Peter was born in Bristol. He began his broadcasting career in 1965, whilst still a student at Oxford University, covering home matches played by Swindon Town FC for the BBC’s Home Service South West. He broadcast live a short report from the linen cupboard of the Goddard Arms Hotel in Swindon!
In 1968, Peter began working in television when HTV Wales gave him his break as one of their launch announcers. He worked alongside the young Martyn Lewis and John Humphrys.
He went on to work at Granada TV in 1971 and ATV in 1972, where he was a presenter and announcer.
At Granada TV in Manchester, he worked with Bill Grundy, who later famously fell out with The Sex Pistols on screen. He met the cast of Coronation Street every day in the canteen and the then ‘hard man’ Len Fairclough (Peter Adamson) became a chum. Ena Sharples (Violet Carson) would greet him with ‘How are you luv?’ every time he saw her. His slightly older, more lascivious friends would ask him to provide as much personal detail of Bet Lynch as he could.
‘Poochie’ as he was known to his colleagues, was a very popular continuity announcer at ATV during the 1970s. As the ‘weekend host’ in Birmingham, he worked as the face of the station from 9am on Saturday morning to closedown on a Sunday evening – a stint of just over 30 hours.
Tiring, yes, but he interviewed all of the personalities visiting the studios for The Golden Shot and other light entertainment programmes. He was famous across the region for his antics when presenting The ATV Horror Picture House season of films on Friday nights.
In 1973, Peter was given the task of linking a number of children shows on ATV on a Saturday morning. To liven up things, in between cartoons, he ad-libbed a competition, offering viewers the chance to win a T-shirt.
The response to the competition was enormous and quite unprecedented for the station. This gave him the confidence to approach ATV’s management and show them there was an untapped audience out there.
The management agreed and Tiswas was born. He was one of its original four presenters, known as the ‘plummy-voiced’ member of the team which included ATV news reporter Chris Tarrant.
He appeared in 131 editions of the show, when it was still only shown in the Midlands region, and was replaced after four years by Sally James – who as he recalled “had a better figure”.
He did though make sporadic appearances after that until 1980, when the show was at the peak of its (almost) national popularity. Tiswas went on until 1982 and had a cult following.
During the 1980s, he was heard providing the voiceover on Central Independent Television’s popular quiz show Blockbusters. He presented on Six Fifty-Five Special (BBC Two, 1981).
At this time, Peter decided that his future lay on the other side of the microphone and cameras and accepted a job as managing director of Beacon Radio in Wolverhampton. In 1985, after building the audience to around 40% of listeners in his catchment area, Peter decided to become a free agent again and use his broadcast and management skills in the world of corporate communications.
In 2001, Peter became managing director of the SAGA FM radio station. In 2005 Birmingham Children’s Hospital appointed him as executive director – marketing, communications and fundraising to raise £3 million for their new Burns Centre.
In 2007, Peter was installed as High Sheriff of the West Midlands and in 2008 was made a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands. Since 2010, Peter has been a freelance consultant, presenter, host, facilitator, moderator, MC and guest speaker.
In 2011, Peter was elected a district councillor for the Ombersley and Doverdale ward in Worcestershire and in 2012 elected to the regional Arts Council. He is chairman of Cancer Research UK Wyre Forest, vice-chairman of Lichfield Garrick Theatre, president of the West Midland Light Orchestra and a long-standing member of The Lord’s Taverners.
In 2019, he was made Chairman of Worcestershire County Council, handing over to the next Chair in July 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
Sadly his wife’s pancreatic cancer returned and she died in October 2020.
Correspondence
Paul R. Jackson corresponded with Peter in December 2017 and March 2018: “The reason you never got a reply in January 1980, was simply because I left ATV in September 1979, joining Beacon Radio during the ITV strike of that year. As a result when ATV came back on the air in November, I had already disappeared!”
Tell us about your childhood and education
“My father worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company as it was then known. He was graduate from Manchester University in mechanical engineering. He also played cricket for the University first XI, soccer for the second XI and Rugby Fives for the University. He also played piano, and with his brother (reading History) formed a comedy duo performing in university venues. He also graduated aged 18, three months before his 19th birthday and just missed a first class honours degree. I had a hell of a lot to live up to!
“I went to Bristol Grammar School where I acted in the famous annual school play which used to be reviewed in The Times, Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. I played Brutus in Julius Caesar and the following year Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
“I was, it seemed, destined for the stage. However, I also played cricket, hockey and fives for the school and when I got to Oxford my headmaster, Dr John Garrett (a Shakespearian scholar), warned me about the dangers of letting acting get in the way of obtaining a degree.
“I did act in my first year, though, coming third in the University Freshers one-act play competition (and beating Michael Palin by the way, although we had no idea who he was then!).
“Sadly my father died suddenly just after Christmas in early January 1963 before my second term began. He was just 46. I was studying Law at the time, managed to pass my Law Mods exam that Easter (God knows how) and at the end of the summer term decided to give up law and acting, and returned the next term to read English.
“I then captained my college hockey team and the Saturday cricket team and played for the college cricket team. I also played drums for a pop group we called The Five o’Clock Shadows. I had taken up the drums aged six and played with two knives on an empty biscuit tin to the Billy Cotton Band Show after lunch on a Sunday.”
Tell us about your broadcasting career
“I tried to get into the BBC full-time after graduating but it seemed they didn’t want broadcasters. Although I had been sports reporting for them for a year, they wanted producers and managers.
“Eventually I joined the newly formed Harlech Television which subsequently morphed into HTV. I started by anchoring the news programme at 6pm and was in the hot seat when everything went wrong on the opening night (50 years ago this coming May 20th).
“The national newspapers featured it on their front pages, but apparently not having a clue what was going on I stoically sat there trying to interpret the increasingly desperate signals of the floor manager and came up with the phrase ‘Well the first night gremlins seem to be having a field day, if you see what I mean’.
“At the end of the programme after the network had taken over there was a stunned silence in the studio, no one moved or said anything, so I stood up and as I did a ripple of applause broke out and increased until everyone in the studio joined in.
“My first thought was that they were all being totally sarcastic and the applause was a form of irony but I was soon corrected when told that no, it was just the opposite and that they had genuinely admired my performance in the face of such chaos – especially as I was so new to it all!
“News at that time was really not my thing and I got transferred to continuity within a few months. I thought I was being downgraded somehow but it turned out to be the making of me. I could ad lib, come up with my own thoughts and generally be much more of a personality on screen than being stuck in the news anchor role.
“I also fronted a children’s programme called Very Very Varied with Liz Carse, who later married Martyn Lewis. It was one of the most enjoyable periods of my life. I did an army assault course, abseiled down the side of the studio building, drove a tank, got grabbed by a police German shepherd dog on the padded arm they gave me, broke my nose whilst on a trampoline (broke it with my left knee would you believe), went up in a hot-air balloon, was shot up in an ejector seat trainer and many, many other things all in front of the cameras.
“Was very sad to leave HTV in 1971, but I had fallen foul of the programme controller for no reason I know of but it was a rude awakening to the world of the freelance presenter. No such thing as security of tenure. One indelicate word in the wrong quarter or a change of management or just a ‘refresh of image’ and you were looking for work again.
“I was fortunate to get to Granada who were looking for someone to take their announcers into vision and they wanted me to spearhead this. It actually never happened but I used to treck all the way from South Gloucestershire up the M5 and M6 to Manchester to fulfil my continuity shifts on a roster which gave me two days on, three days off, three days on then two days off or something along those lines.
“So I commuted, driving my little VW Beetle, top speed and cruising speed both 78mph. I never knew where I was going to sleep when on duty but kind relations and friends helped out and the redoubtable Mrs Hoey on occasions.
“One day the engine blew up as a valve stuck and was hit by a piston. I wasn’t exactly flush with money. My wife earned a crust teaching art part-time at the local prep school so a new engine was a big expense.
“Luckily I had been earning extra money doing voiceovers for local commercials at HTV. Apparently I had what was at that time just the kind of voice for these low-cost type ads. I was to continue doing that at Granada and also ATV.
“In fact at ATV in the 70s we had entered the age of serious film and video productions and I fronted many such productions. I could also learn scripts quite quickly (one of the great advantages of being a continuity announcer) and so was considered a ‘pro’. I was known as ‘one-take Tomlinson’!
“At Granada, I was in-vision reading the news and in demand for doing the voiceovers for the viewers’ letters programme, for any voiceover on a radio on Coronation Street, for the names on The Comedians and I also fronted a series which looked back at previous Granada documentaries.
“When after 20 months, I was offered the station host’s job at ATV in Birmingham which was much nearer home of course for me, Granada offered me quite a lot more money to stay. I didn’t realise that they liked me!!
“I found ATV and the Midlands to be far more welcoming than Granada and Manchester. Whilst I was the son of a Lancastrian I found the renowned friendliness and hospitality I had known from relations in that part of the world really only began once you left the city boundaries.
“Rochdale (where an aunt and uncle lived) and Bury were where I found the true Lancastrian spirit. Birmingham therefore came as a very pleasant surprise and I seemed to be accepted from the word go.
“I began to reveal my real personality on air and since I always had a mischievous sense of humour that was how the Friday Night Appointment with Fear introductions began. Initially it was me pretending to be frightened, then the electrician in the studio became involved altering the lighting, and/or working a puppet or two. The transmission controllers played their part finding sound effects to accompany the intro. That’s where the famous panda came into being.
“Two lovely elderly ladies from somewhere in Gloucestershire entered totally into the spirit of the evening and knitted me a panda to keep me company. My daughter took a shine to it though and I had to announce this one Friday evening, sure enough by the next week they had knitted me another. I have still got it somewhere.
“The story of Tiswas is well known by now. It started with a small quiz I did one Saturday morning in 1973 because we had no commercials slotted and plenty of time to fill. After four weeks, the ratings had improved so much that commercials returned, we lost the slot and I simply wrote a short outline of how Saturday mornings could be put together as one programme with all the cartoons we usually showed plus quizzes etc.
“The next year it turned up as the programme controller’s idea!! Such is life in the cut-throat media world. Eventually I ended up presenting it with Tarrant. He being CT and of course I was PT. When told in August 1977 I was no longer required, I was devastated, especially as no reason was given.
“A petition was set up locally with over 10,000 signatures to get me reinstated. Not by the way instigated by me at all but I was warned to steer well clear of anything like that or else.
“Much later, like nearly 40 years later, someone who got to know the producer of that series (no, not the famous Peter Harris the man who really made Tiswas the anarchic programme it was) found out that I was dropped because the programme controller – yes him again – thought that my image as the station host was being undermined by my involvement in the programme.
“That producer never had the decency to tell me that. I have never understood why, but it would have ameliorated the sudden shock and loss of income which I suffered.
“Anyway it was that episode which persuaded me that I should begin to find a way out of presenting as full-time job and look elsewhere in the broadcasting world. Hence my appointment in 1979 to be MD of Beacon Radio. But that is another story for another time.
“I am now coming up to 75 years old. I have done the high-profile public roles of High Sheriff and am now in my 10th year as a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands. I am still a public servant as a district and county councillor but getting tired.
“For some time now my hearing has been deteriorating, I wear two hearing aids and it is becoming increasingly difficult to hear speakers at meetings. I am hoping to retire from these roles in just over a year, at which point I can give some of my other interests more time.
“I play drums for the Ad Hoc Jazz Band, a proper New Orleans type six-piece combo. I drive an MGC Sebring Roadster which was converted to Sebring specification in the 70s by a man called John Chatham of Big-Healey fame, and compete occasionally (would like to do more if my wife wasn’t so worried about my enthusiasm out-weighing my skill).
“I chair the Wyre Forest Cancer Research UK Committee and have done for over 25 years and been on the prostate cancer journey myself (my wife is a survivor of pancreatic cancer – one of the very few).
“I love compering the West Midland Light Orchestra’s concerts in my capacity as their President. For those who might be interested WMLO is similar to the John Wilson Orchestra except we have been playing the great American Popular Songbook since 1981.”
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Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Peter Tomlinson. SUPPLIED BY: Paul R. Jackson. COPYRIGHT: Peter Tomlinson.
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