This Is Your Life: Sheila Scott

Sheila SCOTT OBE (1922-1988)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Sheila Scott, aviator, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Leavesden Airfield, having been led to believe she was there to be interviewed by television presenter Judith Chalmers.

Sheila, who was born in Worcester, became interested in aviation at the age of six after a flying circus visited her area. During the Second World War, she served as a nurse with the Women's Royal Naval Service before starting a career as an actress in the 1940s. She learned to fly in 1959 after spotting a newspaper advertisement offering lessons at £1 a time.

After her initial training at Thruxton Aerodrome, Sheila quickly started winning trophies in numerous races. In a 15-year flying career on a shoestring budget, she broke more than 100 world-class records, flew three times single-handed around the world, and, in 1966, notched up the longest consecutive solo flight in history - approximately 31,000 miles on 189 flying hours in 34 days.

"Oh no, I am going to have someone's guts for garters now! You wicked man!"

programme details...

Edition No: 378
Subject No: 379
Broadcast live: Wed 13 Mar 1974
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Repeated: Fri 8 Mar 1974
Venue: Euston Road Studios
Series: 14
Edition: 18

on the guest list...

Dr Phil Chapman
Harold - father
Millie - aunt
Phyllis - aunt
Kath - aunt
Bob Ackerman
Elizabeth Overbury
John Blake
Douglas Farge
members of the Ninety-Nines - the British Women's Pilots Association
Freda Charland
Orato Melee
Deborah Kerr

production team...

Researcher: Vincent Stafford
Writer: Jack Crawshaw
Director: Royston Mayoh
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related page...

Life on Earth

an uncharted adventure

Screenshots of Sheila Scott This Is Your Life

Judy Lomax recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in her book, Sheila Scott: A Biography...

While she was still fighting to retain her aircraft, Sheila appeared on the television programme This Is Your Life. She hated it. It seemed almost like an obituary to her flying career, which she was not yet ready to admit was over. If it had not been that she was fetched by a friend, Kay Bird, she would have refused to participate. 'Sheila had been conned into going to Elstree, where Myth Too was being repainted,' Kay Bird told me. 'I was in the green room when the producer rushed in. "Kay, I want you to do the pick-up," he said. "Sheila can be a strange person, but she gets on with you. Tell her we won't be mentioning her marriage or her stepmother."' Halfway to the studio, Sheila insisted on going first to her flat. 'I want to get my rabbit,' she told Kay, who was afraid that she intended to lock herself in.

The recording was tense and difficult. Sheila felt that all the wrong people had come along - like a large contingent from the British Women Pilots' Association, whom she called 'dreadful little women', although individually she was on good terms with many of them - and few of those she really cared about, like the engineers at Oxford: they had been invited, but did not feel that appearing on television was 'their thing'. Afterwards she refused to speak to her father, who she felt had let her down by not helping her to pay for the repairs to her aircraft.

'For God's sake rescue me,' she said to John Blake. He took her and a Fijian chief, one of the few people whom Sheila was genuinely delighted to see, to the Steering Wheel Club, where the six-foot-six chief's formal Fijian attire of a grass skirt and bare feet caused some consternation.

'Sheila was very strange after the show,' Kay Bird told me. 'She kept saying "They don't really care about me."' Sheila felt that she had been abandoned by many of those who had claimed to be her friends; she had spent so little time at home for the previous two years that many had lost touch with her, and others found her constant tales of woe off-putting.

Series 14 subjects