Jack Hargreaves

For other people named Jack Hargreaves, see Jack Hargreaves (disambiguation).

Jack Hargreaves
OBE
Born(1911-12-31)31 December 1911
Palmers Green, London, England
Died15 March 1994(1994-03-15) (aged 82)[1]
The Winterbourne Hospital, Dorchester, Dorset, England

Jack Hargreaves OBE (31 December 1911 – 15 March 1994), full name John Herbert Hargreaves, was an English television presenter and writer whose enduring interest was to comment without nostalgia or sentimentality on accelerating distortions in relations between the city and the countryside, seeking – in entertaining ways – to question and rebut metropolitan assumptions about its character and function. Hargreaves 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 (of which Hargreaves was a director) and networked on ITV until the demise of Southern in 1981.

Hargreaves was the 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. In each episode Hargreaves appeared in short 16mm film reports on some aspect of rural life, usually one in each half of the episode. The films were introduced and narrated by him from a studio set based on the interior of a garden shed.

In 1967, with Ollie Kite he presented Country Boy, a networked children's programme of 20 episodes in which a boy from the city was introduced to the ways of country. Two further series followed in 1969 and 1970. Other programmes he created for local viewers were Farm Progress and a live afternoon series Houseparty. His country programmes continued after the demise of Southern Television with Old Country for Channel 4 - effectively a retitled Out of Town.

Hargreaves was involved in the setting up of ITV, and a member of Southern's board of directors, and was 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). Hargreaves was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1972 New Year Honours.[2] A biography of Hargreaves by Paul Peacock was published in July 2006.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference I was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ United Kingdom list: "No. 45554". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1971. p. 11.
  3. ^ Jack Hargreaves: A Portrait. uk: Farming Books & Videos Ltd. 3 July 2006. ISBN 978-1904871132.