Peter Holmes Woods was a British journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, reporter and newsreader

News presenter

A news presenter is a person who presents news during a news program in the format of a television show, on the radio or the Internet.News presenters can work in a radio studio, television studio and from remote broadcasts in the field especially weather...

.

Early life and career

Born in Romford

Romford

Romford is a large suburban town in north east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, Woods was educated at Hull Grammar School

Hull Grammar School

Hull Grammar School was an independent secondary school in Hull, England, founded in 1486 by Dr. John Alcock. The school merged with Hull High School to form Hull Collegiate School in 2005.- History :The seventeenth oldest independent school in the U.K...

 and Imperial Service College

Imperial Service College

The Imperial Service College ' was a leading English public school based in Windsor.In 1942, it merged with Haileybury to form Haileybury and Imperial Service College...

, Windsor

Windsor, Berkshire

Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....

. He began his career in print journalism, writing for newspapers including the Yorkshire Post

Yorkshire Post

The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...

, the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

and the Daily Mirror, with a break for military service as a commissioned officer in the Royal Horse Guards

Royal Horse Guards

The Royal Horse Guards was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry.Founded August 1650 in Newcastle Upon Tyne by Sir Arthur Haselrig on the orders of Oliver Cromwell as the Regiment of Cuirassiers, the regiment became the Earl of Oxford's Regiment during the reign of...

.

He is best known for his television work with for BBC News

BBC News

BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...

 on Newsroom

Newsroom (BBC programme)

Newsroom was the BBC2 channel's main news programme during the 1960s and early 1970s.The programme began on the day BBC2 started transmission, 20 April 1964 and continued until 1973. The programme was initially broadcast late at night but was moved to a 7.30 - 8.00pm time-slot in 1968...

initially as a reporter but also as a newsreader from the 1960s until the early 1980s. He was the first newsreader to broadcast in colour on BBC2, in News Room. In 1976, he slurred his words on the early evening news. Viewers phoned in to complain that Woods was drunk, but his difficulties were blamed on medication for sinus problems.

Woods was readily seen as an archetypal British newsreader, and was used as such in a number of comedy sketches and films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These included Monty Python

Monty Python

Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

, There's a Lot of It About

Q (TV series)

Q... was a surreal television comedy sketch show from Spike Milligan which ran from 1969 to 1982 on BBC2. There were six series in all, the first five numbered from Q5 to Q9, and a final series titled There's a Lot of It About...

, The New Statesman

The New Statesman

The New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...

, and Jonnie Turpie's 1987 film Out of Order. He also appeared (again as a newsreader) in an advertising campaign for KP Cheese Dips in the mid-1980s. Along with all the other BBC newsreaders of the time, Woods participated in the 1977 Christmas edition of the Morecambe and Wise Show. They delivered a rendition of the song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame

There Is Nothing Like a Dame

"There is Nothing Like a Dame" is one of the songs from the musical South Pacific. The song was written by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is widely popular in the musical arts, often sung by men's choirs....

" (from the musical South Pacific

South Pacific (musical)

South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...

) with Woods getting the deep-voiced last line and using his trademark seriousness to comic effect.

From the mid-1980s up until his death, Woods narrated the "Railscene" videos, a series of videos about Britain's railways. He also narrated a set of five Castle Vision productions about the steam trains of "The Big Four

Big Four British railway companies

The Big Four was a name used to describe the four largest railway companies in the United Kingdom in the period 1923-1947. The name was coined by the Railway Magazine in its issue of February 1923: "The Big Four of the New Railway Era".The Big Four were:...

" British railway companies and British Railways.

Personal life

Woods had two children, Susan (born c. 1955) and Guy (c. 1957) with his first wife Kathleen Marian (née Smith). The marriage was dissolved in 1975 and he later married Esma Jean Woods. He died aged 64 on March 22, 1995.

In 2011, BBC journalist Justin Webb

Justin Webb

Justin Oliver Webb is a British journalist who has worked for the BBC since 1984. Since August 2009, he has presented on the Today programme.-Early life:...

 revealed that Peter Woods was his natural father. Woods had an affair with Webb's mother who was a secretary at the Daily Mirror when Woods was a star reporter. Woods though was already married and Webb's mother was separated from her first husband. Webb commented that the separation may have been as much his mother's doing as his father's, saying "I do not believe she was abandoned." Woods provided financially for Webb and supported his education at Sidcot School

Sidcot School

Sidcot School is a British co-educational independent school for boarding and day pupils, associated with the Religious Society of Friends. It is one of seven Quaker schools in England....

, but saw Webb only once, when he was six months old.