Tonight was broadcast every weekday, beginning in 1957, with an audience of just one million, but by the end of the year, soaring past the five million mark.
Brought in to fill 40 minutes of the 6 – 7 pm slot (until then a close-down period known as the “Toddler’s Truce” so that mothers could put their children to bed), the start of Tonight followed the death of the magazine Picture Post, and some of the show’s most popular contributors came from there – among them Fyfe Robertson, Trevor Philpott, Slim Hewitt and later Kenneth Allsop.
The presenter was Cliff Michelmore, and he introduced weird and wonderful stories from the above-mentioned reporters, together with Derek Hart, Macdonald Hastings, Geoffrey Johnson Smith and a new reporter named Alan Whicker.
Cy Grant sang a topical calypso written by Bernard Levin, and there was a little ditty from folk duo Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor (who went on to host The White Heather Club for five years).
The first woman reporter on the programme was Polly Elwes, who recalled a typical Tonight tale; “I had to do a story about some sheep on Ilkley Moor which, because the moor wasn’t fenced, were getting into people’s back gardens and eating their chrysanthemums. We did a recce and there were sheep, loads of them, doing just that. Next morning when we came to film it there wasn’t a sheep in sight. So we went up on the moors, found some sheep, drove them down and put them into the gardens!”
Human guests included Brigitte Bardot and Jayne Mansfield, both interviewed by the show’s resident charmer, Geoffrey Johnson Smith.
Cliff Michelmore recalled the arrival of La Mansfield thus; “She was wearing a leopard skin affair which looked as though she had been poured into it. It hugged every bit of her body tightly down to her ankles. She shuffled across the studio floor and stood leaning against a piece of scenery. When offered a chair or a stool, she declined, informing us ‘This dress aint for sittin’, this dress aint for walkin’, all this dress is for is leanin’.”
The final edition of Tonight was transmitted on 18 June 1965. After some 1,800 editions, Cliff Michelmore could no longer say: “The next Tonight will be tomorrow night”.
Michelmore and many of the Tonight team moved on to 24 Hours.
The title was re-used in 1975 for an unrelated late-night show. Cliff Michelmore passed away in March 2016, aged 96.
Cliff Michelmore
Derek Hart
Alan Whicker
Fyfe Robertson
Trevor Philpott
Kenneth Allsop
Macdonald Hastings
Christopher Brasher
Julian Pettifer
Brian Redhead
Slim Hewitt
Geoffrey Johnson Smith
Polly Elwes
Cy Grant
Robin Hall
Jimmie Macgregor
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Brought in to fill 40 minutes of the 6 – 7 pm slot (until then a close-down period known as the “Toddler’s Truce” so that mothers could put their children to bed), the start of Tonight followed the death of the magazine Picture Post, and some of the show’s most popular contributors came from there – among them Fyfe Robertson, Trevor Philpott, Slim Hewitt and later Kenneth Allsop.
The first woman reporter on the programme was Polly Elwes, who recalled a typical Tonight tale; “I had to do a story about some sheep on Ilkley Moor which, because the moor wasn’t fenced, were getting into people’s back gardens and eating their chrysanthemums. We did a recce and there were sheep, loads of them, doing just that. Next morning when we came to film it there wasn’t a sheep in sight. So we went up on the moors, found some sheep, drove them down and put them into the gardens!”
