This Is Your Life: Victor Silvester

Victor SILVESTER (1900-1978)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Victor Silvester, dancer, musician and band leader, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews outside the BBC Television Theatre, having been brought there by producer Richard Afton.

Victor, who was born in Wembley, served with the First British Ambulance Unit in Italy during the First World War and was awarded the Italian Bronze Medal for Military Valour. After the war, he studied music at Trinity College, London. However, his passion for dance led to him entering a series of dancing competitions, and in 1922, he won the first World Ballroom Dancing Championship.

He went on to open a dancing academy in London, where he taught some of the top celebrities of the day, but the lack of suitable recordings for dancing led Victor to form his own five-piece band in 1935. The band was later enlarged and named Victor Silvester and his Ballroom Orchestra, and their first released recording, You're Dancing on My Heart, became Victor's signature tune. By the mid-1950s, Victor was the most successful dance band leader in British musical history and a major star on British radio and television.

programme details...

Edition No: 45
Subject No: 45
Broadcast live: Mon 9 Dec 1957
Broadcast time: 7.30-8.00pm
Venue: BBC Television Theatre
Series: 3
Edition: 11

on the guest list...

ACM Sir Victor Goddard
Diana Churchill
Mrs J H Churchill
Gwen - sister
Jack Massie
Laurence Wade-Brown
Phyllis Walker-Carter
Dorothy - wife
George Metcalfe
Oscar Phillips
Lenore Freeman
Ben Edwards
Oscar Grasso
Victor - son
The Victor Silvester Ballroom Orchestra
Lionel Sessions
Gerry Moore

production team...

Researcher: George Bruce
Writer: Peter Moore
Director: unknown
Producer: T Leslie Jackson

related pages...

A Musical Life

blowing a trumpet for the musicians

Interviews

Tara Silvester, granddaughter of Victor Silvester, recalls her grandfather and her appearance on the BBC television programme The Repair Shop in an exclusive interview recorded in March 2023

Victor Silvester This Is Your Life Big Red Book

Photographs of Victor Silvester This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Victor Silvester's big red book

Series 3 subjects