JOHN P. HAMILTON

12 May 1924 - 11 January 2001

John P. as he was invariably addressed - the "P" was important - was essentially a scion of Victoria's Empire. His grandfather served as a sergeant in the 2/60" Royal Rifles stationed in Bengal in today's Pakistan. His father, born in 1875, followed the tradition of the day into the Regular Army and was attested for the Royal Artillery at Jhansi in

1892. The attitudes, the mores, the disciplines of those times somehow became part of John P.'s character and outlook. He emphatically knew how things should be done.

He was born in Kingston-upon-Hull in East Yorkshire, the youngest of six children, and an early sign of promise when access to secondary education was far from universal was a proud attainment of scholarship to the Marist College in Hull and his resulting five School Certificate credits.

He joined the BBC in 1940 as a Trainee Recorded Programmes Assistant. Based at Broadcasting House in those stirring days he worked at all the London studio venues and was also attached to the CBC War Reporting Unit. Volunteering for aircrew duties with the RAF in 1942 after training in Canada he served variously in Coastal and Bomber Commands finishing up at war's end, boringly, with the RAF Police until his demob in 1947.

Returning promptly to the BBC's Recorded Programmes Department after some refresher courses his career proper now began with the Latin American & Near East Services.

1948 saw him back at BH as a Mobile RPA, which required travel around the country on such programmes as Down Your Way, Top of the Form, and the party-political conferences. When the Engineering and Production departments were amalgamated in 1949 he became a Studio Manager and moved to the Variety Department at Aeolian Hall.

The shows he worked on there are redolent of the vanished age of wireless. Home at Eight, Star Bill, Riders of the Range, Jazz Club, Bedtime with Braden, Stand Easy, Just Fancy and the first series of 'Hancock's Half Hour”. Then there were some of the landmarks in his life - the third, fourth and fifth series of “The Goon Shows”, about which he became an enthusiastic expert. His principal task was to create the "spot effects" and Sunday afternoons, after mornings "doing grams" on “The Billy Cotton Band Show,” he would pack cases with bits and pieces from the effects store and dash off to the Paris Cinema or wherever the show was being recorded and in full view of a delirious audience create those memorable sounds. There, and later at ITV, he enjoyed a rewarding friendship with Peter Sellers.

In 1954 he married Daphne Shadwell, the youngest daughter of Charles Shadwell, the former director of the BBC Variety Orchestra, and together they were offered jobs by Associated-Rediffusion, the founding weekday company of the Independent Television network. John became its Head of Sound on April 1, 1955, recruited a staff of 54 and methodically trained and planned for Opening Night on September 22 that year. This became a calendar date for him and in later years he enthusiastically organised annual reunions of ITV's old girls and boys.

He was made a programme director at the beginning of 1959, cutting his teeth on advertising magazines, epilogues, and the similar detritus then existing, before moving on to Cool for Cats, a proto-pop music and dancing series. Until 1968 when Rediffusion traumatically lost its franchise John worked on every type of show, drama excepted. With the advent of London Weekend he became a producer/director with World of Sport and, as he had at A-R, worked on hundreds of programmes here and abroad across the entire spectrum.

In October 1984 he left programming to become LWT's Company Archivist for which his organisational abilities, his meticulous work habits, and his formidable memory ideally suited him. Having completed that task he retired on October 28 1988 after 48 years of continuous activity.

In those earlier days television was largely ephemeral, and a decreasing number of quondam viewers remembers the way it was but from that foreign country of the past where things were so different a few more titles of John P's shows can be recalled.

Alfred Marks Time, Love of Mike, Three Live Wires, Tubby Hayes Plays, Stars & Garters, The Des O'Connor Show, This Week, Here & Now, Three After Six, Five O'Clock Club. There was then a level of professionalism among media workers and an attitude of responsibility within the ITV companies. It was called Public Service Television.

John was a large man whose size might seem at odds with his goodness, kindness, generosity and unselfishness. Family was important to him, both his own origins and also within the corporate environment. For years he staunchly represented Producer/Director members of ACTT, the technicians' union, both at A-R and LWT and especially enjoyed encouraging young people at the start of their careers.

His interests were many and varied, principal among them a love of his work, football (both as spectator and player - he was goal for Rediffusion), jazz (a fantastic collection), entertaining friends (at which he and Daphne were specialists), and staying in touch. The condition of the country did not sit well with him. He was a patriot who hankered for times of better-ordered existence and accepted self-discipline. He loathed the falling and failed standards of television, both in terms of content and technicalities.

John had not always in recent years experienced the best of health but of late his old brio had returned. On the first day of this year, having bought a new typewriter, he settled down to write his autobiography. It was called - provisionally at least - My Life and all that Jazz and two thirds of a page had been composed when almost immediately a sudden catastrophic event, not speedily diagnosed, resulted in his death in St. Mary's Hospital Paddington on January 11. Cremation at Golders Green on January 24 followed a hugely

attended service at the Church of Our Lady on Lisson Grove where some 47 years earlier Daphne and he had embarked on such a rewarding marriage.

Roy Fowler: 5-2-2001