Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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This is Your Life returned to reveal more inspirational and entertaining life stories on Monday evenings at 7.30pm for its seventh series.

In the first 'pick-up' of its kind, the production team travelled outside the UK - to the Italian city of Naples - to surprise a Roman Catholic priest before returning to London's BBC Television Theatre for the live broadcast.

For the first time, the programme was recorded on a different day to the 'pick-up' - an actor-manager was surprised at a friend's Surrey house party one evening - while the actual tribute was recorded the following evening. One subject, a former ballet dancer, became the first to be surprised on their birthday and the first to be told of the surprise in advance - following a doctor's advice to the producers that a sudden shock may harm their health.

For the programme's first-ever Christmas Day broadcast – which honoured a former nurse – each guest brought a present, and the tribute ended with all the guests sitting down to a full Christmas dinner.

History was made with two editions in this series - a schoolboy, who lost his legs in a mortar bomb explosion, became the programme's youngest ever subject at the age of 17, while, just several weeks later, a former cricketer became the programme's oldest subject - at the age of 100.

related pages...

Timeline

the show's fifty year history

This Is Your Life

Radio Times previews the seventh series

Woman's voice in TV shock

Daily Sketch interview with director Yvonne Littlewood

Behind The Scenes Of This Is Your Life

Radio Times feature on the frustrations of a 'Life' researcher

Elizabeth Twistington Higgins: This Is Your Life

A profile of the ballet dancer