has yet been done without that element of uncertainty which is also the show's strength. For wear and tear on the nerves and double talk, I've never known anything like it. When we settled one day on doing the life of music publicity man, Joe Brannelly, I made the initial approach, taking singer Frankie Vaughan into my confidence, explaining the problem and extracting from him a promise to have Joe in the theatre that Sunday night. Then I telephoned Joe and pretended that it was Vaughan's life we were doing.

"Can you see that Frankie comes on Sunday?" I asked.

"I think so," Joe said. "You don't want me to come, too?"

"No, of course not. It's Frankie we want. If it means you have to come to get Frankie here, I'll let you have tickets."

Joe then explained that he was flying to Rome with a party of American friends that Sunday. I knew one of them, a man named Robert Armstrong, and persuaded him to keep Joe off the Rome plane and, if possible, to get his friends to say that they would like to see the show.

It was midday on Sunday when Joe resignedly telephoned to say that his friends wanted tickets after all. I had them ready on my desk, but I said, not very optimistically, that I would try to get them.

As well as double talk, the show requires an awareness of security on MI5 lines and, more than that, a capacity to trust confidantes. Invariably, in planning a "life," we first approach the person nearest in relationship to the subject to establish whether the man or woman of our choice would be amenable to the whole thing. For that reason, the earlier criticisms we met that This Is Your Life is an intrusion into privacy seems churlish.

As the programme has developed, so these criticisms have subsided. The tenterhook moments are still as nerve racking, for apart from the uncertainty of the subjects' arrivals, I often do not know what they look like until they are pointed out to me from behind the stage back-drop.

With This Is Your Life launched, I decided in the New Year of 1956 to have a closer look at the American scene, and especially the television part of it, as soon as I could.

Already, at Teddy Sommerfield's suggestion, I had dropped much of the work I had been doing, including newsreel commentaries, and this proposed second visit to the United States would also mean sacrificing, at least for some time, the chairmanship of the now hardy annual, What's My Line? With some reluctance I advised Leslie Jackson that I would be leaving the programme. It had not been my original plan, and only arose now because the BBC unexpectedly discovered that there was life in the old programme yet, and decided to extend its run beyond what had originally been planned and for which I had been contracted.

It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make, for What's My Line? had been the most outstanding milestone in my life, coinciding as it did with a change of fortune more sudden and overwhelming than anything I might have imagined. It has given me some publicly harassing moments, but it has also produced excitements and thrills, not all of them in the studios.

Not long ago, when one of Grainne's sisters was being married in Dublin, I had to leave for London Airport at six o'clock in the morning already dressed for the occasion: through What's My Line? I had been unable to catch a plane the night before.

I stopped at a set of traffic lights on the Great West Road and a motor-cyclist drew up alongside. He looked at me, togged up as I was, grinned and said: "Blimey, Eamonn – this is a fine time to be coming home!" I felt the real libertine, and it was warming on a winter's morning to be hailed by a complete stranger as if I were an old acquaintance.

As Grainne and I were discussing our American trip one evening in March, I caught sight in a newspaper of a story about Jose Iturbi, the famous pianist. He had just made a successful appearance in London. My mind went back to those Dublin days when I used to do celebrity interviews for Radio Eireann's Microphone Parade at two guineas a time.

Once, I went to the Theatre Royal to ask Iturbi for an interview. He agreed and we roughed it out before taking a taxi to the studio to record it. Iturbi's fans milled round and became so excited as the taxi moved off that they tore the roof. I had to pay for the damage.

It meant that I had done the job at a loss; a tragedy at the time, for I was hard up. Now, in retrospect, it is a glowing memory of those years of struggle. And if I were as much of an optimist as Grainne, I would believe that tomorrow will be just as exciting as yesterday.

This Is Your Life - Article: This Is My Life