New plans for ‘Living Your Life’

A BISHOP and a Member of Parliament discussing marriage; the history of a pre-Conquest church; information about pilgrimages to Lourdes. These are some of the things viewers will see in ABC’s religious programme, Living Your Life, during the next few weeks.

A wide diversity of subjects to include under the heading religion. But this will be an informal, informative, hard-hitting and sometimes controversial TV programme. It reaches a greater public; it brings religion into the lives of non-churchgoers.

Man behind the programme is 31-year-old Tom Singleton. His qualification for producing this series is that he studied theology at school, was active in the Methodist church and a member of the YMCA.

He has, however, no doctrinaire outlook. “I think that is perhaps a good thing,” he said, explaining that subjects were chosen to appeal to every denomination.

Certainly Tom Singleton is not biased. He has had programmes devoted to Roman Catholic interests — Douglas Hyde, ex Communist turned Roman Catholic, was interviewed. He gave extra time to a Methodist programme when German pastor Martin Niemoller was speaking in Manchester.

On another programme he got four young Church of England clerics to discuss their training. He has gone outside the Church to discuss moral problems of young people in industry.

Tom Singleton is a man with a fund of new ideas, inquisitive about religion and sympathetic towards human problems. These, allied to his knowledge of television, are the reasons why he handles his programmes in such an interesting way. He was born in Old Trafford, Manchester, near the famous cricket ground. At 18 he joined the Army. Broadcasting came into his life when, with the Indian Army, he began taking part in Forces programmes.

Five years later he was demobilised – but be carried on Forces broadcasting as a civil servant. Later he joined the British Forces Network in Germany, after which he was appointed Programmes Officer for the Forces Network in the Middle East.

Lively, broadminded Singleton left this post to join ABC just before the Midlands opening. Living Your Life is not his only work for the company — he is also Head of Presentation.

He is married and has two young children. He writes books and plays. He wrote The Gloves, a play which starred Dennis Price and Betty McDowall on television.

One of his plans is to show the changing face of church architecture. This begins on February 9 when, in the first programme about the parish church, ABC cameras go to Wootton Wawen, between Birmingham and Stratford-on-Avon, to study the pre-Conquest church of St Peter’s. The earliest record goes back to AD 723.

The late George Gilbert Scott described St Peter’s as “an epitome in stone of the English Church and Nation.”

Tom Singleton told me: “We will not concentrate on individual churches after this programme, but will describe different facets in the architecture of other beautiful churches in the North and Midlands.”