12 Facts About Bob Danvers-Walker

Cyril Frederick "Bob" Danvers-Walker was a British radio and newsreel announcer best known as the voice of Pathe News cinema newsreels during the Second World War and for many years afterward.

Bob Danvers-Walker's voice was described as "clear, fruity and rich, with just the suggestion of raffishness".

Bob Danvers-Walker spent much of his childhood in Tasmania and began his radio career in Melbourne, in 1925, moving on briefly to 2FC in Sydney, in 1932, before returning to the United Kingdom the same year.

Bob Danvers-Walker helped the IBC to set up radio stations at Toulouse, Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, but Radio Normandy was always the company's flagship station, and Danvers-Walker was heard regularly over its airwaves until the station was closed down at the start of the Second World War in 1939.

Bob Danvers-Walker wanted to join the BBC as soon as the war started, but was prevented by a BBC rule against employing anyone who had worked on commercial radio.

Bob Danvers-Walker was the commentator for the British Pathe newsreel, a job he held continuously from 1940 to 1970.

Bob Danvers-Walker worked freelance for many radio and television outlets.

Bob Danvers-Walker was the announcer on the "rebel" version of the comedy programme Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh on Radio Luxembourg when the show was in temporary exile from the BBC, and for the science-fiction series Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future on the same station.

Bob Danvers-Walker took part in the "stunt" programme People are Funny on Luxembourg, recorded around the UK and presented by Peter Martyn.

At BBC Radio, Bob Danvers-Walker was one of the regular presenters of Housewives' Choice throughout the 1950s, and contributed to many other programmes, including in the 1960s Holiday Hour and Countryside.

Bob Danvers-Walker appeared in a number of feature films, often as himself.

Bob Danvers-Walker died of cancer in the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, England, on 17 May 1990, and was survived by his wife Vera Nita White, whom he had married in 1933; they had a son and a daughter.