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Robert Robinson |
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Moss Lane, Orrell Park |
After
he graduated in 1951 Robinson's first job in journalism required him to make up
readers' letters for a London-based weekly offshoot of the Sheffield Telegraph.
He was soon writing about television for the Sunday Chronicle, then
about film and theatre for the Sunday Graphic, once asking Rita
Hayworth to jog his memory as to which husband belonged to which child. He
became radio critic of the Sunday Times in 1956, the same year his first
novel was published, Landscape with Dead Dons, an ingenious comic detective
story set in Oxford. On 26 August 1958 he married Josephine Mary (Josée)
Richard (b. 1929), an actress whom he had met at Oxford, and daughter of Paul
Richard, merchant. After their marriage they moved into a Queen Anne house in
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where they lived for the rest of their married life. They
had a son and two daughters.
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Kenneth Tynan |
At
the Sunday Times, Robinson became editor of ‘Atticus’ and in 1962 a
columnist. His broadcasting career had begun with an appearance during the
newspaper strike of 1955 but the first regular programme was Picture Parade in
1959. He did some interviews for Panorama and made short films with the
director John Schlesinger for the arts programme Monitor. From 1961 he
presented Points of View, a snappy filler featuring viewers' letters, in which
Robinson's distinctive wit first came to a large audience. He hosted BBC3,
the Saturday satire show in which Kenneth Tynan uttered the word ‘f**k’
for the first time on television.
Robinson
was by the late 1960s one of the most familiar faces on BBC Television,
presenting several weekly programmes. In 1967 he began a seventeen-year run as
chair of the BBC1 quiz Ask the Family and twenty-one years as chair of the BBC2
panel game Call My Bluff, joined by The Fifties on BBC1 in 1969. He was on our
screens again on BBC2, from 1973–80 in The Book Programme, and Stop the Week
(1974–92).
He was ‘the last great gentleman broadcaster’, as Laurie Taylor called him (Daily Mail, 5 Aug 2010). Certainly there will be few in future who, when a technical delay holds up a recording, will recite the whole first page of Chaucer's prologue to the Canterbury Tales, accent and all, or sign off with the formality of Robinson's ‘I bid you goodbye’. He died of pneumonia and heart disease at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, on 12 August 2011, and was buried in Gunnersbury cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Josée, and their three children.
Sources
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Will Wyatt
R. Robinson, Skip all that (1996)
W. Wyatt, The fun factory: a life in the BBC (2003)
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