Peggy Bacon | |
---|---|
Born | Margaret Bacon 19 November 1918 Kings Heath |
Died | 1 March 1976 (aged 57) London |
Alma mater | |
Occupation | Radio producer, radio personality, television producer, nurse |
Employer |
Margaret Bacon (19 November 1918 – 1 March 1976), who worked under the name Peggy Bacon, was a BBC radio and television producer and radio presenter.[1][2]
Bacon was born on 19 November 1918 in Kings Heath, Birmingham, England, to Arthur Charles Bacon and Doris Elizabeth, née Day.[3] She was educated at the city's King Edward VI High School for Girls from 1931 to 1936.[2][4]
She joined the BBC in Birmingham as a secretary in 1938 before working as a Red Cross nurse, treating wounded servicemen at an emergency hospital in Birmingham for several months in 1940, during World War II.[2]
She produced and presented - as "Aunty Peggy" - the BBC Home Service radio programme Children's Hour for almost 20 years,[2] with the Radio Times first listing her appearance on 17 September 1947.[5] She also edited a B.B.C. Children's Hour Annual book, for the BBC.[6][7]
After meeting two railway-enthusiast film makers, she commissioned them to work on Railway Roundabout, a television series, episodes of which she also produced, and which ran from 1958 to 1962.[8][9]
She commissioned Brian Vaughton to make the documentary The Cats Whiskers: celebrating forty years of broadcasting from the heart of England, broadcast on the Home Service (Midland) on 12 November 1962.[10][11] In 1965, after she made a successful series of programmes for O-level students, she was transferred to the BBC's education department, in London.[2] While there, she edited F. D. Flower's Reading to Learn: An Approach to Critical Reading (BBC, 1969).[12]
In her leisure time, she was a singer and linguist, and translated song lyrics from French and German, some of which were broadcast.[2]
She retired in 1975 and died in London on 1 March 1976, aged 57.[1][2]