Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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As the decade of the 1970s drew to a close, This Is Your Life - still in its Wednesday at 7pm slot in the ITV schedules - remained as popular as ever, consistently topping the increasingly competitive ratings.

This 20th series featured an unusually high number of sporting heroes - from a weightlifter to a boxer, a sailor to a rugby star, and, uniquely, within one year, the life stories of two cricketers.

A specially extended Christmas Day edition paid tribute to a well-respected and much-loved comedy actor and writer.

The planned opening of the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats at the New London Theatre in May 1981 meant another change of venue for the programme. So while the Royalty Theatre around the corner in Holborn became the new home to This Is Your Life for the next six years, the Stage newspaper reported on the practicalities of a television show using a working theatre.

In a history-making moment in this series, Eamonn Andrews presented the Big Red Book to one particular television presenter - surprised on the set of the hugely popular game show, Give Us A Clue - who, eight years later, would become the book's custodian.

related pages...

Timeline

the show's fifty year history

Royalty plans future as opera-dance venue in Thames TV tie-up

The Stage reports on This Is Your Life's new home