THE news has leaked out. The dreadful truth is known. The boys of Battersea Grammar School in South London have at last learned that their 29-year-old schoolmaster, A.B.C. TV announcer John Edmunds, wears a GREEN suit during his evening transmissions.

The boys show do mercy on him. They call him “Le Beau” – and who wouldn’t after seeing his magnificent suit.

It is of Lovat green [a yellowish-green or bluish-green mixture named after Lovat in Inverness-shire, according to the Collins English Dictionary – Ed] with dark bottle green lapels. His bow-tie is also bottle green and his shirt is stone coloured.

This oddly-coloured get-up was specially made for John because the small, fixed-position TV camera in front of his announcer’s desk makes a better picture from greens and off-white mon from the violently contrasting black and white of conventional evening dress.

John was hoping that the boys of Battersea Grammar School, where he teaches from Monday to Friday, would never get to hear about his suit. And there was a sporting chance that they wouldn’t have done so, for his TV appearances are seen only in the Midlands and the North.

But — poor fellow – the secret is out.

While correcting an English composition the other day. he opened a youngster’s exercise book and there, slipped between the pages, found these verses, headed “The Beau”:

Lovat green, it is his shade;
Lovat green, with shoes of suede.
His fans are numbered by the score
Waiting patiently at the door
His fame is spreading far and wide
This fact I won’t attempt to hide,
But!
If your fans knew what he’s like at school
Lashing about with his cane and rule,
You wouldn’t cry “Oh Hero Mine”
Or fill your hearts with love divine.
You’d stop and think of the Battersea Band
Who suffer and squirm ‘neath his iron hand.

Poor John! They’re much kinder to him at the TV studio at Birmingham where he’s known as “Smiler” and at Leicester where he’s the favourite of many a housewife.

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LEICESTER’S 70-year-old Mrs. Stella Sharman has had the greatest thrill of her life. Visiting the A.B.C. television studio at Aston, Birmingham, last Sunday, she spent the whole afternoon with her favourite TV personality, the 29-year-old announcer, John Edmunds.

The visit, specially arranged for her by the “Illustrated Chronicle,” was a great success, ending with Mrs. Sharman and John kissing each other as they said goodbye

Mrs. Sharman made the happy discovery that John, who works a seven-day week, five as a schoolmaster, two as an announcer, was even nicer than she expected. And. believe me, she had expected a great deal!

John has the knack of putting people at ease, says Mrs. Sharman. “If you had a trouble he would be the sort of person you would like to meet,” she says.

At her home, 8, Bradbourne Road, Mrs. Sharman had waited excitedly for the red letter day. Keyed up with happy anticipation, she and her husband, 68-year-old Mr. Robert Sharman, were taken by car to a luxury hotel in Birmingham, where they lunched with John Edmunds.

ARM IN ARM

Mrs. Sharman and John were like mother and son in no time. Later, at the studio. John walked arm in arm with her. Nothing was too much trouble for him. Everything he did quickly confirmed Mrs Sharman in her belief that his “gentle, kindly manner’ on TV was far from being skin deep.

She was sure he made an excellent schoolmaster. If her grown-up daughter and sons were children he would be just the kind of teacher she would like them to have.

TINY STUDIO

First thing John showed Mrs. Sharman was the tiny studio from which he made his announcements. She sat at his announcer’s desk, saw herself in his monitor screen, and examined his control switches.

Mrs. Sharman also saw the small fixed-position TV camera a few feet in front of John’s desk. This camera is similar to those used for televising programme titles.

She was particularly interested in John’s green dinner jacket and cream-coloured shirt, which he wears when announcing in the evening. “This camera does not like strong contrasts.” he says. Viewers see the green as black and the cream as white.

Later, John took Mrs. Sharman and her husband to the make-up room and the other studios, introducing her to the seemingly chaotic, overpopulated world of TV in the making.

Mrs. Sharman watched a rehearsal and had tea with John. He signed her autograph book as a souvenir of a very pleasant afternoon.

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Most TV hopefuls want to be an ANNOUNCER.

What is it that makes an announcer’s job look so glamorous. A job which means 100 per cent concentration for 12 hours non-stop each day? Perhaps it’s because the announcer must be a friendly man, acceptable in every one of over two million households.

The announcer is the permanent link between home and studio. Programmes and performers may change by the hour, but the announcer is present the whole time, making anything up to 40 or more appearances every day. These frequent appearances make a firm impact on the mind of the viewer.

The announcer becomes easily recognisable in the the street, on the bus, or in the pub, and he cannot walk across the road without being spotted. Heads will turn and he will overhear the remarks – “Ooh, look, that’s John Edmunds. You know, the announcer on the telly.”

Perhaps it is that little bit of egoism present in every human being that tempts young people to hanker after the announcer’s job.

“For, believe me, life ceases to become normal once you are an announcer,” says John. Sometimes, he has to slip away from a side door in the studio to escape the attentions of fans, some of whom can be quite fanatical, at times.

Not for him the hotel rooms in the city centre – he would be an obvious target for the fans on each week end lie in wait inside Birmingham hotels, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourites and to get their autographs. John spends his week-ends in very homely and comfortable digs in Erdington, with “the most charming landlady imaginable.”

You see, John is a friendly and sociable chap who likes to meet people away from the glare of the studio lights. He is a homely type – and that is one of the most essential qualities of an announcer. If the station announcer is not a friendly visitor to the viewers’ home, then the station is switched off.

What other qualifications? A pleasant voice? Naturally – but not necessarily a donnish voice, and certainly not an affected one. It must be a voice acceptable to the Black Country, to Shropshire, to the happy, homely Lancastrian and the shrewd and dour Yorkshireman.

What language qualifications are desirable? Well, French is most useful (John Edmunds was a French master before joining ABC Television); Italian is handy, and so is German. If you know a little Greek, Polish, Swahili or Urdu, so much the better.

Does acting experience help? Definitely. Although the announcer must, at all times be of a friendly and happy disposition, there are occasions where acting ability can help him. John Edmunds was recently suffering from extremely painful tooth abcess [sic]. All of the dentists were closed and he faced a ten-hour stint of duty on Sunday. Make-up department, with their pots of magic creams, smoothed out the ‘pain lines’ in his wrinkled forehead, softened down the swelling lump on his face, and brought some colour to his ashen cheeks, but only his acting ability could produce the smiling, happy, trouble free announcer that Sunday.

The announcer must be prepared to speak ad lib at a moment’s notice. There may be a few minutes – or just a few seconds – in hand before the next programme comes on. He must be prepared to speak intelligently and unharried without a script, to millions of viewers, making making up his words as he goes along. His announcement must finish dead on the second, and it must be conclusive.

He cannot break off in the middle of a sentence because the merciless studio clock has beaten him to it. All this he must assess as he goes along – and that’s not easy, particularly when the controller has called him up on the studio ‘talk back’ and told him that he has ‘one minute thirteen seconds to fill, starting in five seconds time!’

Butterflies In The Stomach

What is it like to sit in the announcer’s chair? Very, very lonely. At the other end of that camera facing him are millions of viewers – his friends, but in the studio he is all alone with nobody at his side, not even a cameraman, for the camera is operated by remote control in the adjoining control room.

Once he embarks on his announcements, he is out on his own, speaking in a small studio, with a cluster of monitor sets, clock, cue lights, microphones and cameras just three feet away from him and facing into the glare of the studio lights. And he knows that seven million people are listening, he hopes, to his every word.

“Butterflies?” says John, “my stomach breeds them at the beginning of each working day. But as you go through that day, hour by hour, there comes a time soon when those butterflies have settled down to sleep, and you become completely relaxed. Up to this point you have been acting with all the ability at your command, to appear relaxed, comfortable and easy.”

So there is is. Our announcer must be pleasant looking and have a pleasant speaking voice. He must have a friendly approach to the job. He must be a linguist, and preferably have had acting experience. Oh, and he must be able to control breeding butterflies.

The time – 15.18.09, or nine seconds past eighteen minutes past three. John Edmunds prepares to read an announcement, coming up in 12 seconds time. On the left is the studio monitor which he can switch on to see the actual programme, or himself as the camera sees him. On the front of his desk are his cue lights, red on the left, green on the right. The red light flashing means stand by, and “steady green” means go ahead. The studio clock, known unpopularly [sic] as “That Thing” is surmounted by the small, but all important Announcer’s Camera, which can be moved up and down or sideways by remote control from the COntrol Room, the windows of which can be seen in this picture. On the right of his desk by the arm of his chair can be seen the switch controls for the picture monitor and his microphone, which he switches on and off himself. All this equipment is within three feet of him as he makes his announcements.

Commentary

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“I’m much too busy,” he declares. “I don’t have any romantic attachments at all.

“I’ve been combining teaching with announcing until Christmas, but now I’ve decided to concentrate on my television commitments.”

At present he is announcing from the Birmingham studios, but he hopes to go on to straight acting. He would also like to work on television for schools — he taught French at a London grammar school until he resigned to go full-time on television.

He has made such a big impact that he often has difficulty getting away from the studios. One Sunday so many girls were waiting for him he had to be smuggled out dressed as a labourer.

But one woman was more persistent. She waited each Saturday and Sunday; telephoned; wrote scores of letters. For weeks Edmunds managed to elude her.

“One day, she caught up with me,” he recalls. “It was a hurried conversation as I was rather late. But she still managed to explain her feelings for me. It was terribly embarrassing.”

Many of the letters are pathetic, but he answers them all. One came from a mother in the Midlands who told him that her daughter had been taking a more than usual interest in the announcing spots. “The fact is,” wrote the mother, “she hasn’t a clue what you’ve said when I ask her afterwards.”

“I did answer this letter,” says Edmunds, “but not as the mother would have wished. She wanted me to write and say that I was happily married with three children!”

When Edmunds was still teaching and announcing “it was a case of scowling during weekdays and smiling at weekends,” he laughed.

“My pupils knew nothing of my double life. Strange to think that millions of viewers in the Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire had seen me but none of my pupils knew what I did with my week-ends.”

A Welshman, Edmunds was educated at Aberystwyth and went to the university there, where he took a first class honours degree in modern languages. He had a strong leaning towards the stage in those days, and during university vacations spent several seasons in repertory and two summer seasons at a holiday camp.

One of his enterprises was his own student repertory company called “The Adventurers.”

A great lover of Shakespeare, he toured French schools and universities with his own production of Twelfth Night.

“After I had obtained my degree, the Royal Navy decided it was time to teach me something about seamanship. I was called up, and served for three years and three weeks.

“But the strange part is,” he recalls, “for three years I studied at a university on a special Russian language course. The odd three weeks? I spent those swabbing decks.”

When he isn’t in Birmingham, Edmunds shares a flat in London with Richard Baker, a BBC TV news reader. In his spare time he enjoys reading Shakespeare, playgoing and cooking.

“Working in Birmingham these past few months has made me into a really good cook,” he admits. “I’ve watched Philip Harben at work, and obtained quite a few tips from the master.

“Every Monday I try out a new recipe at home – probably that’s the reason why my friend Dick Baker always stays out on a Monday!”

But good cook or not, girls are out. Though Edmunds does admit that Jayne Mansfield is his idea of a perfect film actress.

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How was ABC to respond, in such a way as to make its presence felt? How to find a way not to be overwhelmed by the Granada or ATV identity?

The answer was to be as different as possible from their opposite numbers. With Granada being Northern, dour and serious, ABC always felt lighter, with a more cosmopolitan touch. Against ATV in the Midlands, itself a lighter station, ABC went in the opposite direction, and became more heavyweight, emphasising its Adult Education and Sunday Arts programmes in extensive trailers.

This odd dichotomy of identity worked well in both cases, though seemed slightly more successful in the North. The Midland output suffered from sharing studios with ATV, and having to work hard to look different. In the North, separate studios seemed to facilitate a quite different weekend ‘feel’ to the station. This policy was successful with advertisers and ABC was always fully booked, and its rate card was more expensive than the Granada or ATV equivalents.

How did this affect the viewer?

As an ABC viewer in the early sixties, I was always impressed by the ‘balanced weekend package’ that ABC worked to provide. There was something for everyone – arts, variety, music, nostalgia, drama, ABPC’s films, children’s programmes, news and adult education, not to mention those weekend staples of sport, religion, and the Avengers.

Specialist programming abounded in the daytime slots, weekend programming generally starting before lunchtime, while weekday programmes started at teatime. Typically, in the early sixties daytimes, ABC had cookery, music, gardening, farming, and a highbrow cultural programme early on Sundays, with a magazine programme at teatime. These quality programmes balanced the more glitzy evening fare of films, drama and variety.

The weekday programming, hemmed in as it was between fixed points like news, Coronation Street and regional programming, was hard to vary and became predictable. With ABC at weekends, there was always something different, something special, or something unexpected. It could be “Teach Yourself Russian” from Tyne Tees on Saturday lunchtimes, “The Grammar of Cookery” on Sunday mornings or a joint production of “The Struggle for Peace”, with America’s Westinghouse for US education stations, on Sunday afternoons.

ABC offered a package of delights that made the weekend distinctive, and the weekdays with Granada or ATV predictable.

With a team of regular and friendly ‘in vision’ announcers, known on air as ‘station hosts’, and led by John Benson, John Edmunds, David Hamilton and Sheila Kennedy, ABC were never patronising, and always interesting. The contrast with the weekday companies was stark and very evident.

ABC succeeded in presenting a station personality that was quite unique in the television of the fifties and sixties.

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