Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

• HOME
• |
• SERIES
• |
• SUBJECTS
• |
• FEATURES
• |
• ARTICLES
• |
• INTERVIEWS
• |
• ABOUT

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz musician, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews on the stage of the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe he was taking part in a variety programme which had been hastily prepared as a replacement for an edition of This Is Your Life which was cancelled after the press had exposed the intended subject.

'Humph', as he was affectionately known, was born in Eton, where his father was a housemaster. He developed a love of jazz while still at school, teaching himself the trumpet. After enlisting in the Army in 1939, he spent a year volunteering at the Port Talbot steel plate works before being commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, where he formed a band while training at Sandhurst Academy.

After the war, he studied at the Camberwell School of Art and later joined the Daily Mail as a cartoonist while continuing to play the trumpet on the burgeoning London jazz scene, having joined the George Webb Dixielanders. He formed his own band in 1948 and became a prominent figure in the British revival of the traditional jazz sound, which originated in New Orleans.

programme details...

• Edition No: 63
• Subject No: 63
• Broadcast live: Mon 21 Apr 1958
• Broadcast time: 8.45-9.15pm
• Venue: BBC Television Theatre
• Series: 3
• Edition: 29

on the guest list...

• Rose Bourne - sister
• Nat Gonella
• Sim Saville
• Fred Hurley
• Barry MacKay
• Carlo Krahmer
• Lynn Dutton
• George Webb
• Wilfred Norton
• Wally Fawkes
• Dr Norman McSwan
• James MacGibbon
• Jill - wife
• Mary Stewart-Cox - sister
• Simon Burt
• Shirley Abicair
• Al Fairweather
• Keith Christie
• Bruce Turner
• John Dankworth

related appearances...

• Nat Gonella - Feb 1960
• Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe - Dec 1986
• George Melly - Apr 1993
• Barry Cryer - Jan 1995
• Helen Shapiro - May 1995
• Benny Green - Feb 1996

production team...

• Researchers: George Bruce, Bill Nolan
• Writer: Bill Nolan
• Director: unknown
• Producer: T Leslie Jackson

• names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

• with thanks to Stephen Lyttelton for his contribution to this page

All that Jazz

covering all the notes

John Dankworth

Nat Gonella

Photographs of Humphrey Lyttelton This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Humphrey Lyttelton's big red book

Daily Sketch 21 April 1958

I'M NO CAD, SAYS 'LIFE' TIP-OFF MAN

By MICHAEL KEMP

THE man who upset to-night's This Is Your Life BBC-TV show said yesterday: "I dare say millions think I'm a cad."

"Well, I'm not – even if I HAVE spoiled a lot of people's fun."

Mr Percy Faulkner, 50-year old deputy secretary of the Transport Ministry, tipped off to-night's subject – and the BBC had to cancel the programme.

AID ASKED

It would have been the "Life" of 51-year-old taxi king Alexander Samuels, chairman of the Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee.

The BBC wanted Mr Faulkner to help them get him to the show by pretending he was to appear in "Panorama"

Why did he give the game away?

Said Mr Faulkner at his home in Watford Road, Northwood, Middlesex:

A PRINCIPLE

"There was a principle at stake concerning the relationship between our Ministry and its advisors."

I found Mr Faulkner, a Companion of the Bath, in a boiler suit, clearing a blocked drain – "saving my builder a job."

He placed two deck chairs in the sun and asked his wife to bring the port.

Then he talked about that show...

"I don't think the department should allow itself to be used, even in the smallest degree, in a pretext to get one of its advisors into a programme of this sort, which he may take amiss."

"If Mr Samuels had objected when he found himself in the programme, an important official relationship would have been jeopardised."

"Have I seen This Is Your Life? No! Got no set. That aerial up there was on the house when I moved in."

Over to the BBC, and a flat spin as producer T Leslie Jackson strove to arrange a stop-gap show.

"I bear Mr Faulkner no ill-will," he told me.

Daily Telegraph 21 April 1958

'THIS IS YOUR LIFE' SECRET LEAKS OUT

BROADCAST OFF

BY A RADIO CORRESPONDENT

The BBC Television's This Is Your Life is likely to be cancelled to-night. The identity of the subject has leaked out.

A BBC spokesman said yesterday that although the Corporation was trying to compile another This Is Your Life programme, it was doubtful whether there would be time.

If there was not, viewers would probably see a variety show or a tele-recording of another life, which was kept in reserve.

The producer of the programme, Mr T Leslie Jackson, was 48 yesterday. He spent his birthday in a race against the clock trying to compile another programme in time for to-night.

His wife said that since the secret leaked out last Thursday she had hardly seen anything of him. One of the main difficulties was getting in touch with the people necessary for a substitute programme.

FINE WEATHER DIFFICULTY

Even the elements were against him. The fine weather enticed people out of doors, making it more difficult to find them.

To-night's subject was to have been Mr Alexander Samuels, chairman of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee. Surprise is the essence of the programme but Mr Samuels learned he was to be the subject when he telephoned a Government office.

Only once before has the secret leaked out and that was in the first programme of the series which began in 1955. Stanley Matthews was to have been the subject but instead the life of Eamonn Andrews, who has been the compere ever since, was substituted.

Daily Mirror 22 April 1958

CASSANDRA

THIS ISN'T YOUR LIFE

OF all the blush-making, embarrassing, tear-jerking programmes that the BBC puts on, This Is Your Life is the most shame-making.

I have no time for it with its glycerine grief and cloying happiness. And Mr Eamonn Andrews' unnatural booster-enthusiasm (which I hope is against his better judgement) gives me the colly-wobbles.

But see what happens.

The cataract of slob-happiness for last night's performance was suddenly dried up on the projected appearance of Mr Alexander Samuels, who is known as "the taxi king of London" and is chairman of the Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee.

The gaff was blown by Mr Percy Faulkner, a deputy secretary of the Ministry of Transport, who pompously said that there was a principle at stake and that, "The Department" would not allow itself to be used even in the smallest degree.

So thus we get a bad programme censored by a tip-off from an over fussy official.

I think that This Is Your Life should be murdered in the interests of good sense and taste.

But I don't think it should be scrubbed out by the activities of officious busy-bodies.

News Chronicle 22 April 1958

IN MY VIEW

36 hours to hoax Humph

THE men who keep the BBC's biggest secret every week scored well last night.

A programme like This Is Your Life which depends so much on surprise, is always poised near disaster as the history of the "victim" is being accumulated without his knowledge.

This week the intended victim learned what was going to happen to him if he set foot near Shepherd's Bush.

With 36 hours to go, producer Leslie Jackson and his team of three researchers and two writers had to build up a new "life" of an entirely different person.

Fish and chips

Fish and chips and red wine fortified them as they worked throughout Friday night.

At 9 a.m. on Saturday they made the last of their dozens of night calls, to ask an army officer's wife in Malaya if she would catch the next plane to England.

So it was that Mrs Mary Stewart-Cox flew 10,000 miles from Bahra, near Johore, to join jazzmen and others turning back the pages in the history of bandleader Humphrey Lyttelton, who first played trumpet when he was at Eton.

Lyttelton had been brought to the cameras under the impression that he was to perform in a show to replace the cancelled programme.

He proved to be one of the least surprised, but certainly most charming "lifers" yet.

He may have had his suspicions but no one told him what was going to happen, until Eamonn Andrews appeared.

Norman Hare

Daily Express 22 April 1958

HUMPH GETS TV SHOCK

Old Etonian jazz-man Humphrey Lyttelton went to the BBC Television Theatre last night to fill in for a This Is Your Life programme which had been called off. He was stopped in the middle of a number to go under the spotlight himself.

Said the producer, T Leslie Jackson: "I'm worn out – this was all fixed in 48 hours."

The programme's 12,000,000 viewers should have seen Eamonn Andrews bring Alex Samuels, the traffic expert, before the cameras. But Mr Samuels found that he was to be the subject.

Reynolds News 4 May 1958

OTHERS MORE DESERVING, BUT -

It's fun being a Life man

By HUMPHREY LYTTELTON

IT may seem almost indecent to say it, but I rather enjoyed being the victim of This Is Your Life a fortnight ago.

No one but a balloon-head would relish the "tribute" aspect of the thing – the procession of kind people coming forward to tell generous fibs about one's character and deeds.

From this point of view, I fared better than some of the more meritorious and saintly people who have been put on the spot.

Apart from the gush, though, one cannot but enjoy the opportunity of meeting old friends and having a party.

We had a get-together afterwards in the BBC hospitality room – and in true jazz-party tradition the refreshments vanished as speedily and as thoroughly as if a swarm of locusts had passed through.