Jack de Manio

Giovanni Batista "Jack" de Manio MC and bar (26 January 1914 – 28 October 1988) was a British journalist, best known as a radio presenter.

Life and work He was the son of Jean and Florence de Manio. His father was an Italian aviator who died in a flying accident before he was born; his mother was Polish. He attended Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. As a young man he worked as an invoice clerk and then as a waiter. He was called up by the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1939. He fought with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1939–40 and from 1940 to 1944 he was with the 1st battalion, Middle East forces.

De Manio's first experience of radio came when he joined the Forces Broadcasting Unit in Beirut in 1944. He became an announcer on the BBC Overseas Service on leaving the army in 1946. He transferred to the Home Service in 1950.

De Manio's career nearly crashed in 1956 when he was duty announcer for the BBC's Home Service. A major radio feature, The Land of the Niger, was broadcast worldwide to mark a Royal visit to Nigeria. Carelessly, he back-announced it as 'The Land of the Nigger'. There was outrage; he was immediately suspended and then returned to the General Overseas Service.

In 1958 de Manio was chosen to present the morning current affairs programme Today, which had begun a few months earlier. The programme was less hard news oriented than it would eventually become and was well suited to de Manio's relaxed, humorous style. He became famous for the number of occasions on which he gave the time incorrectly. In 1969 he was the first radio broadcaster to be permitted to interview Prince Charles. He was voted British Radio Personality of the Year in 1964 and 1971. In 1970 the programme format was changed so that there were two presenters each day. Uneasy with the new format, de Manio left the following year.

At the point of his departure, de Manio was considered out-of-step with the news values of the BBC. The World at One had successfully brought to the BBC the best of Fleet Street values and a hardened newspaper editor in the form of William Hardcastle. Hardcastle contrasted unflatteringly with de Manio, whom David Hendy described in Life on Air: A History of Radio 4 as "a Bentley-driving habitué of Chelsea and the clubs of St James, complete with a rich gin and tonic voice". Sue MacGregor disliked de Manio's "golf-club bore attitude to anything foreign".

Selected bibliography To Auntie with Love. London: Hutchinson, 1967. . Autobiography. Life Begins Too Early: A Sort of Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1970. .

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