Born in Thurnscoe, West Riding of Yorkshire, Leonard began his career as a reporter on the Wakefield Express series of weekly papers, then Yorkshire Observer, Bradford Telegraph and Argus and Yorkshire Evening Post. He was one of the BBC’s early television news reporters in the BBC News division (1954 – 1960) and was later BBC Radio News Canada correspondent (1960 – 1965) and Washington correspondent (1963 – 1965). In November 1963, as deputy correspondent in Washington, his Radio Newsreel report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy proved to be an historic recording. He also worked as a reporter on BBC TV’s Panorama (1965 – 1967). He was involved in coverage of five general elections: BBC reporter (1966); ITN reporter (1970, February 1974, 1983) and ITN presenter 1979.
…King, Susan
Susan presented various BBC TV children’s series during the 1970s: Country Search (BBC One, 1975 – 1977); Play It Again… (BBC One, 1975); BBC Manchester’s The Sunday Gang (BBC One, 1976); Horses Galore (BBC One, 1977 – 1979); BBC Manchester’s sports series Stopwatch (BBC One, 1978 – 1980). She was also a guest on All-Star Record Breakers (BBC One, 1975 – 1980), a panellist on Star Turn (BBC One, 1976, 1977 and 1979), and a reporter on We’re Going Places (BBC One, 1979).
…Soanes, Zeb
Zeb trained as an actor and graduated from the University of East Anglia where he was spotted by the BBC.
…Chell, Carol
Carol was born in 1941. An actress, she studied drama at The Royal Academy of Music and was a qualified teacher who presented many schools series for Granada TV and Central TV including: The Messengers and Enough to Eat.
…Long, Sarah
Sarah was a RADA-trained actress. She was best known as a Play School presenter. She made her debut appearance on the programme on 6th September 1971. Producers John Lane, Peter Ridsdale-Scott and pianist Jonathan Cohen all agreed that Sarah wasn’t a good singer. However, she was a lovely actress and was given another chance, and worked well on screen. Their judgement proved right, as she stayed on the presenting team for a further 15 years. The earliest surviving footage within the BBC archives of Sarah on Play School is Friday 10th September 1971 and archivist and author Paul R. Jackson viewed the programme. It was a little odd that when Sarah showed items to be used in the Pop Goes the Weasel song, that she couldn’t make a brown paper bag burst – but this was kept in the final recording.
…Lewis, Anthony
Anthony was born in Leeds. He began acting at the age of nine, with roles in television shows including Heartbeat (1994), Cracker (1995), The Detectives (1995) and A Touch of Frost (1996).
…Jaque, Natalie
Natalie gained a degree in journalism with distinction and then backpacked around the world for a while (before the days of e-mail, iPad or mobile phone). She worked as a staff announcer with the BBC from 1997 until 2004, mainly live on BBC Two. Since March 2015, she has been a freelancing voice on both BBC One and BBC Two. Natalie was also the first female voice on BBC Knowledge and BBC Choice, and went on to become the BBC’s first freelance announcer.
…Fox, Everton
Everton was born in Cambridge in 1964. He worked in the Department of Social Security as a civil servant before joining the Met Office in 1991. He spent a year at the Norwich Weather Centre. Having completed the forecaster foundation programme in March 2000, which included on-the-job training at RAF Marham in Norfolk, he went on to become a forecaster at the London Weather Centre where he worked for three months.
…Foulkes, Jerry
Jerry was a Children’s ITV presenter who provided the continuity links, alongside Scally the puppet dog, from 28th March until 22nd December 1989. On the first day that Jeanne Downs took over from him (on 2nd January 1990), they had a mop and a bucket in the studio, and a name tag with “Foulkes” on it. During the links both she and Scally made some amusing comments about it.
…Young, Helen
Helen was born in Crawley but raised in East Grinstead and Old Coulsdon/Purley, Surrey. She graduated with a BSc (hons) in geography from Bristol University in 1990 and joined the Met Office in September 1990, working in the commercial services division as a consultant, providing climatology reports for the building and transport industries. She wrote climatological reports for county councils and often had to go out to rural locations and report on whether proposed road routes would be fog prone or frost prone. Helen commented: “It was a great job, but you were certainly less popular than being a TV weather forecaster!” She trained as a forecaster in November 1992 and moved to Bristol Weather Centre in February 1993. She appeared as a forecaster on local TV for HTV for one week as emergency cover. Later, she would move to BBC Bristol, appearing on Points West.
…Morris, Christopher
Chris was born in Luton. His career in broadcasting and journalism spanned 60 years.
…Dougall, Robert
Robert was born and educated in Croydon. After leaving school, he worked briefly in the City, before joining the BBC in the accounts department. He made his first broadcast on the old Empire Service on his 21st birthday in 1934. On the day World War II was declared, and speaking as an anonymous Englishman, he broadcast a last-minute appeal to the German people to stop the invasion of Poland. He was a reporter in the early years of the war before joining the Royal Navy. He was based in Northern Russia as an interpreter for 18 months.
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