Raymond Baxter dies, 84

[OpenMind]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... w_16092006





Raymond Baxter

(Filed: 16/09/2006)

Raymond Baxter, who has died aged 84, was a wartime Spitfire pilot who became one of the BBC television's best-known outside broadcasters, and the first presenter of the popular BBC1 science programme Tomorrow's World.

Baxter's lean, craggy face and emphatic punched sentences exuded the schoolboyish enthusiasm he felt for the up-to-the-minute gadgetry over which he presided for 12 years. Among many "marvels" — one of his favourite descriptions — he introduced to viewers were the electron microscope (1965), the breathalyser (1967), the pocket calculator (1971), and the barcode reader.

With his American wife Sylvia he demonstrated the first video game, a version of table tennis called Pong, and in another edition he gave the signal for live rounds to be fired at an assistant wearing a new bullet proof vest.



He was, said a later editor of Tomorrow's World, "the messenger for the great white heat of technological advance which in the 1960s was going to sort out all our lives". Always preferring the role of "action man", Baxter reported live from the first passenger hovercraft crossing of the Channel in 1966, and made many flights on Concorde, his first when it was still no more than a prototype fuselage.

He said of the "marvel" of hover flight: "We thought it was going to solve everyone's transport problems. But it just turned into a high-speed ferry on one of the most overcrowded waterways in the world. Its exciting amphibian potential was never exploited."

Baxter parted company with Tomorrow's World in 1977, after falling out with its new producer, Michael Blakstad. Blakstad allegedly called the gravel-voiced presenter "the last of the dinosaurs" and Baxter allegedly said he could never work with someone who rode to the office on a bicycle. He retired hurt and bewildered to the comforting calm of his Queen Anne house and 32-acre garden at Denham in Buckinghamshire.

His departure from Tomorrow's World was the second of two traumatic events to afflict him in 1977. A few months earlier he had broken down and wept while giving evidence to an industrial tribunal about the sacking of his gardener, Albert Murphy, for alleged incompetence. Murphy, who was required to leave a tied cottage, claimed unfair dismissal.

The tribunal found in Baxter's favour, but the court appearance and his emotional response left a mark. A year later he sold his estate and moved to a more modest home in Henley, where he lived until his death. He set up a business which made commercials for British Leyland and promotional videos and films for business conferences. He also became Honorary Admiral of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

Raymond Frederic Baxter was born on January 25 1922 at Ilford, Essex, the son of a schoolmaster, and educated at Ilford County High School. As a boy his enthusiasms were divided among motor cars, aeroplanes and music. He learned the violin and sang as a boy soprano, but at the tender age of 14 he flew with Alan Cobham's flying circus for 10s 6d a day (about £25 in today's money). He said later: "I've had a love affair with planes ever since."

At 18, he joined the RAF at the recruiting centre at Lords and, disguised as a civilian, was sent with other hopeful pilots to train in Canada and the American Mid-West. He qualified as a pilot and was posted to No 65, a Spitfire V fighter squadron based in Scotland, which mostly dealt with shipping reconnaissance.

In the New Year of 1943, following the Operation Torch landings in Algeria and Tunisia, Baxter was posted to the North-West Africa Air Force, joining No 93, a Spitfire IX squadron covering the First Army, in July. After a year, he was sent home to instruct at No 61 Operational Training Unit in Shopshire; though he had disliked being taken out of active service, he later said that the experience was "just about the happiest six months of my life". Instructing fighter pilots for the last three weeks of their training offered, he recalled, "all the fun of operational flying and the responsibility of leadership without having the enemy around".

In September 1944 he returned to operational flying himself with No 602. This was a Spitfire IX squadron (re-equipped from November with XVIs) which had just been recalled from Normandy. From Coltishall in Norfolk, he was one of the pilots who dive-bombed Germany's V-2 sites. He was mentioned in dispatches for his part in these raids.

Towards the end of the war, while still a serving officer, he got his first job in broadcasting, as an announcer with the Forces broadcasting station in Cairo. He then spent two and a half years as deputy director of the British Forces Network station in Hamburg. He told an interviewer: "It was a complete course in broadcasting — you had to be able to do everything yourself, and to teach other people at the same time." He was finally demobbed in December 1946 in the rank of flight lieutenant.

Back in Britain the BBC took him on as an outside broadcast commentator, specialising in "mechanical sports" — flying, motorcycling and motor racing. The BBC appointed him their motoring correspondent in 1960 and between 1967 and 1968 he was also director of publicity for the BMC car group. He was part of the BBC commentating team on numerous Royal occasions, including the Coronation and the Queen's State visit to Canada. Baxter also covered the state funerals of Churchill and of King George VI.

Baxter's trademark in covering international sporting events was to double as commentator and competitor. He took part in 12 Monte Carlo rallies, and although his team never won he was twice among the highest placed British competitors. He also took part in the Tulip, Alpine and RAC rallies and in 1953 covered the New Zealand Air Race as a member of the crew of a competing BEA Viscount.

Leaving Tomorrow's World marked the end of his regular association with the BBC, but he continued to make screen appearances on special occasions. He covered the Farnborough Air Show many times – his commentary during the 1950s was responsible for inspiring many to take an interest in aviation. He was also involved in events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation.

In 1997 and 1998 he returned to his old programme for two series of retrospectives, TW: Time Machine, recapturing outstanding moments from the programmes of the 1960s and 1970s. In July 2000 he was invited to Earls Court to participate in the presentation of the first Raymond Baxter Award for Science Communication. To his surprise and delight, he discovered that he was also the first recipient.

Baxter married, in 1945, Sylvia Kathryn Johnson, of Boston, Massachusetts; she died in 1996. They had a son and a daughter.

In the 1990s it was revealed that Baxter was, by marriage, the uncle of the avant-garde American sculptor Carl Andre, of Tate bricks fame – or, as modern art buffs know it, Equivalent VIII (1966, now in Tate Modern's permanent collection). Baxter told intrigued interviewers that he had "total respect" for, if not total understanding of, his nephew's work. Visiting Andre in New York, Baxter asked: "So where is this sculpture?" "You're standing on it," Andre told him.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.

[Uncle Kram]

He made some of those far fetched ideas that became reality sound so interesting

[dubs]

He was an old Fighter Pilot, and he died on Battle of Britain day!

He will be missed.