Eamonn Andrews

Did You Know?

• Andrews won the Irish junior middleweight title in 1944 as a keen amateur boxer.
• He was appointed an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970.

Broadcasting career

Eamonn Andrews started his broadcasting career in 1946 as a full-time freelance sports commentator for Radio Éireann, Ireland's state broadcaster. By 1950, he was presenting programmes for the BBC, where his boxing commentaries made him a familiar voice, and he quickly became one of the most popular television presenters of the era. The following year, he began hosting the game show What's My Line?, and he also appeared occasionally as a panellist on its American version, once filling in as host when John Charles Daly was unavailable.

During the 1950s, he covered major British heavyweight boxing matches on the BBC Light Programme, with W. Barrington Dalby providing inter-round summaries. On 20 January 1956, he charted at number 18 in the UK Singles Chart with a spoken-word recording, "The Shifting Whispering Sands (Parts 1 & 2)", produced by George Martin and backed by the Ron Goodwin Orchestra on a Parlophone 78 rpm record. From 1950 to 1964, he presented the long-running Sports Report on the BBC Light Programme.

In 1965, he moved to the ITV contractor ABC, where he became the first host of World of Sport and helped pioneer the chat show format in the UK, hosting The Eamonn Andrews Show for five years. He was known for awkward ad-libs, like "Speaking of cheese sandwiches, have you come far?", which were parodied by Bill Pertwee as the character Seamus Android on the radio comedy Round the Horne. During the 1960s and 1970s, he also presented Thames Television's Today news magazine programme.

He is best remembered as the presenter of the UK version of This Is Your Life, from its launch in 1955 until his death in 1987, when Michael Aspel took over. Andrews himself was the first person surprised by the show on British television, caught off guard by its creator Ralph Edwards. He also created and owned the panel game Whose Baby?, which aired on both the BBC and ITV, and was a regular host of early Miss World pageants.

Death

After months of illness during 1987, originally caused by a virus contracted during a plane journey, Andrews died from heart failure on 5 November 1987 aged 64 at the Cromwell Hospital in London. He had recorded his last edition of This Is Your Life six days before on 30 October 1987. After his death, the show, and two others that had yet to be broadcast, were postponed until, with his widow's permission, they were broadcast in January 1988. A funeral service was held for Andrews at St Anne's Church in Portmarnock where he had his home, and his body was buried in Balgriffin Cemetery to the north of Dublin. A memorial mass was held for him in Westminster Cathedral.