The Godfather Of Countryside TV

I've lost count of the times that people have said, 'You remind me of that bloke who used to be on the telly - Jack Hargreaves.' 

I take that as the deepest of compliments as he is a lifetime hero of mine. But, my goodness, I wish I had a tenth of the knowledge that man had.

Jack Hargreaves OBE (1911 – 1994) was a TV icon. His TV shows about the countryside - Out of Town, Old Country, and Gone Fishing - were a fixture of Sunday afternoon viewing from 1960 to 1985 and they were everything that modern shows like Countryfile, and all of those cunningly disguised middle class property shows like Lovely XXX-shire aren't. 

Jack was never polemic, never had a go at the 'townies', and didn't try in any way to glamorise or romanticise country life. He told it like it was and his knowledge was encyclopaedic. If you read the two volumes of his autobiography (as I have several times), you soon realise that he was born into a world very different to the one he broadcast to. He accepted change was inevitable. All he wanted to ensure was that the old ways were not forgotten.

Behind the scenes, he had a fascinating life. After leaving his university studies at the Royal Veterinary College, he worked as a journalist, mostly writing about farming matters. At the outset of the Second World War, his talents in this field meant that he faced being recruited to a restricted post in radio, a reserved occupation. Instead, he joined the Royal Artillery as a private, quickly became an NCO, entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment. Even so, Hargreaves' reputation as a communicator went ahead of him. He was recruited to the staff of General Montgomery to play a role setting up broadcasting services to allied forces before and after D-Day. He left the army in 1945 with the substantive rank of major, having briefly held the acting rank of lieutenant-colonel.

   

After the war, Hargreaves continued his media career and, during the 1950s, was editor of Lilliput magazine and Picture Post. His brilliance as a communications manager led to his being recruited to the National Farmers Union by Lord Netherthorpe, who was celebrated for his success as a lobbyist for farmers. Hargreaves organised and developed the NFU's Information Department, founding the British Farmer magazine. He also served on the Nugent Committee to oversee the return of lands, commandeered by the military in wartime, to private ownership. His contribution to the Nugent Report in 1973, saw him awarded an OBE. 

He was then involved in the setting up of ITV, and was a member of Southern's (an ITV franchise) board of directors. From here it was a natural step to move into television. 

   

He is remembered for creating a number of TV series. In the 1970s  he appeared in Country Boy, a show in which a boy from the city is introduced to the countryside. He also created the magazine show How? which ran on ITV from 1966 until the demise of Southern in 1981. The format was resurrected in 1990 as How2 and ran until 2006. But such was its appeal that it was again resurrected in 2020 and is still on TV.

How? was conceived to teach children about how things worked or ought to work. Jack was a regular on every episode, talking about country crafts, vintage technology and how food got to people's plates. His quiet, comfortable manner - often with pipe in mouth and occasionally coughing or stumbling over his words - was endearing. He was a great champion of the countryside and was able - without nostalgia or sentimentality – to question and rebut metropolitan assumptions about its character and function. Many of the later episodes of Old Country were recorded in his garden shed.

I doubt we'll see his like again. But he has inspired some wonderful spoofs, like The Fast Show's character of Bob Fleming.

   

And Robert Popper's and Peter Serafinowicz's hilarious Markets of Britain (featuring footage of Jack).

   

Jack was one of the inspirations for this blog. And I'm hoping - in a small and modest way - to pass on what I know about the countryside in the same way that he did.