Jeremy James Anthony Gibson-Beadle MBE (12 April 1948 – 30 January 2008) was an English television and radio presenter, writer and producer. From the 1980s to the late 1990s he maintained a constant presence both on British television and radio, hosting various programmes in particular the hidden-camera show Beadle's About and home-movie clip show You've Been Framed!.
Alongside his media work, Beadle wrote and co-authored several books, and contributed greatly to raising funds for several charities, including those supporting disadvantaged children. His charity work was estimated to have raised millions for the causes he helped, and led to him earning an MBE in 2001.
Beadle's health began to decline by his fifties, receiving treatment for kidney cancer and later for leukemia, before dying from pneumonia in 2008 at the age of 59.
Beadle was born in Hackney, east London, on 12 April 1948. His father, a Fleet Street sports reporter, abandoned Jeremy's mother, Marji (9 July 1921 – 4 July 2004), when he learned that she was pregnant. His mother worked as a secretary, including a stint for the boxing promoter Jack Solomons.
Before Jeremy reached age two, he was frequently hospitalised and had undergone surgery for Poland syndrome, a rare disorder that stunted growth in his right hand.
Beadle did not enjoy school and was frequently in trouble. He was eventually expelled from Orpington County Secondary Boys' School. A teacher remarked, "Beadle, you waffle like a champion but know nothing."
After his expulsion, he travelled and worked in Europe. He held many jobs, including photographer of topless models, sky-diving instructor, lavatory attendant, and briefly as a tour guide at the York dungeons. He often said that he gave the best London tour because he realised that what people wanted was stories of blood, sex and death.
Beadle was chosen in 1970 by Tony Elliott, the founder of Time Out, to set up a Manchester edition of the magazine, a venture that was short-lived, though he subsequently maintained a connection with the publication in London. In 1972, North West Arts Association asked him to organise the Bickershaw Festival, and he worked on further musical events over the next couple of years.
In 1973, as an early member of the Campaign for Real Ale, he was elected to their National Executive and secured the campaign's first television or radio coverage in a one-hour programme on BBC Radio London, which he hosted. During this period his talent for practical jokes became evident, although occasionally this rebounded on him, such as when colleagues left him naked in front of 400 women arriving for their shift. He then started writing for radio and television to provide material for stars such as Sir Terry Wogan, Michael Aspel, Noel Edmonds and Kenny Everett.
Beadle began supplying odd facts and questions to radio and television game shows, such as Celebrity Squares. He sent a number of questions to Bob Monkhouse, the host, without the answers and Monkhouse was so impressed he rang Jeremy to ask him to work on the show. His presenting style on the phone-in programme Nightline on LBC in London, which he hosted between September 1979 and 22 June 1980 (when he was sacked), led to a cult following. He introduced himself as Jeremy James Anthony Gibson-Beadlebum: "Jeremy James Anthony Gibson-Beadle is my name and a bum is what I am," he explained.
On 31 May 1980, he began co-presenting the children's television show Fun Factory with his LBC co-star Thérèse Birch, Kevin Day and Billy Boyle. On Capital Radio Beadle presented Beadle's Odditarium, a music show concentrating on strange, bizarre and rare recordings all taken from the archives of producer Phil Swern. From 5 October 1986, Beadle presented Beadle's Brainbusters on the independent local radio network, with questions written by Beadle and Paul Donnelley. He also became renowned for his off-air pranks and intellectually challenging quizzes. He wrote, devised and presented many television pilots for the highly successful game show company Action Time, then run by Jeremy Fox, the son of Paul Fox. Beadle wrote and presented The Deceivers, a BBC2 television series recounting the history of swindlers and hoaxers. The success of this led to using the same format for Eureka, which told the background behind everyday inventions. He hosted a US game show pilot in 1985 called Family Follies, which did not make it to a full series.
Beadle then went on to become nationally famous as one of the presenters of LWT's Game for a Laugh, the first programme made by ITV to beat the BBC's shows in the Saturday night ratings battle. This was followed by a hidden-camera style practical joke show, Beadle's About (1986–1996), which became the world's longest continuously running hidden-camera show.
From 1990 to 1997, Beadle presented You've Been Framed!, a family show featuring humorous clips from viewers' home video recordings. An offshoot of this was Beadle's Hotshots, featuring viewers' intentionally funny parodies and sketches, some of which were re-edited and even reshot by a young Edgar Wright in his first industry job; other sketches and scripts were produced by writer/director Chris Barfoot. In total, Beadle hit the UK Number One ratings slot four times.
In 1995, reflecting his days on LBC, he presented a relatively short-lived but popular Sunday late-evening show on the newly launched Talk Radio UK. As well as his considerable television output as writer, presenter and producer, he appeared in numerous pantomimes and acted as ringmaster for many circuses, notably for Gerry Cottle's. He also worked as a consultant for many television companies, wrote books, and presented quizzes both commercially and for charity. As a radio presenter, he chaired a brief revival of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? on BBC Radio 4. In 2007 he started to work on the Bickershaw Festival 40th Anniversary Boxed set project for 2012 in conjunction with Chris Hewitt, who had worked with Beadle on the original event in 1972. (Chris Hewitt continued to work on the project after Beadle died.)
Beadle was living in Highgate, north London, when he was the subject of This Is Your Life on 26 January 1994. He was surprised by Michael Aspel during a school carol concert at a church in nearby Hampstead on 8 December 1993.
Beadle wanted to be the British Robert L. Ripley. A love of trivia was born when his mother bought him The Guinness Book of Records for Christmas when he was a small boy. This led him to write Today's the Day (published in the UK by WH Allen in 1979 and by Signet in the United States two years later), researched in his own library of 27,000 volumes. The book recounts – for any given day of the year – around half a dozen notable births, deaths or events that occurred on that date, linked to odd or amusing facts. Beadle briefly performed a similar duty on television's TV-am, informing each morning's viewers of prominent events on this date in past years. The scripts were written by Beadle and Paul Donnelley. The format was briefly revived when GMTV replaced TV-am as the ITV breakfast franchise in 1993.
For more than two years Beadle wrote a daily cartoon series of Today's the Day for the Daily Express. He worked alongside Irving Wallace and his son David Wallechinsky and daughter Amy Wallace as the biggest contributor to the sex and death chapters of The Book of Lists and was the London editor of The People's Almanac 2. The Wallaces' book The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (Dell (US) Hutchinson (UK), 1981) was researched in part in Beadle's library, which contained an extensive collection of erotic literature.
In autumn 2007, three new books by Beadle were published: Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Crime, Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Military (both co-authored by the celebrated writer Ian Harrison) and Beadle's Miscellany, the first hundred quizzes from his weekly puzzlers in The Independent. He guest-edited the January 2008 edition of True Detective, which featured contributions from his friends who are crime experts including James Morton, Paul Donnelley, Andrew Rose and Matthew Spicer.