Neville Wanless (G 45-47) has sent the following career notes:
      
“On leaving school after a spell in the sanatorium with a serious virus, which was bad enough to summon my parents when I wasn't expected to recover, I continued my education back in the North East and afterward settled as a financial director in my father's engineering company. A keen interest in the amateur theatre was instrumental in launching me into a career in broadcasting. This began with a successful audition for voice-over work in our local television company in Newcastle and also for freelance news reading for BBC Radio, also in Newcastle. Eventually this led to an offer from the TV station to work full time as a continuity announcer. I took the job in 1971 and remained there until 1988, working eventually in-vision as an announcer and promotion writer. Voice over work in TV and radio commercials took me to various places in the country and curiously back to where I spent two years of my school career, as shortly after I began work in Tyne Tees TV in Newcastle, I was offered freelance continuity work at the then thriving Border TV in Carlisle where I spent many happy hours working shifts and filling in when the announcers there took their holidays. I married my wife Pat in July 1960 and our daughter Melanie was born in 1965.
Since retirement as a full time broadcaster in 1988, I have worked mainly in television as an 'extra' in programmes and carrying out voice-over work for corporate video companies. I have also worked for many years in hospital radio in various stations in the North East and am currently presenting my own radio show for Radio Tyneside, which is on the internet.

When I was stationed in  Germany during my National Service in the Royal Horse Artillery and we were housed at the Hohne Barracks, which was adjacent to the the Belsen concentration Camp, one sunny Sunday morning in 1955 a friend and I were out for a walk and decided to go into the camp. The incredible thing was that we chose the same day that the BBC world service had decided to film a programme entitled 'Ten Years After', with Richard Dimbleby, and we walked right in just before he went live on the air to London!

It transpired that Dimbleby was one of the first correspondents to enter Belsen after the liberation. We met him and had our photograph taken with him, after he had got over the shock of seeing two national servicemen standing there absolutely agog!
One of my favourite comedy actors is Rowan Atkinson so I was delighted to discover that he too is an old St Beghian! I would love to hear from any of my old friends - two who come to mind are Clive (CPJ Hodgson) and Michael Stout.
I have kept up my golf, which I first played on the school's lovely course, so I have been playing now for nearly 70 years! I did manage to play in the Critchely Cup for St Bees many years ago but do very little travelling these days. Being an octogenerian does slow you down a bit!

I did make a couple of visits to the school many years ago and was very relieved to discover that corporal punishment had come to an end. I well remember receiving a beating for leaving my towel out of my locker after being woken up at 10pm and taken down to the changing room. Another bizarre experience was a beating from the housemaster after his wife caught my friend and myself eating chips in the street in Whitehaven while on a visit to the dentist!

However I did introduce soccer to the school as I was at the time an avid fan of Newcastle United. And I remember the great games we had on the ash court at Grindal.”

 

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The St Beghian Society,    St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.
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