Quick Facts
Biography
Chris Howland (30 July 1928 – 29 November 2013) was a British radio and TV presenter. For most of his career he worked in (Western) Germany, where he started a few years after World War II at BFN in Hamburg. He became a popular disc jockey and presenter also at German networks. He also was a prolific Schlager-singer and starred in films.
Youth in England
Chris Howland was born in London and brought up in Southern England and became a professional beekeeper.
Radio career
In 1948 he started working for the BFN in Germany.
The British programmes were popular among German youths who would rather listen to British music than to the comparatively slow contemporary German music. So his popularity subsequently soon exceeded his actual target audience. Howland also got acquainted with the German language. In 1952, when he already spoke German fluently, he was hired by the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk broadcaster.
Still, when he debuted six years later as a singer, he did it in German and had two hits. But in 1959 he stopped doing radio shows and returned to Britain.
TV career
On British TV Howland had a show called Peoples and Places but he was not as popular as in Germany where the audiences loved his British accent. So after two years he continued his career in Germany. Here he got a show called Studio B .
which featured pop stars in a new way that included a lot of humour. The show was broadcast more than sixty times. Howland's next coup was a version of Candid Camera for German TV.
Cinema career
From 1954 Howland acted in more than twenty films, including six European Karl May films. In 2007 he appeared in a parody on German Edgar Wallace feature films.
He acted mainly in comedies which were carried out in a style quite like the British Carry On films.
Accent as trademark
Like the Dutch TV presenter, singer and actor Rudi Carrell and the American musician, actor and journalist Bill Ramsey (who also appeared as guest in Howland's show "Studio B") he made his accent his trademark.
Recent activities
Until his death Howland lived outside Cologne and worked again as a radio presenter and appeared occasionally as an actor or talker on TV. In 2009 he published his memoirs Yes, Sir. The book was well received.
Howland died on 29 November 2013.
Selected filmography
- The Blue Sea and You (1959)
- A Thousand Stars Aglitter (1959)
- Mission to Hell (1964)