In the emergent world of television in the 1940s and 50s, Peter Dimmock, who has died aged 94, took a leading part as a presence on the screen and a power behind it. Everyone knew him as an accomplished and personable sports presenter, with trim moustache, brisk voice and the most neatly knotted necktie ever beheld.
Less well known was that often he had marshalled the event being televised – and not only in the realm of sport. The historic outside broadcast of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 owed much to his directorial flair, plus a little guile. Resistance to the prospect of cameras nosing in on such sacred moments as the anointing and the placing of the crown on the monarch’s head came from church and state, not to mention the nobs who had invitations to Westminster Abbey and resented the idea of any Tom, Dick or Harriet being able to share in the spectacle.
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