John Tidmarsh

John Alan Tidmarsh, O.B.E., born 13 August 1928 in King's College Hospital, Camberwell, is a British broadcaster and journalist who spent 10 years with domestic radio and television and more than 30 with what became the most popular programme on BBC World Service called “Outlook”.

An evacuee during the early years of the Second World War he went to three different grammar schools before joining his parents in Bristol for his final school years at Cotham Grammar School. He left school at 16 to become a junior reporter with the Western Daily Press. At 18 he left to do two years of National Service and spoke into a microphone for the first time when he became a radio operator in the RAF, serving one year at RAF Seletar in Singapore.

Back in Bristol with the Western Daily Press in the autumn of 1948 he began to specialise in sport reporting each week on Bristol Rovers. After doing a “live” commentary one Saturday for the newly created Hospital Radio Service the BBC Controller in West Region, the former war correspondent Frank Gillard, offered him a job, initially as a resident freelance, reporting and presenting the regional magazine “The Week in the West”. He later joined the staff as the regional organiser of coverage for national Television News.

After four years in Bristol, John was invited to join the reporting staff at Broadcasting House in London and within two months was sent on a 4 month assignment at the United Nations in New York.

Back in England, John worked at Alexandra Palace, the headquarters of BBC Television News and presented the daily news magazine for South East England, “Town and Around”. Occasionally he presented the national news and later joined Gerald Priestland to present the first ever two handed news presentation, which was on the newly created BBC2.

For most of his remaining years on the staff he worked out of Broadcasting House, where from time to time he stood in for Jack de Manio presenting the popular Today programme . Most of the time he was reporting on Foreign News. Often in France during the crisis over DeGaulle and independence for Algeria. He covered the final talks for Algerian independence at Evian les Bain and was actually in Algiers on Independence Day.

John had many more overseas assignments, including India, Vietnam and the USA, where he covered the whole of the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama lead by Martin Luther King.

In 1966 John resigned from the staff and set himself up as a correspondent for the
BBC in Brussels (a “stringer”). From there he flew to London every Thursdaymorning, back again on Friday night, after presenting the new current affairs andmagazine programme which he had been asked to join on BBC World Service called [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/outlook “Outlook"] He thus became the BBC’s first European Commuter before returning to Britain in 1968.

Traditionalists said that [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/outlook “Outlook"] would not last six months. The formula was all wrong, particularly with the inclusion of star guests “live” in the studio. An unacceptable mixture. When John finally retired in 1998, shortly after his 70^th birthday, he had been with the programme for more than 30 years. For much of that time he took over three days a week and, as the senior presenter, made many special editions from every Continent except Antarctica.

He was awarded the OBE in 1997 for services to broadcasting.

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/49813.stm Interview with John Tidmarsh on his receiving the OBE.]
* [http://www.amaana.org/interviews/bbc.htm Interview with the Aga Khan]