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Eamonn Andrews
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Eamonn Andrews, CBE (hon.) (19 December, 1922 – 5 November, 1987) was an Irish-born television presenter based in England.
Andrews was born in Synge Street, Dublin, Ireland, the same street as playwright George Bernard Shaw. He was educated at the local school, Synge Street CBS. He began his career as an amateur boxer and went on to be a sports commentator on Radio Éireann. In 1950, he began presenting programmes for the BBC and soon became one of television's most popular presenters.
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Eamonn Andrews, CBE (hon.) (19 December, 1922 – 5 November, 1987) was an Irish-born television presenter based in England.
Andrews was born in Synge Street, Dublin, Ireland, the same street as playwright George Bernard Shaw. He was educated at the local school, Synge Street CBS. He began his career as an amateur boxer and went on to be a sports commentator on Radio Éireann. In 1950, he began presenting programmes for the BBC and soon became one of television's most popular presenters. In 1965, he left the BBC to join Associated British Corporation where he pioneered the talk show format in Britain.
Series with which he was associated included:
He chaired the Radio Éireann Authority between 1960 and 1964, overseeing the introduction of television to the Republic of Ireland and establishing the Irish State Broadcaster as an independent semi-state body.
He was famous for coming up with off-the-cuff linkings which did not work—such as 'speaking of cheese sandwiches, have you come far?'. This was parodied by the character Seamus Android in the BBC radio programme Round the Horne in the 1960s. At the time Andrews hosted a chat show on ITV. He was also famous for sweating while on screen, as parodied by another BBC radio programme The Burkiss Way.
In the late 1960s, at the height of the Cold War and Vietnam, he showed his serious side when at his own expense he interviewed many notables to ask them their current opinions, and what they thought the world would be like twenty years into the future. He planned to invite them back, to screen what they had said, and to chat about how accurate they had been. He never lived to record the second part; the tapes exist in the family's archives, and have never been viewed.
He is perhaps best known as the presenter of the UK's version of "This Is Your Life", between its inception in 1955 and his death in 1987, when he was succeeded by Michael Aspel (who had also succeeded Andrews as host of Crackerjack 22 years earlier). He also created a long-running panel game called "Whose Baby?" which originally ran on BBC and later ITV. He was a regular presenter of the early Miss World pageants.
After months of illness, he died suddenly from heart failure in November 1987, aged 64, in the private Cromwell Hospital, London. His widow Grainne Bourke, whom he married in 1951, died eighteen months later. They had three adopted children.
Eamonn Andrews is also the name of a linking composition by the 1970s British avant-rock band Soft Machine. It was named after Eamonn because it was an off-the-cuff link between unrelated pieces in their live sets. Over time, it came into its own as a major part of the live Soft Machine repertoire.
Cornish producer and recording artist Luke Vibert paid tribute to Andrews by releasing a series of hardcore and jungle EPs on Rephlex Records under the pseudonym of "Amen Andrews", featuring a picture of the real Andrews on the second side of all 5 EPs.
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