Michael Peacock

Who is Michael Peacock?

Michael Peacock is a former British television executive, who from 1963 until the spring of 1965 was the first ever Controller of BBC 2, the Corporation's second television channel.

After graduating with an upper second class degree in sociology from the [London School of Economics in 1952, Michael Peacock immediately joined BBC Television in as a trainee producer, working under Grace Wyndham Goldie in the Television Talks Department, based at Alexandra Palace, which moved to the Lime Grove Studios the following year. In 1955 he become the producer of Panorama the Corporation's first weekly TV current affairs series at the age of just twenty-six. Under his editorship with Richard Dimbleby as anchorman the programme became very popular, and during the Suez crisis in 1956 audiences reached 12 million viewers.It was he who masterminded what is still its most remembered story, a world famous April Fool's Day 'Joke' which fooled many viewers into believing that spaghetti grew on trees.

In 1958 he was appointed Assistant Head of Television Outside Broadcasts with the brief to develop documentary OBs. In 1959 he returned to Panorama where ratings had fallen badly.