Desmond Wilcox
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Desmond Wilcox (May 21, 1931 - September 6, 2000) was a British documentary maker at the BBC and ITV. He was producer of This Week, Man Alive, That's Life!.
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[edit] Early life
Wilcox ran away from home at age 16 to work as a deckhand in the merchant marine. He began his career in journalism as a reporter on a weekly newspaper in 1949. He moved to Fleet Street after two years of National Service. He worked for the Daily Mirror, becoming a foreign correspondent in the New York bureau.
In 1960 he moved to television as a reporter on ITV's This Week current affairs programme, where he stayed for five years until joining the BBC.
[edit] Documentaries
He was co-editor and presenter of the landmark Man Alive series in 1965. He later formed the Man Alive Unit.
In an interview in 1986 he said:
| Real life honestly portrayed is sufficiently dramatic in itself. The idea that might lurk in some people's minds that you somehow have to beef it up, or pump it up or invent the circumstances to make it more colourful, is an idea born of Fleet Street and ignorance. |
Among his most famous programs was the series following the story of David Jackson, a badly-deformed Peruvian boy whose face was rebuilt by a Scottish surgeon who adopted him. The series won six international awards.
[edit] BBC executive
From 1972 to 1980 he was head of general features at the BBC. He made series including Americans, The Visit, Black in Blue and A Day in the Life.
[edit] Personal life
He was married to television presenter Esther Rantzen in 1977 following an 8 year affair with her. They had three children together. He had three other children from an earlier marriage to Patsy. He died of a heart attack in 2000. He was posthumously awarded the Grierson Documentary Film Awards Life Tribute in November 2001.
[edit] Sources
- Esther Rantzen, The Autobiography, BBC Worldwide, 2001
