Talk:Jack de Manio

Untitled
I'm pretty sure de Manio's legendary timekeeping on Today was immortalised in one of John Wyndham's novels. Must have a skim through some time to find the reference.Pterre 15:50, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

→ Chocky as I recall, but it is nearly fifty years since I read it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.135.119 (talk) 12:03, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

We currently have him as being dismissed from the army following a court martial in 1944, and also as leaving the army in 1946. They can't both be right. JH (talk page) 21:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't mentioned in Desert Island Discs, although he made light of being dismissed from other jobs.

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The Land of the Niger
IIRC, the programme marked an important reception, with QEII and many other visiting dignitaries. I believe it may have been associated with Nigeria's forthcoming independence, though that was still 4 years away. I doubt it was even possible in those pre-satellite and pre-fibre-optic days to broadcast it worldwide. The fundamental issue was that, showing the British mastery of radio and telephony, it had been patched through, live, to the diplomatic reception in Lagos, 4000-odd miles from London, intended to demonstrate how the UK public was learning about Nigeria, and how the UK government respected the native leaders of its colony Nigeria, who would soon be running their own country, with which the powerful but smaller UK wanted to continue to trade on advantageous (aka exploitative) terms. [Maybe Trump was watching and learning.]

It was therefore a very embarrassing setback for the UK diplomats when de Manio disrespected the Nigerians, even though, 60 yrs ago, very few British people yet knew that nigger was disrespectful (certainly I only learned that around 1972 -- books like Huckleberry Finn were set texts at school in the 60s, and were discussed in class, without any teacher explaining that their historic language was no longer acceptable -- so presumably the teachers didn't know either).

Certainly, de Manio claimed to be totally unaware of the issue. When called in front of the BBC Director General, he claims to have said in puzzlement "But if I'd slipped up and announced Thomas a Becket as Thomas a Bucket, no one would have complained" to which the DG replied, "But what if his name was Thomas a Fecket?"

However, the only source I have for most of what I've written above is a book de Manio wrote (I think To Auntie with love rather than his autobiography) which I read about 50 years ago, so I have based it on a biased source which I may have misremembered anyway, and anyone wanting to add any of it will need to fact check first.

To be fair on de Manio, these days he would probably be diagnosed as dyslexic -- he showed significant traits of dyslexia, including frequently misreading words (and he was famously completely unable to tell the time on an analogue clock). Continuity announcing was a ridiculous job for him to have, and he came into his own as a presenter and interviewer (with a studio engineer to keep him on schedule). His colleagues found him irritating as they covered for what they saw as his faults but may have been a disability, while the listeners (even me as a pre-teen) loved him. Even as an announcer, he had been so popular that (he claimed) there was an outcry at him being sidelined, which led to him being brought back into a plum job after a year or so.

I've also not come across the word "back-announce". Is it correct for an introduction by a continuity announcer before the programme, which I believe this was? Enginear (talk) 02:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)