This Is Your Life: Gerry Marsden

Gerry MARSDEN (1942-2021)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Gerry Marsden, singer and musician, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the car park of Thames Television's Teddington Studios - along with a group of artists called The Crowd who had recently re-recorded You'll Never Walk Alone to raise funds for the Bradford Football Club stadium tragedy.

Gerry, who was born in Liverpool, first began singing in school concerts and the local church choir before entering talent contests and playing with skiffle groups. His first group, Gerry and the Mars Bars, became Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1959, and by the early 1960s, they were regularly playing at Liverpool's Cavern Club.

Gerry and the Pacemakers became the first group in pop music history to have three number-one hits with their first three recordings - How Do You Do It, I Like It, and You'll Never Walk Alone - all released in 1963. After the group disbanded in 1966, Gerry starred in the West End musical Charlie Girl in 1968, appeared regularly on television and toured worldwide.

"You bastards! You swines!"

programme details...

Edition No: 687
Subject No: 681
Broadcast date: Wed 18 Dec 1985
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 22 Oct 1985
Venue: Teddington Studios
Series: 26
Edition: 9
Code name: Ferry

on the guest list...

The Foxes
Rick Wakeman
Gerard Kenny
The Barron Knights
Motorhead
Girlschool
Ed Stewart
Jim Kenny
Rose Marie
Phil Lynott
The Nolans
Jess Conrad
John Conteh
Tony Christie
Joe Fagin
Pauline - wife
Yvette - daughter
Vicky - daughter
Fred - father
Mary - mother
Ruth - mother-in-law
Gerry - father-in-law
Fred - brother
Margaret - sister-in-law
Sarah Jane - niece
Peter - cousin
Alan Rudkin
Ken 'Dixie' Deane
Tommy Ryan
Jimmy Tobin
Jimmy Savile
Derek Nimmo
Larry Viner
Anna Neagle
Jimmy Tarbuck
Ben E King
Les Maguire
Les Chadwick
Ron Yeats
Tommy Lawrence
Gerry Byrne
Bill Stevenson
Tommy Smith
Peter Thompson
Ian Callaghan
Ian St John
Nessie Shankly
Paul McCartney
Cilla Black

production team...

Researcher: Miriam O'Callaghan
Writer: Tom Brennand
Directors: Terry Yarwood, Michael D Kent
Associate Producer: Brian Klein
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

Top of the Pops

charting the pop stars

Screenshots of Gerry Marsden This Is Your Life

Gerry Marsden recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, I'll Never Walk Alone...

For any entertainer, being the subject of television's This Is Your Life is a big accolade and I never had the faintest expectation that I would be chosen for that programme. But in 1985 the producers began their elaborate plan to feature my life story and of course the whole idea of the show is that the celebrity should know nothing of the project until he's whisked into the studio before the cameras. This element of surprise is vital to the show's impact, and my wife Pauline and Derek Franks were the chief organisers of the plot to get me to London for the programme, while kidding me that I was going for something else. October 26 1985 was one of the craziest nights of my life.

As Derek recalls:

When I got a call from Thames TV saying they wanted Gerry for the show, I said there was no way on earth I'd get him down there without a strong reason. I suggested that reason might be a 'pretend' appearance on Give Us A Clue, because he'd been saying for months before that he wanted to do that programme. This was the excuse we planned as a decoy to get Gerry to London, and he readily agreed to the date I gave him.

As the date drew near, Pauline had a difficult situation with our daughter, Vicky, who was then five and had brought school photographs home which I always paid for. These school photographs always arrived at half-term time, and Pauline knew that if I was asked for money for them, I would know that the time had come to go to Anglesey for a week with her and Vicky. Pauline says:

I had to hide these photographs, but the whole thing went wrong when Vicky said to him, 'Look, Daddy, I've got my school photos.'

Gerry said, 'Well, here you are, there's the money, you can hand it in on Monday when you go to school.'

And Vicky said, 'I'm not in school on Monday, it's my half term.'

Immediately, Gerry picked up the phone to Derek and said, 'You can forget Give Us A Clue. Vicky's off school. We're going to Anglesey.'

Derek and Pauline then began sneaky conversations to discuss how they were going to get me to change my mind. 'The more you pressure Gerry, the more determined he is to stick by his guns,' Pauline points out. 'But his Achilles heel is Vicky. So we used her. We told him how all her friends at school loved Give Us A Clue and how proud his daughter would be when Vicky's friends told her they'd seen her dad on the show. We knew he'd give in to something that would please Vicky like this.'

The night before the programme, Derek and I drove down to a London hotel where we met up with the producer, Daphne Shadwell, who had worked with us on the Sooty series. She was in on the deception and we all pretended to rehearse for Give Us A Clue next day. There was another small difficulty: as Derek says, before any television programme, I don't drink but prefer an early night:

I wanted Gerry drunk so that next morning he'd stay in bed late while there was a rehearsal for This Is Your Life. At nine o'clock, he said, 'We're going to bed now', but I said, No, we'll have another bottle of wine. I made him continue drinking and he thought I'd gone off my trolley because he knew he had a major television show next day and he could not understand why I was making him drink.

As we drove to the Teddington Lock studios, I was telling Derek which way to go without realising that he was following a car which was in radio contact with This Is Your Life and Eamonn Andrews. Derek was ignoring my directions, something I wasn't used to! I began to bark at him as he drove. As we arrived at the gateway to Thames TV, the barrier was down and Derek announced to the commissionaire: 'Gerry Marsden for Give Us A Clue?' I didn't hear the man's reply, luckily, because he said to Derek out of my earshot, 'It's not Give Us A Clue tonight, it's This Is Your Life?'

Derek says:

Next, Gerry told me where to park the car. I ignored him and, as instructed by the This Is Your Life people earlier, parked in the middle of the car park. Gerry was now having a seizure in the car, telling me I'd parked wrongly. As he opened the door, the lights went on, the music started, and he nearly had a heart attack on that spot.

I really was in a state of shock. They'd lied completely to me, and it had worked brilliantly. As they began playing my music loudly with the lights beating down on me, I thought a bomb had gone off, with that impact. I leaned over the car to Derek and cursed him for his trickery. But of course, as the programme unfolded and so many of my relatives and friends and musicians came forward under the compèring of Eamonn Andrews, it became a tremendously emotional night for me. I really didn't have a clue until it happened, but I was glad they'd duped me into it!

Series 26 subjects