Helen Mary Malcolm
Retrieved 2012-11-08 (15 March 191813 October 2010) was one of the first two regular female announcers on

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January 1927. It p ...

after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and was a household name in the United Kingdom during the 1950s.

Biography

The only daughter and youngest of four children of the diplomat and politician Sir Ian Malcolm and Jeanne Langtry (1881–1964) and granddaughter of the Victorian socialite and actress

Lillie Langtry Emilie Charlotte, Lady de Bathe (née Le Breton, formerly Langtry; 13 October 1853 – 12 February 1929), known as Lillie (or Lily) Langtry and nicknamed "The Jersey Lily", was a British socialite, stage actress and producer. Born on the isla ...

, a mistress of

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and ...

, Mary Malcolm was born in

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and brought up partly in Poltalloch,

Argyll Argyll (; archaically Argyle; , ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a Shires of Scotland, historic county and registration county of western Scotland. The county ceased to be used for local government purposes in 1975 and most of the area ...

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. Until the age of sixteen, she attended the Lycée Français de Londres in

South Kensington South Kensington is a district at the West End of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with the advent of the ra ...

, London. She began her television career in 1948, having gained broadcasting experience on the

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

during the Second World War. As more and more men were called up to fight, women became increasingly in demand to fill posts at the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

. Mary Malcolm was taken on and worked for the Home Service as a continuity announcer from March 1942. With the relaunch of the BBC's television service after the war, she worked alongside Sylvia Peters and McDonald Hobley, with the trio averaging ten days' work a month each. At this time, all television programmes were introduced by an in-vision host or hostess and broadcasts were normally live. Malcolm received no training and became known for her

spoonerism A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who report ...

s: "By the end of the day I was tired, and when I came to the weather forecast I just read it out without really trying. My biggest fear was 'drain and rizzle', which I said more than once." With the advent of commercial rival ITV in 1955, the BBC's reliance on announcers diminished. Commercial breaks quickly became popular and the BBC decided audiences no longer needed a hostess to soothe them. Malcolm left the BBC in 1956 although she continued to appear as a guest on various programmes including an episode of the comedy series ''

The Goodies The Goodies were a trio of British comedians: Tim Brooke-Taylor (17 July 1940 – 12 April 2020), Graeme Garden (b. 18 February 1943) and Bill Oddie (b. 7 July 1941). The trio created, wrote for and performed in their The Goodies (TV series), ...

''.Ross, Robert ''The Complete Goodies'', (London 2000), B T Batsford. Her

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

, ''Me'', was published in 1956.

Personal life

Malcolm was first married to Sir Basil Bartlett, a baronet and actor, on 5 January 1937. They had three daughters, Lucy, Jemima, and Annabel, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1960. She married secondly Colin McFadyean, a solicitor, on 16 June 1960, gaining two step-daughters: Andrea, who died in 1983, and Melanie McFadyean, who became a journalist. Malcolm had the onset of dementia late on in her life and died on 13 October 2010 at the Hilton Park care centre in Bottisham,

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

Selected filmography

* '' Design for Loving'' (1962)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malcolm, Mary 1918 births 2010 deaths BBC newsreaders and journalists Mary People educated at Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle Wives of baronets