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Margaret Hubble (Read 3366 times)
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Margaret Hubble
Sep 22nd, 2006, 8:02am
 
This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Margaret Hubble
(Filed: 22/09/2006)


Margaret Hubble, who died on August 30 aged 91, was a mainstay of radio broadcasting for some 30 years, becoming best known in the 1950s as a presenter of Woman's Hour.

The youngest of five children of a Kent farmer, Margaret Elinor Hubble was born on December 29 1914 and attended boarding school in Sussex. In 1938 she joined the advertising agency Erwin Wasey, and during the war served in the Women's Land Army. She joined the BBC as a secretary in 1940 and became overseas presentation assistant the following year.

By 1942 she was chief announcer for the BBC's African Service, where she presented Forces Favourites.
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While working for the African Service she was asked to train Jean Metcalfe for her first broadcast as an announcer; in Two Way Story, by Jean Metcalfe and her husband Cliff Michelmore, Jean Metcalfe recalled how in "five terrifying hours" Margaret Hubble had shown her the ropes: "I stuttered my way through the Service to North Africa, which began at 5.30 and ended at half past ten. Maggie, golden-hearted Maggie, stayed with me all the time after she had completed her own long day's work. She is still the kind of person anyone would want to have with them on a life-raft." In 1943 Margaret Hubble was the first female announcer to be heard in the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme, and when that came to an end in 1945 she was one of the first announcers on the Light Programme.

She resigned her staff position to marry Albert Cuthbert in June that year, but returned to the BBC three years later, after his early death.

Margaret Hubble was described in the Radio Times as "an extremely capable woman who is not in the least dismayed when two telephones ring simultaneously and a visitor calls to see her at the same time". She demonstrated her unflappability in September 1945 when she agreed at the last moment to appear as Roy Plomley's guest on Desert Island Discs, standing in for the actress Valerie Hobson, who had gone down with flu. She presented Family Favourites at intervals from then until 1952, and from 1951 was one of three announcers on Woman's Hour, alongside Marjorie Anderson and Jean Metcalfe.

In 1950 she married Philip Horne, and two years later resigned from the BBC for a second time; but she continued to work freelance, returning to Woman's Hour in 1957 and presenting Milady's Music Box, You & The Night And The Music, Rise & Shine, and Homespun on the Light Programme. She also contributed to Children's Hour on the Home Service, and introduced a monthly series called Saturday Excursion for Children's Television.

From 1959 she was a regular narrator, with Douglas Henderson, for Children's Newsreel, and from 1969 she presented Call from Home for the British Forces Broadcasting Service. Later she worked in the duty room of the BBC, answering questions from the public and entertaining guests taking part in programmes.

Margaret Hubble's husband died in 1982. She is survived by a daughter from her first marriage and by three sons from her second.
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