Was a BBC tea lady the secret inspiration for Children In Need?
FOR 30 years she worked as a BBC tea lady at Broadcasting House. But Joyce Rose did far more than just sell snacks and drinks to employees, it seems.
The down-to-earth figure in uniform helped raise nearly £1billion for charity, her relatives claim.
They say Miss Rose, who died on Monday aged 79, was the secret inspiration for the BBC’s annual Children In Need appeal, famous for its mascot Pudsey Bear.
In the 1970s, she marched up to a senior BBC executive on his lunch break and told him the Corporation should do an annual TV fundraiser. In 1980, the BBC launched Children In Need, which has raised more than £972million. She often mentioned her encounter in the canteen, the family says.
Miss Rose also raised thousands of pounds for the cause herself. She regaled her family with other tales of her time at the BBC, including how she twice told Margaret Thatcher off for skipping the queue to her trolley.
Her relatives were never sure whether Miss Rose was pulling their leg. But while clearing her house in Paddington, West London, following her death from kidney cancer, they found a 1985 newspaper cutting backing up her claim about Mrs Thatcher – and they now believe all her BBC tales were true. Her sister Linda Bolley, 73, said: ‘She would always tell us these stories but we sometimes didn’t really believe her at the time. I was going through her stuff and found the newspaper.’
Headlined ‘Who’s afraid of Margaret Thatcher, not Joyce Rose’, the cutting tells how the tea lady told the then-PM ‘get in the queue like everyone else’. Mrs Bolley said: ‘I thought, “Blimey, she did do it after all”. She didn’t care it was the prime minister. She was always quick on bad manners.’
Of Miss Rose’s suggestion for a charity telethon, she added: ‘It was a pretty brave thing to do.’ She said: ‘She didn’t come up with the name Children In Need but the idea of a yearly thing on the TV was hers.’
The middle one of five sisters, Miss Rose was seven when her labourer father walked out and her mother was put in a workhouse. She was separated from her sisters and sent to a children’s home. She later applied for a job at Broadcasting House after spotting a newspaper advertisement.
Mrs Bolley said: ‘Joyce was fascinated by movie stars. I think that’s why she was keen to get into the BBC. I think that our upbringing definitely played a part in her coming up with the idea of Children In Need.’