John Alan Tidmarsh was a British broadcaster and journalist who spent ten years with domestic radio and television and more than thirty years with the BBC World Service magazine programme Outlook.
13 Facts About John Tidmarsh
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John Tidmarsh left school at 16 to become a junior reporter with the Western Daily Press.
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Back in Bristol with the Western Daily Press in the autumn of 1948, John Tidmarsh began to specialise in sport, reporting each week on Bristol Rovers.
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John Tidmarsh later joined the staff as the regional organiser of coverage for national television news.
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Back in England, John Tidmarsh worked at Alexandra Palace, the headquarters of BBC Television News, and presented the daily news magazine for South East England, Town and Around.
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John Tidmarsh covered the final talks for Algerian independence at Evian-les-Bains and was actually in Algiers on Independence Day.
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John Tidmarsh had many more overseas assignments, including the revolt in Lebanon in June 1958 to overthrow Camille Chamoun, the two wars between India and Pakistan in 1962 and 1965, a three-month assignment in Vietnam in 1965, and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, led by Martin Luther King Jr.
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In 1966, John Tidmarsh resigned from the staff and set himself up as a correspondent for the BBC in Brussels.
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John Tidmarsh thus became the BBC's first European commuter, before returning to Britain in 1968.
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When John Tidmarsh finally retired in 1998, shortly after his 70th birthday, he had been with the programme for more than 30 years.
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John Tidmarsh was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcasting in 1997, the same year he signed off from regular presenting.
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John Tidmarsh's autobiography was published in 2010, entitled Horrid Go-ahead Boy: A Broadcaster's Life.
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John Tidmarsh died on 30 May 2019 at the age of 90 and is survived by his partner Anne Lount, and two children, Patrick and Emma.