20 Facts About Hughie Green

Hugh Hughes Green OStJ was an English radio and television presenter, game show host and actor.

Hughie Green was born in Marylebone, London, to a Scottish father, Hugh Aitchison Hughie Green, a former British Army officer from Glasgow who made his fortune supplying canned fish to the Allied forces in the First World War, and an English mother, Violet Elenore, from Surrey, the daughter of an Irish gardener.

Hughie Green attended Arnold House School, a boys' prep school, in the St John's Wood district of Westminster, Greater London.

In 1949, Hughie Green devised a talent show called Opportunity Knocks, which was commissioned by BBC Radio.

Hughie Green was not discharged from bankruptcy until 18 June 1958.

Hughie Green became a household name in 1955, with the ITV quiz show Double Your Money, which had actually originated some years earlier on Radio Luxembourg.

Hughie Green brought his future co-host Monica Rose to the screen.

On 8 November 1966, Hughie Green presented the show from The House of Friendship in Moscow.

Hughie Green, who possessed a pilot's licence, would fly the panel of judges between audition venues all over Britain, in his small Cessna aircraft.

Hughie Green's game show The Sky's the Limit was generally considered a failure, and was dropped by most ITV regional companies after the first run, although it lasted until 1974 in the Yorkshire and Granada regions, eventually being cancelled because of low ratings, combined with a falling-out between Green and producer Jess Yates.

However, Hughie Green, known for his right-wing politics, had decided he was bigger than the show format he had devised, and began politicising an apolitical family-friendly format.

Hughie Green was often mocked for his permanent door-to-door salesman's smile and Canadian accent.

Hughie Green recorded an album, Songs For Children which was released on York Records MYK 601 in 1971.

Hughie Green met Montreal socialite Claire Wilson on a cruise liner in the mid-1930s when both were still teenagers.

Journalist Noel Botham approached Hughie Green to expose him, but Hughie Green countered with a lawsuit threat.

Hughie Green grew frustrated by Yorkshire Television's failure to remove programme producer Jess Yates when he requested this to be done, and so leaked to Botham the stories of Yates' affair with the young actress Anita Kay, whose story, published in the News of the World, destroyed Yates' career.

In July 1993, after a lifetime of smoking a pipe, heavy drinking and latterly taking recreational barbiturates, Hughie Green was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital, Chelsea, London.

Hughie Green died in hospital on Saturday 3 May 1997, aged 77.

On 2 April 2008 a TV film about Hughie Green's life was broadcast on BBC Four.

Hughie Green told of her struggle with his legacy and her three meetings with half-sister Paula Yates.