Jack Hargreaves

Jack Hargreaves OBE (31 December 1911 in London – 15 March 1994) was an English television presenter and writer. His enduring interest was to comment without nostalgia or sentimentality on accelerating distortions in relations between the city and the countryside.
He is remembered for appearing on How, a children's programme, which he also conceived, about how things worked or ought to work. It ran from 1966 on Southern Television and networked on ITV until the demise of Southern in 1981.
Hargreaves is well known as the gentle-voiced presenter of the weekly magazine programme Out of Town, first broadcast in 1960 following the success of his series Gone Fishing the previous year. Broadcast on Friday evenings on Southern Television the programme was also taken up by many of the other ITV regions, usually in a Sunday afternoon slot. He also presented three series (one of them with Ollie Kite) of Country Boy, a networked children's programme in which a boy from the city was introduced to the ways of country. Other programmes he created for local viewers were Farm Progress and a live afternoon series Houseparty. His country TV programmes continued after the demise of Southern with Old Country for Channel 4.
Most of his viewers were probably unaware that he was a player in the setting up of ITV, and a member of Southern's board of directors. From early in his life he acquired a sophisticated grasp of city life. He made his reputation in the heart of London, on whose outskirts he was born. Yet for the last 30 years of his life, while employed by the National Farmers' Union, serving on the Nugent Committee (the Defence Lands Committee that investigated which parts of the Ministry of Defence holdings could be returned to private ownership) and throughout his later career as a TV personality, he sought – in entertaining ways – to question and rebut metropolitan assumptions about the character and function of the countryside. A biography of Hargreaves by Paul Peacock was published in July 2006. It was for his contributions to the Defence Lands Committee which produced the Nugent Report in 1973 that he was appointed an OBE.

Born, like his brothers, in London, Hargreaves, in his youth, was placed by his mother with old family friends at Burston Hill Farm, north of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire where he was profoundly influenced by the farmer Victor Pargeter. Over half a century later, Hargreaves would acknowledge Pargeter as part of a composite of father, grandfathers, uncles and old farming friends in the formative character of 'The Old Man' at the start of his book Out of Town (1987). Hargreaves was to live at a variety of addresses in central London between Soho, Chelsea and Hampstead. In the late '40s he was moving between a London home and a caravan in a field on the bank of the River Kennet at Midgham, then a cottage in Bagnor in Berkshire by the Winterbourne running into the River Lambourn, then at Lower Pennington and Walhampton near Lymington as well as at Minstead and East Boldre in the New Forest, and he spent his final years at Raven Cottage, near Belchalwell in Dorset which he – an inveterate commuter to and from the places from where he worked – was wont to bless for being 'just out of range of London'. He died at the Winterbourne Hospital in Dorchester, and was cremated at Salisbury, his ashes being spread on Bulbarrow Hill above Raven Cottage.

Born in London in 1911 to James and Ada Hargreaves (née Jubb), Jack (christened John Herbert) was one of three brothers. The family was rooted in Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but James Hargreaves based himself partly in London for commercial advantage and to allow his wife the benefit of the capital's midwifery. The brothers attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood near London after which Edward and Ronald Hargreaves pursued successful careers in medicine, while Jack went to study at the Royal Veterinary College at London University in 1929, leaving the university to earn a living as a copywriter, journalist and script writer for radio and films. By the late 1930s he had established a reputation for his pioneering approaches to radio broadcasting.

At the outset of the Second World War, broadcasting was recognised as part of the war effort. Hargreaves' 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 where he commissioned work from Bert Hardy. His brilliance as a communications manager led to his being recruited to the National Farmers Union by Jim Turner, later Lord Netherthorpe, who was celebrated for his success as a lobbyist for farmers. Working closely with Turner, Hargreaves organised and developed the NFU's Information Department, founding the British Farmer magazine during an almost intractable crisis of trust between NFU HQ and the members of the largest union in the country, many of whom were experiencing seismic change in the agricultural economy.

Hargreaves loved angling. Bemused at the way it had, from "sociological, technical, financial and Malthusian" causes become tribalised by class and species, he wrote Fishing for a Year (1951), arguing "for regression" – the pursuit of different fish, in separate places and varied methods throughout the licensed seasons. "What do they know of fishing" he wrote "who know only one fish and one way to fish for him?" Yet his language was seldom so polemic and never adversarial. Hargreaves' style was complemented in this first book by the drawings of his friend Bernard Venables: "It is one of the most excellent provisions of Nature" he wrote in a chapter for the warmest time of the year "that chub are to be angled for on hot summer afternoons ... When the grass is high and full of hum and rustle, when the comfrey blooms along the edge of the water and the air shivers in the heat, the chub lie just under the surface in slacks and corners and eddies all along the bank. You will see them and you will think they have not seen you". His writing and contacts among anglers saw the president of the Piscatorial Society, Sir Robert Saundby, asking Hargreaves to organise the Society's library. With typical thoroughness the collection was removed to Jack's home, leaving it fully catalogued with not a volume unread. This was when he became sceptical about the opinion of the immortal 17th century author of The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, as to the culinary qualities of the chub – a dish Hargreaves described as "eating cotton wool full of pins and needles".

Southern Television

In 1959, by now well known in the trade as a creative media innovator, Hargreaves was head-hunted by Roy Rich to the new ITV franchised company, Southern Television, both as programme maker and assistant programme controller. He might have been promoted but Independent Television Authority (ITA) regulations prohibited being in charge of programming, while also making programmes.

It was at Southern, in the same year he joined the station, that Hargreaves made his screen debut with the series Gone Fishing – and so, what had previously been a pastime became the focus of his wider reputation. He recounted how on his first broadcast, sitting in the studio, apprehensive at the thought of being about to talk live to a potential audience of millions, his director had reminded him that although that vast audience might be statistically daunting, it was more likely to be two or three people and perhaps a dog sitting in their front room. He aimed at conversing with such an audience for the rest of his career. The director of nearly all of Hargreaves' programmes at Southern Television was George Egan who, with cameraman Stan Bréhaut, became the third ingredient of a most creative outdoor team.

In the early 1960s Hargreaves, fascinated with a still young medium and perceiving how completely different television – especially live television – was from cinema, collaborated in a new documentary series under the Out of Town umbrella. Hargreaves had moved from his country home in Bagnor near Newbury to a new home near Lymington on the Solent and one of his earliest programmes for Out of Town documented the invention, design and construction, by his friend Denys Rayner, of a family yacht – the Beacon Corvette – which evolved into Rayner's Westerly 22 and became among the first of a new family of small affordable sailing boats capable of being trailed behind a family saloon, easily launched and used for weekending as well as ocean voyaging. Jack and his last wife Isobel, whom he married in 1964, took one of these – "Young Tiger" (named after another of his TV series) – through the Canal du Midi between Bordeaux and Sète in 1965, completing one leg of a transatlantic voyage continued by his stepson, Simon.

The programme Out of Town was broadcast between 1963 and 1981. Jack Hargreaves became a household name in the parts of England covered by Southern Television. When Southern lost its franchise, Hargreaves continued his TV career on Channel 4, also continuing, in prose, the deceptively simple narrative style that had worked well "on the box". Hargreaves' most extended filming relationship was with Stan Bréhaut, the cameraman who worked closely with him for over 20 years on over a thousand shoots. He described Bréhaut (who died peacefully in December 2005), as "the finest outdoor cameraman in England". Enjoyed for the relaxed style of his "countryside" broadcasting, Hargreaves, with Stan's help, used a sure grasp of how television worked best to spread cogent messages about the loss of men's connection with the land.

Channel 4

After the demise of Southern Television in 1981, Hargreaves teamed up with Lacewing Productions, a small company founded by David Knowles (ex-Southern Television). Lacewing, based in Winchester, were commissioned by Channel 4, via Limehouse Productions in London, to make a series similar to Out of Town. Setting up a studio – complete with the original shed set from Southern Television – in the village hall at Meonstoke Hampshire, Jack worked with Steve Wade, Phil Wade and Steve Wagstaff (location cameraman), to create a new version of Out of Town called Old Country. Lacewing produced a total of sixty Old Country episodes, broadcast nationally on Channel 4 between 1983 and 1985.

"Out of Town" theme tunes

The earlier black and white episodes used the theme song "Out of Town" by Leslie Bricusse and Robin Beaumont, performed by Max Bygraves. The lyrics begin: "Say what you will, the countryside is still, the only place that I can settle down".

The distinctive classical guitar tune that accompanied later episodes of "Out of Town", "Recuerdos de la Alhambra", was commissioned by Hargreaves from one of Southern's musical directors, Jonathan Xavier Coudrille. While strolling down a corridor at the Southern TV HQ at Northam in Southampton, Hargreaves overheard the multi-instrumentalist, Jonathon Coudrille playing his own arrangement of Francisco Tárrega's piece in one of the studios. He decided to use it in place of Bygraves' song, commissioning Coudrille's group, 'Late November', to play it especially for OOT. The group comprised Coudrille, Mick Hawksworth, Steve Smith, Tony Fernandez, Peter Barraclough and Jonathan Handlesman.

As an independent member of the Defence Lands Committee 1971–73, Hargreaves made key contributions to the Nugent Report, 1973, reviewing the use of land held by the country's armed forces for defence purposes. He became even more aware that one of the best ways to reserve the countryside for its proper purpose was to keep most people out of it. Although agriculture would be preferable, military exercises seemed less harmful in their impact on the environment than its use for the recreational choices of a predominantly urban population. This was a conundrum he shared wryly with his audience, gently repeating the point, that the countryside, insofar as it had a purpose for humans, was to grow their food in sustainable ways.

Jack Hargreaves was married, in 1932, to Jeanette Haighler. They had two sons, Mark and Victor; then, after divorce, he married Elisabeth Van de Putte. Two more sons were born – James Stephen in 1946 and Edward John in 1947. That marriage ended in 1948 when he began a relationship with a journalist from Vogue, Barbara Baddeley.

Living with her until 1963, Hargeaves became a stepfather to Bay and her brother Simon, Barbara's children by the diplomat John Baddeley CMG. He also had a daughter Polly, born in 1957 as a result of a six-year relationship with his secretary Judy Hogg. Hargreaves' biographer, Paul Peacock, arranged for Polly to meet Simon Baddeley and his family in March 2006.

In 1965, Hargreaves married Isobel Hatfield (born 12 April 1919). Isobel died four years after her husband on 5 February 1998 and her ashes were scattered with Jack's on Bulbarrow Hill.

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  Hargreaves with his stepson Simon Baddeley in a trap drawn by Simon's pony, Pewter

Hargreaves had worked with Steve Wade on How before Southern Television lost its franchise. In 1985 Hargreaves worked with Wade to make twenty-seven new Out of Town episodes for video release. Instead of the studio 'shed' that had been a mainstay of the earlier series, these episodes were made in Jack's real shed at his last home beside Raven Cottage, Belchalwell, in Dorset.

Using original cut film inserts he had bought from Southern Television, Hargreaves acquired a Steenbeck editing machine and, with Steve Wade, selected films to be inserted into the new series. These films were tele-cined at Bournemouth Film School and copied to VHS tapes. Steve Wade (director), Phil Wade, his son (sound), and Steve Wagstaff (camera) with Brian Mathews (production manager), shot new links in the shed. Jack then sat in his front room at Raven Cottage and did a new voice-over to the VHS of the film inserts. Brian Mathews and Steve Wade took these component parts to London where they were assembled as the final programmes for distribution by Primetime, later Endemol, as VHS tapes and later DVDs for home viewing. They comprise:

1. Appleby Fair/Ramming Time, New Forest Point to Point/Apple Grafting and Kingfishers/Model Carts
2. Sheep Shearing/Sea Bream, Sweetheart Story/Tyring a Cart and Farm Sale/Fishing in a Gale/Forest Fire
3. Market Day/Minnow Trap/Lobster Boat, Iron Ponds/Lobster Breeding and Romney Marsh/Pumpkins.
4. Lambing/Mayfly, Mole Catcher/High School Horse and Rake Maker/Stage Coach.
5. Bee-Skips/Pheasant Shooting, Tidal Mill/Ice Fishing and Fly Casting/The Log Splitter.
6. The Hidden Stream/Deer Shoot, the Shooting Master and British Finches/Yerro's Operation.
7. Stour River, Hacienda/Bullfight and House Building/Trout and Grayling.
8. Freeze Branding/Cider Making, Trammel Nets/The Coach Builder and Big Skate/Pannage.
9. Cod Fishing/Centenarian Angler, Charcoal Burners/Pigeon Shooting and Long Distance Ride.

Hargreaves also authored a number of audio-tapes and long play records on his favourite subjects.

In 2004 a full-length edition of Out of Town, first broadcast on 23 May 1980, was included on a DVD released by ITV Meridian to mark the closing of Southern Television's Southampton studios. Until 2012 this remained the only one of Jack Hargreaves' original broadcast programmes to have been published in any format, and in the intervening years the whereabouts of the remaining master tapes became unknown. However, after extensive research by Jack's stepson Simon Baddeley, Simon Winters, the classic television organisation – Kaleidoscope, and Southern Television archive expert David King, thirty four complete original episodes of Out of Town – not seen since their original broadcast in 1980 and 1981 – came to light and were made available on DVD.