John Tidmarsh
Encyclopedia
King's College Hospital
King's College Hospital is an acute care facility in the London Borough of Lambeth, referred to locally and by staff simply as "King's" or abbreviated internally to "KCH"...
, Camberwell
Camberwell
Camberwell is a district of south London, England, and forms part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is a built-up inner city district located southeast of Charing Cross. To the west it has a boundary with the London Borough of Lambeth.-Toponymy:...
, is a British broadcaster and journalist who spent 10 years with domestic radio and television and more than 30 with the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
magazine programme 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
Western Daily Press
The Western Daily Press is a regional newspaper covering parts of South West England , mainly Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset as well as the metropolitan areas of Bath and North East Somerset and the Bristol area. It is published Monday to Saturday in Bristol, UK...
. At 18 he left to do two years of National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
and spoke into a microphone for the first time when he became a radio operator in the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
(RAF), serving one year at RAF Seletar in Singapore.
Back in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
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
Hospital radio
Hospital radio is a form of audio broadcasting produced specifically for the in-patients of hospitals. It is primarily found in the United Kingdom.-History:...
Service, the BBC Controller in West Region, the former war correspondent Frank Gillard
Frank Gillard
Frank Gillard CBE was a BBC reporter and radio innovator.-Early years:Gillard was born in Tiverton, Devon and attended Wellington School, Somerset. He gained a Batchelor's degree from St Luke's College, Exeter. He then taught in a private school.-Broadcaster:In 1936 he became a part time...
, 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, Tidmarsh was invited to join the reporting staff at Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters and registered office of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London.The building includes the BBC Radio Theatre from where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience...
in London and within two months was sent on a four-month assignment at the United Nations
United Nations headquarters
The headquarters of the United Nations is a complex in New York City. The complex has served as the official headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River...
in New York.
Back in England, Tidmarsh worked at Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
, 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
Gerald Priestland
Gerald Francis Priestland was a news correspondent and newsreader for the BBC.-Early life and work:Gerald Priestland was educated at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford. He began his work at the BBC with a six-month spell writing obituary pieces for broadcast news...
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
Jack de Manio
Jack de Manio MC and Bar was a British journalist, best known as a radio presenter....
, presenting the popular Today programme
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
. Most of the time he was reporting on foreign news, often in France during the crisis over Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
and independence for Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
. He covered the final talks for Algerian independence at Évian-les-Bains
Évian-les-Bains
Évian-les-Bains or Évian is a commune in the northern part of the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France...
and was actually in Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
on Independence Day.
Tidmarsh had many more overseas assignments, including India, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and the USA, where he covered the whole of the Civil Rights March
Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League...
from Selma
Selma, Alabama
Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, United States, located on the banks of the Alabama River. The population was 20,512 at the 2000 census....
to Montgomery
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
in Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, led by Martin Luther King.
In 1966 Tidmarsh resigned from the staff and set himself up as a correspondent for the BBC in Brussels (a "stringer
Stringer (journalism)
In journalism, a stringer is a type of freelance journalist or photographer who contributes reports or photos to a news organization on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work....
"). From there he flew to London every Thursday morning, back again on Friday night, after presenting Outlook, the new current affairs and magazine programme which he had been asked to join on BBC World Service. He thus became the BBC's first European commuter, before returning to Britain in 1968.
Traditionalists said that Outlook would not last six months. They argued that formula was all wrong, particularly with the inclusion of star guests "live" in the studio.
When John finally retired in 1998, shortly after his 70th 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. His autobiography was published in 2010, entitled "Horrid Go-ahead Boy: A Broadcaster's Life".
External links
- Interview with John Tidmarsh on his receiving the OBE.
- http://www.amaana.org/interviews/bbc.htmInterview with the Aga KhanAga Khan IVPrince Karim, Aga Khan IV, NPk, NI, KBE, CC, GCC, GCIH, GCM is the 49th and current Imam of the Shia Imami Nizari Ismaili Muslims. He has held this position under the title of Aga Khan since July 11, 1957, when, at the age of 20, he succeeded his grandfather, Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan...
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