Tributes as BBC’s Cliff Michelmore dies at 96
Affable and astute television and radio broadcaster who became a national figure in the 1950s and 1960s as the presenter of Tonight
Cliff Michelmore, a top BBC presenter for decades, has died aged 96.
The television and radio host, who headed coverage of the Apollo moon landings and two general elections, was best known as the long-serving anchorman of magazine show Tonight.
BBC director-general Tony Hall led tributes to the “outstanding broadcaster”. He was viewed by audiences as likeable but hard-hitting.
Mr Michelmore, whose career began during the Second World War, was made a CBE in 1969. He died at Petersfield Hospital in Hampshire after being admitted last week, his son said.
LIFF MICHELMORE, who has died aged 96, was one of the most familiar faces on British television in the 1950s and 1960s, notably as presenter of Tonight, which ran for some 1,800 editions between 1957 and 1965.
Tonight, the first nightly television news journal, featured short and snappy items aimed at an audience whose attention span was presumed to be limited: men coming home from work; women putting children to bed. The idea was that they would be dipping in and out of the programme as household tasks permitted.
The format was the brainchild of Grace Wyndham Goldie, Donald Baverstock and Alasdair Milne. Those who built their reputations on Tonight included Geoffrey Johnson Smith, Fyffe Robertson, Trevor Philpot, Alan Whicker, Macdonald Hastings, Polly Elwes and Derek Hart.
Bernard Levin was a regular contributor, even writing calypsos for Cy Grant, Rory McEwen or Noël Harrison. In the first programmes Jonathan Miller did comic turns, until he offended viewers with a sketch on the death of Nelson.
But Cliff Michelmore, reassuring and affable, at once wholly middlebrow and unfailingly astute, was very much the man in charge. Although in the late 1950s and early 1960s he was appearing in as many as 300 programmes a year (for Tonight was by no means the only string to his bow), on screen he invariably appeared confident, calm, unhurried and unflappable. At the end of 1957 The Daily Telegraph’s L Marsland Gander had no hesitation in naming Cliff Michelmore as the television personality of the year: “He radiates unaffected friendliness and good humour. Being entirely natural and unselfconscious are his great attributes. Moreover, there is real intelligence and wit behind his spontaneous interviewing.” There was keen rivalry between Tonight and Panorama. On one occasion, after an unfortunate camera switch had caught Richard Dimbleby combing his hair, Tonight teased the great man by including a clip of Michelmore cutting his toe-nails.
Nevertheless, Michelmore, in a mock obituary he wrote for himself, insisted that his real character was different from his easy-going image on television. He “found criticism hard to accept and could be intolerant even when proved wrong. His temper was combustible, on a short fuse, but, to be fair, he would quickly forget the cause of his anger when it has passed.
“He was a voracious reader, rapidly absorbing and retaining information, forming opinions and taking decisions. But slow to make friends. Popularity was not important to him. He was not afraid of losing favour in what he considered a good cause. At times he lacked concentration and the persistence to see a project through to its conclusion. Direct rather than subtle, he never claimed to be a patient man.”
This was over-severe. Michelmore’s schedule put him under immense strain, and though he occasionally had to take time off to recuperate, he remained in charge for the entire eight years during which Tonight ran. On November 22 1963, it fell to his lot to give British viewers the first news of President Kennedy’s death.
In October 1965 Michelmore, with Kenneth Allsop, took charge of a new current affairs programme, 24 Hours, which went out later at night. Though it was soon established as another success, Michelmore’s relations with the producers proved stormy. In 1967 he walked out after Derrick Amoore had required him to discuss the question of Stansted Airport with a studio audience: “I will not be associated with a thirdrate Palladium show,” he stormed.
Matters were patched up, and later in 1967 Michelmore signed a new two-year contract with the BBC. But he had grown weary of the daily grind, and in 1968 he left 24 Hours in favour of a more restful existence beyond the constant clutch of current affairs.
Clifford Arthur Michelmore was born on December 11 1919 at Cowes, the youngest of six children. His parents had moved to the Isle of Wight before the First World War, in the hope of relieving his father’s tuberculosis; Michelmore senior, however, was dead before Cliff was two. Cliff ’s sister Ivy also died from TB. Since his mother could not afford the fares to the grammar school in Newport, Cliff went to Cowes Senior School, where he became head boy and captain of cricket – and rather alarmed the staff with his eagerness to organise everything and everybody.
There was some thought that he should go into the Methodist ministry; in 1935, however, he joined the RAF and underwent initial training at RAF Halton, in Buckinghamshire. The outbreak of the Second World War found him in France as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force, “a stirring title,” as he later reflected, “for a far from stirring force”.
An aircraft crash in a ditch ended any chance of Michelmore serving as aircrew; his eyesight, it was evident, was not up to the mark. The rest of his war was spent on the ground, at air stations, group and command headquarters and the Air Ministry. At various times in the RAF he ran into Herbert Bowden (the future Lord Aylestone and chairman of the IBA), William Glock, who would become Controller of Music at the BBC, and the singer Max Bygraves.
At the end of the war Michelmore was sent to Denmark on an Air Disarmament Wing. And then, on the strength of having done some radio commentaries on interservice games, he was sent to Hamburg as Officer Commanding Royal Airforce Element, the British Forces Network in Germany. His rank was now squadron leader.
The BFN proved an ideal training, being the sort of organisation in which everyone was expected to do everything: write scripts, act in plays, announce concerts, give talks. Michelmore remembered with special affection a production of The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which Nigel Davenport played Robin, Raymond Baxter Guy of Guisborne, Geraint Evans Blondel, Bryan Forbes Will Scarlet and Roger Moore a forester. Michelmore himself was Little John.
Another of his duties was to host record request programmes, and when the regular Hamburg presenter of Two-Way Family Favourites, the Sunday lunchtime link between the forces in Germany and their families in Britain, was taken ill, Michelmore was drafted in to replace him.
Before the programme began he used to chat on the closed line to the presenter at the London end, Jean Metcalfe, in whom he detected a distinctly flirtatious tone. She helped him through the early programmes, and when, in the spring of 1949, he came to London and met her, romance immediately blossomed.
The timing was perfect, for it was in 1949 that divorce ended Michelmore’s ill-fated wartime marriage to a nurse. But no hint of his affair with Jean Metcalfe was allowed to surface in Two-Way Family Favourites; even the official announcement of their marriage, in 1950, had to be postponed until he had left the programme.
At this stage, there was a distinct risk of Michelmore being “Mr Metcalfe” – since his wife commanded a vast public following. One listener, indeed, was sufficiently enamoured to leave her a legacy of £3,000, which the Michelmores put towards the purchase of the White House in Reigate in 1958.
Having left the RAF and returned to London in 1950, he was in search of employment at the BBC. On radio he introduced dance bands, and commentated on sport. But his first billing in the Radio Times was on children’s television, in July 1950: “Cliff Michelmore explains the rules and scoring of tennis and introduces the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships from Wimbledon.”
Subsequently Michelmore interviewed such sporting heroes as Stanley Matthews, Denis Compton and Godfrey Evans for children’s television. For All Your Own, introduced by Huw Weldon, he travelled the country looking for talented youngsters. He also presented the children’s news programme Telescope.
Michelmore’s breakthrough to later evening television came in 1955 when Donald Baverstock asked him to join his topical programme Highlight, which pioneered a grittier style of interviewing. Michelmore also worked for Panorama and as a reporter on Saturday Sport. He had therefore served a thorough apprenticeship by time he was offered his big chance on Tonight.
In no time Michelmore was rivalling Richard Dimbleby as the BBC’s leading current affairs specialist, less heavyweight no doubt, but still scrupulously well informed, and a good deal less pompous. He introduced the general election results in 1964, 1966 and 1970; he covered the Apollo space probes; and in 1967 he was put in charge of the satellite programme My World.
It was Michelmore who reported from Aberfan after the disastrous slurry slide in 1966. It was Michelmore who (with Brian Connell) helped to guide the Prince of Wales through his first television interview in 1969, before the Investiture at Caernarvon.
From 1966 he hosted a series of television programmes titled So You Think You…, including …Need the Doctor (1967), …Can Manage Your Money (1967), …Know the New Laws (1970), …Can Drive (1970), …Are a Good Wife (1970), …Know Your Kings and Queens (1971), …Know Britain (1971), …You’re Safe at Home (1974).
When Michelmore left 24 Hours in 1968, he set up a company to
make video cassette programmes. But though he turned down the opportunity to take over from Freddie Grisewood on radio’s Any Questions, and to replace Eamonn Andrews on This Is Your Life, he remained a frequent presence on both mediums.
British By Choice (1969) gave those who had settled in this country an opportunity to explain why; Across the Great Divide (1970) investigated Britons living in America; and Wheelbase (1972) was a series about the motor industry.
Holiday, which ran from 1969 to 1986, involved Michelmore in the arduous duty of travelling around the world investigating the offerings of the leisure industry.
In 1970 he did a series of interviews under the title With Michelmore; his subjects included Matt Busby, Ginger Rogers and Field Marshal Montgomery, who confessed that his favourite television programme was Come Dancing – “the one with all those pwetty girls in pwetty fwocks dancing in formation”.
Though Michelmore continued to work hard, he never showed any disposition to return to news programmes, and left himself time for such distractions as celebrity golf tournaments. On radio, he chaired Whatever You Think (1972), an attempt to find a variation on the old Brains Trust programmes, with questions from the public; it never carried sufficient intellectual weight to succeed. Home Town (1975) was a television variation on the Down Your Way formula which gave Michelmore the opportunity to show his talent as a chatter-up.
He had a brief and unhappy spell with Southern Television in 1980, but three years later found agreeable berth as the presenter of Home On Sunday (1983-90) and of Lifeline (1986-96). His radio programmes included Coastline (1991-94), Cliff ’s Country (1992), and Scrapbook: A Year to Remember (1996-97).
Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe published a joint autobiography, Two-Way Story (1986). Radio 4 broadcast a retrospective of his career for his 80th birthday. He returned to the BBC in 2007 to introduce a programme on the Parliament channel, recalling the devaluation of the pound in 1967. He was appointed CBE in 1969. Jean Metcalfe died in 2000; Cliff Michelmore is survived by their son and daughter.
Cliff Michelmore, born December 11 1919, died March 17 2016