Whicker's World
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Whicker's World
OR:
Whicker's World on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

''Whicker's World'' was a British
television documentary Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. *Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...
series that ran from 1958 to 1994, presented by journalist and broadcaster
Alan Whicker Alan Donald Whicker (2 August 1921 – 12 July 2013) was a British journalist and television presenter and broadcaster. His career spanned almost 60 years, during which time he presented the documentary television programme '' Whicke ...
. Originally a segment on the BBC's ''
Tonight Tonight may refer to: Television * ''Tonight'' (1957 TV programme), a 1957–1965 British current events television programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore that was broadcast on BBC * ''Tonight'' (1975 TV programme), a 1975–1979 British current ...
'' programme in 1958, ''Whicker's World'' became a fully-fledged television series in its own right in the 1960s. The series was first shown by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
until 1968, and then by ITV from 1968 to 1983, when it was produced by
Yorkshire Television ITV Yorkshire, previously known as Yorkshire Television and commonly referred to as just YTV, is the British television service provided by ITV Broadcasting Limited for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV (TV network), ITV network. Until 19 ...
, in which Whicker himself was a shareholder. The series returned to the BBC in 1984, and to ITV again in 1992.


Series history

Whicker reported stories of social interest from around the world. His interviewees included locals, politicians, celebrities, and even convicted criminals as he reported on stories as far ranging as military dictatorships, British expatriates, the
feminist movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality between men and women. Such ...
of the 1970s, the
Tanka people The Tankas or boat people are a sinicised ethnic group in Southern China who have traditionally lived on junks in coastal parts of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Shanghai, Zhejiang and along the Yangtze river, as well as Hong Kong ...
of
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, the American Gay Rights movement, the building of
Disneyworld The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, t ...
in Florida, and the
plastic surgery Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction or alteration of the human body. It can be divided into two main categories: reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgery includes cranio ...
industry. Among his interviewees were actors
Peter Sellers Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...
,
Joan Collins Dame Joan Henrietta Collins (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist. Collins is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primeti ...
,
Britt Ekland Britt Ekland (; born Britt-Marie Eklund; 6 October 1942) is a Swedish actress, model and singer. She appeared in numerous films in her heyday throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including roles in '' The Double Man'' (1967), '' The Night They Raided ...
, Liza Minnelli, and Christopher Lee, Haitian dictator
François "Papa Doc" Duvalier François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters" * Francis II of France, King o ...
, Paraguayan dictator
Alfredo Stroessner Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (; 3 November 1912 – 16 August 2006) was a Paraguayan army officer and politician who served as President of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 to 3 February 1989. Stroessner led a coup d'état on 4 May 1954 with t ...
, novelist
Harold Robbins Harold Robbins (May 21, 1916 – October 14, 1997) was an American author of popular novels. One of the best-selling writers of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages. Early life Robbins was b ...
, Lula Parker Betenson (the 94-year-old sister of the outlaw Butch Cassidy), the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah (reputedly the richest man in the world at the time of filming), opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, several former
Maharaja Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king". A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, a ...
s of India, and various members of the
British aristocracy The British nobility is made up of the peerage and the (landed) gentry. The nobility of its four constituent home nations has played a major role in shaping the history of the country, although now they retain only the rights to stand for election ...
. Although episodes were self-contained, Whicker would often film a series of episodes devoted to one particular location or subject, including five whole series devoted to the United States and three about Australia. Multi-episode series dedicated to the South Pacific,
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, India,
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, Spain, and a voyage on the '' QE2'' were also made. These were usually given series titles such as ''Whicker's New World'' (1969), ''Whicker In Europe'' (1970), ''Whicker's Walkabout: Seven Scenes Down Under'' (1970), ''Whicker Within A Woman's World'' (1972), ''Whicker Way Out West'' (1973), ''Whicker's South Seas'' (1973), ''Whicker's World Down Under'' (1976), ''Whicker's World: A Fast Boat to China'' (1984), ''Whicker's World: Living With Uncle Sam'' (1985), ''Whicker's World: Living with Waltzing Maltilda'' (1988), and ''Whicker's World: A Taste of Spain'' (1992). Two episodes were filmed on the
Orient Express The ''Orient Express'' was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company ''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits'' (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe and int ...
, the first on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express in 1982 and the second on the
Eastern and Oriental Express The Eastern & Oriental Express is a luxury train that carries passengers between Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. It runs between Singapore's Woodlands Train Checkpoint and Bangkok, stopping at Kuala Lumpur, Butterworth, and Kanchanaburi, t ...
in 1993. In 1998, Whicker made a six-part radio series, '' Around Whicker's World'', for BBC Radio 2. In 2009, he returned to television with ''Alan Whicker's Journey Of A Lifetime'', a four-part series for the BBC in which he revisited some of the locations and people shown in ''Whicker's World'' decades earlier to see how their lives had progressed since his original interviews with them. Included in this was a third visit to American plastic surgeon Dr. Kurt Wagner and his wife Kathy, whom Whicker had already made two programmes about in 1973 and 1980 and had considered them among his favourite interviewees. The series had several theme tunes over the course of its run. The original theme music for the programme was "West End" composed by Laurie Johnson. When the series moved over to ITV in the late 1960s, a new theme was incorporated entitled "Horizons" by Frank Talley and The New Concert Orchestra which was used until 1977. In 1978 Andrew Lloyd Webber composed a new theme for the series that was used until the early 1980s. When the series returned to the BBC in 1984, "Newsweek", a piece composed by Graham de Wilde for
KPM Musichouse KPM Music is a company that creates and provides library music that was originally known as KPM Musichouse. It was formed by the merger of KPM (the initials of Keith-Prowse-Maurice, which was then a division of EMI) and Musichouse (a company th ...
, was used as the theme.


Awards

''Whicker's World'' was a huge ratings success in the UK, and one of the longest running series in the history of British television. The series was nominated for a variety of awards throughout its run including several BAFTA Awards. The 1977 episode "Palm Beach" garnered three BAFTA nominations for Best Documentary, Best Sound, and Best Editing, and Whicker himself won the Richard Dimbleby Award at the 1977 BAFTA ceremony, and had also won a BAFTA in 1964 for his presentation in the Factual category. In 1971, the series won the Dumont International Journalism Award at the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
for the 1969 episode "Papa Doc - The Black Sheep" (in which Whicker interviewed Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier). The episode "Harold Robbins - I'm The World's Best Writer" won the Best Interview Programme Award at the Hollywood Festival of World Television in 1972.


DVD release

Network have released three volumes of the series on DVD, compiling some of the more prominent ITV episodes from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. The first and second volumes were released as two-disc sets containing eight and ten episodes respectively. The third volume contains thirteen episodes over three discs, though a second version was also released containing only ten episodes over two discs. A seven-disc set containing all three volumes, ''The Best of Whicker'', is set for release on 16 October 2017. To date , of all the BBC episodes , only the 2009 ''Journey Of A Lifetime'' series has been released. In May 2016, Network also began releasing each full ITV series of ''Whicker's World'' in chronological order, beginning with the 1968 series, followed by ''Whicker's New World'' from 1969. This was followed in July 2017 by two more DVD sets, ''Whicker In Europe'' (1970) and ''Whicker's Walkabout: Seven Scenes Down Under'' (1970). Two further sets, comprising the 1971 series and 1972's ''Whicker's Orient'', were released in November 2017.


Merchandising

Several books, written by Whicker, were published as tie-ins to the series, including ''Whicker's New World'' (1985) and ''Whicker's World Down Under'' (1988). Whicker's autobiography, ''Within Whicker's World,'' was published in 1982, which chronicled many of the journeys he had made in the series. A second volume, ''Whicker's World - Take 2'', was published in 2002, and a third volume, ''Journey of a Lifetime,'' was published in 2009. The ''Whicker's World'' brand also spread into other merchandise tie-ins. In the 1970s,
Whitman Publishing Whitman Publishing is an American book publishing company which started as a subsidiary of the Western Printing & Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. In about 1915, Western began printing and binding a line of juvenile books for the Hammi ...
released ''Whicker's World'' jigsaw puzzles featuring stills from Whicker's travels. A board game based on ''Whicker's World'' was released in 1989 by Paul Lamond Games.


Cultural impact

In the late-1960s, the series was spoofed by the British comedian
Benny Hill Alfred Hawthorne "Benny" Hill (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992) was an English comedian, actor, singer and writer. He is remembered for his television programme ''The Benny Hill Show'', an amalgam of slapstick, burlesque and double ente ...
who did a sketch on his show called "Knickers World". It was parodied again in 1972 by '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', who did a sketch set on a tropical island called "Whicker Island" where all of the inhabitants were Alan Whicker clones. In the 1980s, Whicker appeared in several television commercials for
Barclaycard Barclaycard (; stylized as barclaycard) is a brand for credit cards of Barclays PLC. , Barclays had over ten million customers in the United Kingdom. History Barclays launched Barclaycard on 29 June 1966, initially as a charge card, but followi ...
that were based on ''Whicker's World'' and featured Whicker in various foreign locations. In 1981, ''Whicker's World'' was spoofed by The Evasions, a British funk group whose
novelty song A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and wit ...
"Wikka Wrap" featured songwriter Graham de Wilde impersonating Whicker. The single reached the UK Top 20 in June 1981; the song was later
sampled Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
in American rapper Coolio's 1996 song "
1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin' New) "1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin' New)" is a song by American rapper Coolio. It was the third single released from his second studio album, '' Gangsta's Paradise'' (1995), in February 1996. Initially entitled "Sumpin' New", the song uses a sample from " Thig ...
". Graham de Wilde also composed the theme tune for the 1980s BBC episodes of ''Whicker's World''.


Legacy

The ''Whicker's World Foundation'' is an organisation that was created by Alan Whicker to encourage the making of quality documentary programmes. Overseen by Whicker's partner Valerie Kleeman and run by documentary maker Jane Ray, each year the foundation awards £100,000 to a new director with the most promising pitch for an authored film or television documentary. There are also separate funding and recognition awards for audio documentaries.


See also

* '' Around Whicker's World''


References


External links

* {{IMDb title, 0180386 1958 British television series debuts 1994 British television series endings 1950s British documentary television series 1960s British documentary television series 1970s British documentary television series 1980s British documentary television series 1990s British documentary television series British television documentaries BBC television documentaries ITV documentaries Television series by Yorkshire Television