Background
Wilcox was born in 1931 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, to John William Wilcox and Alice M. Whittle.
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Desmond Wilcox Edit Profile
documentary maker head producer of This Week
Desmond John Wilcox was a British documentary maker at the British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television.
Education
He attended Cheltenham Grammar School and Christ"s College, Finchley.
Career
He was producer of This Week, Manitoba Alive, and That"s Life!. He was then a training apprentice with the Outward Bound Sea School and left home to work as a deckhand in the merchant marine. In 1949 he began a career in journalism as a reporter on a weekly newspaper.
After two years of national service, he moved to Fleet Street to work for the Daily Mirror, becoming a foreign correspondent in the New York bureau.
In 1960 Wilcox moved to television as a reporter on Independent Television"s This Week current affairs programme, where he stayed for five years until joining the British Broadcasting Corporation.
He was co-editor and presenter of the landmark Manitoba Alive series in 1965. He later formed the Manitoba Alive Unit as well as providing the distinctive voice-over in the weekly current-affairs programme TEMPO directed by Mike Hodges.
In an interview in 1986 he said:
Real life honestly portrayed is sufficiently dramatic in itself. The idea that might lurk in some people"s minds that you somehow have to beef it up, or pump it up or invent the circumstances to make it more colourful, is an idea born of Fleet Street and ignorance.
From 1972 to 1980 he was head of general features at the British Broadcasting Corporation. He made series including Americans, The Visit, Black in Blue and A Day in the Life.
After he left the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wilcox was involved in the occasional series following the story of David Jackson (David Lopez) "the Boy David", a badly-deformed Peruvian boy (a sufferer of noma) whose face was rebuilt by a Scottish surgeon who adopted him.
Achievements
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Born
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Died
September 6, 2000 (aged 69) -
Nationality
United Kingdom -
Religion
Judaist