Richard Baker R.I.P. (and who is/was your favourite newsreader)?

[Colin Sanction]

Nina Hossain

[Jockice]

Why I liked Nina Nannar

That's just bad manners.

[manticore]

Anna Ford was a bad newsreader, a pioneer of the affected and pompous 'I am very important and I'm telling you this in my role as the Voice of Authority' tendency which Chris Morris lampooned.

[a duncandisorderly]

Wasn't Roger Mellie based on him?

according to chris donald's book, he was at Tyne-Tees for a meeting or interview in the early days of viz, & found himself in the canteen where roderick griffiths, the news anchor, would hold court & turn the air blue. I witnessed this myself a few years later when I did work-experience there. I remember there being a sort of alpha-male stand-off between griffiths & a very young jools holland, then co-presenting 'the tune' with leslie ash & muriel gray, while paula was on maternity leave.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Mellie

[edit] but a composite with mike neville, yes. as a kid, I would enjoy neville's hand-offs to michael barratt during 'nationwide'; this latter insisted on presenting one entire show- possibly his farewell appearance- from saltburn beach, a couple of miles from where I lived at the time.

"After celebrating the Silver Jubilee in consummate style with the lavish Nationwide Jubilee Fair, an era ended on Friday 15 July 1977 when Michael Barratt bid farewell to the show. But he wasn't going quietly. His entire final week was given over to a spectacular "grand tour" around the regions aboard a specially customised British Rail exhibition train. The premise was to visit locations that held a particular resonance for Barratt, but in reality it became one long lavish personal appearance with amazing scenes of crowds thronging the train desperate for a glimpse of their teatime hero. The regal journey came to an end at Saltburn By The Sea, where an extremely emotional Barratt signed off for the very last time."

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/index1c17.html?page_id=582



funnily enough, barratt (still alive, 90) cropped up in this, which was linked in another thread- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWRdYvhBt8

[Satchmo Distel]

Mary, Mungo and Midge.

[Captain Z]

Nina Nannar

hey Jude

[gilbertharding]

"After celebrating the Silver Jubilee in consummate style with the lavish Nationwide Jubilee Fair, an era ended on Friday 15 July 1977 when Michael Barratt bid farewell to the show. But he wasn't going quietly. His entire final week was given over to a spectacular "grand tour" around the regions aboard a specially customised British Rail exhibition train. The premise was to visit locations that held a particular resonance for Barratt, but in reality it became one long lavish personal appearance with amazing scenes of crowds thronging the train desperate for a glimpse of their teatime hero. The regal journey came to an end at Saltburn By The Sea, where an extremely emotional Barratt signed off for the very last time."

Bloody hell, Michael Barratt!

I was born in 1969, so only have a child's eye view of the era - I never even, until long after he'd gone, knew his name. He was just the gruff but avuncular presence who populated the box after the Magic Roundabout finished.

About a year (maybe less) after he'd 'retired' from Nationwide, he cropped up on The Generation Game, where for some reason which makes less and less sense the more I think about it, he demonstrated a trick where he took off his shirt without first removing his waistcoat. I was savvy enough to notice he was rather flushed with the effort, and I remember my Mum making the same kind of sardonic comment she used usually to save for when my Dad got home from the pub on a Sunday lunchtime.