Name Desmond Wilcox | Role Television producer | |
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Children Rebecca Wilcox, Miriam Wilcox, Joshua Wilcox, Claire Wilcox, Adam Wilcox, Cassie Wilcox Books Future Tense, The Year Two Billion, Future Tense: Extermination Day, Return visit Parents John William Wilcox, Alice M. Whittle Similar People Esther Rantzen, Rebecca Wilcox, John Reith - 1st Baron Reith | ||
Diana Dors, Knneth Williams and Desmond Wilcox on Parkinson show 1971
Desmond John Wilcox (21 May 1931 – 6 September 2000) was a British documentary maker at the BBC and ITV. He was producer of This Week, Man Alive, and That's Life!.
Contents
- Diana Dors Knneth Williams and Desmond Wilcox on Parkinson show 1971
- Hearing Dogs Desmond Wilcox Volunteer of the Year 2017
- Early life
- Documentaries
- BBC executive
- Later career
- Personal life
- Awards
- References
Hearing Dogs - Desmond Wilcox Volunteer of the Year 2017
Early life
Wilcox was born in 1931 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, to John William Wilcox and Alice M. Whittle. He attended Cheltenham Grammar School and Christ's College, Finchley. He was then a training apprentice with the Outward Bound Sea School and left home to work as a deckhand in the merchant marine. In 1949 he began a career in journalism as a reporter on a weekly newspaper. After two years of national service, he moved to Fleet Street to work for the Daily Mirror, becoming a foreign correspondent in the New York bureau.
In 1960 Wilcox moved to television as a reporter on ITV's This Week current affairs programme, where he stayed for five years until joining the BBC.
Documentaries
He was co-editor and presenter of the landmark Man Alive series in 1965. He later formed the Man Alive Unit as well as providing the distinctive voice-over in the weekly current-affairs programme TEMPO directed by Mike Hodges.
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.
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.
Later career
After he left the staff of the BBC, Wilcox was involved in the occasional series following the story of David Jackson (David Lopez) 'the Boy David', a badly-deformed Peruvian boy (a sufferer of noma) whose face was rebuilt by a Scottish surgeon who adopted him. The series won six international awards.
Personal life
Wilcox married firstly Patsy Price, and they had three children together called Claire, Adam, and Cassandra. Claire has two children, Ruby and Martha, and Cassandra has three, Rosie, Archer, and Drew. During this first marriage he had an eight-year affair with television presenter Esther Rantzen, and in 1977 he married her after obtaining a divorce from Patsy. There were three further children of this marriage, including the television presenter Rebecca Wilcox. In 1992 Wilcox converted to Judaism, the religion of his second wife. He died of a heart attack in Paddington, London, in 2000, aged 69.
Awards
He was posthumously awarded the Grierson Documentary Film Awards Life Tribute in November 2001. A media arts centre at a High School in Rainhill, Merseyside has been opened, named in his honour.