In his final years, Richard Baker moved to a retirement home. He was a little unsettled at first but soon found a way of integrating.And so, farewell then to another stalwart of British television (and of my childhood) - one of the BBC's longest-serving newsreaders, Richard Baker. In his 27-year tenure from 1955 to 1982, he covered everything from the Burgess-Philby-Maclean spy scandal, the Suez crisis, the start of the Vietnam War and the birth of rock'n'roll, to the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the wedding of Charles and Diana, the AIDS panic and the Falklands War.
He would read all the newspapers and cut out the interesting headlines. Then, at Six O'clock, he would read them aloud to his fellow residents over supper.
A classical music aficionado, he also presented The Last Night of the Proms for many years, and Radio 2's Your Hundred Best Tunes light classics show (and much more besides), as well as lending his dulcets to narrating children's cartoon Mary, Mungo and Midge and the pre-school programme about the adventures of Teddy Edward.
Of course, the clip everyone of our era remembers most fondly was his participation in the remarkably imaginative There is Nothing Like a Dame sketch from the Morecambe & Wise Xmas show in 1977 (alongside fellow newsreaders Richard Whitmore and Peter Woods, as well as other BBC presenters Michael Aspel, Frank Bough, Philip Jenkinson, Barry Norman and Eddie Waring):
And here, with tributes from all his colleagues and crew popping up at the end, is the last ever news broadcast Mr Baker read:
RIP, Richard Douglas James Baker OBE RD (15th June 1925 – 17th November 2018)
There's something about losing the voices we grew up with, sugar. I love what he did in the retirement home! xo
ReplyDeleteI thought it was faboo - and I imagine his compatriots in the home appreciated it, too... Jx
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