Tickets on sale for Alan Whicker’s Centenary at the BFI!

Join us to celebrate 100 years of Alan Whicker at the BFI Southbank on Saturday 7th August 🎉 🎉

With a career spanning six decades, Alan Whicker was Britain’s most famous television reporter. At a time when interviews were notoriously obsequious Whicker and his team wrote the grammar of the television we watch today. With a journalist’s nose for a story, his mission was to inform and to entertain, never to preach. His deceptively conversational style encouraged intimate revelations from the great, the good and the not so good, with penetrating questions masked in old-school manners. Often ahead of his time, Whicker’s reports on divorce, gay marriage and racial inequality changed attitudes, and, in some cases, changed the law. From the Sultan of Brunei to Butch Cassidy’s sister, the descendants of the Bounty mutineers to Papa Doc’s Haiti, Whicker’s World was innovative and adventurous.

Our celebration of his centenary in partnership with the BFI, features screenings of some of his most memorable programmes, followed by a panel discussion with those who worked with, admired and knew him best. We are thrilled to announce that we will be joined by Michael Palin, Jon Culshaw (star of the upcoming Whicker radio drama ‘The Other Side of the World’) and The Whickers’ Artistic Director, Jane Ray, with guest appearances from Michael Parkinson and Alan’s partner in life and work, Valerie Kleeman.

You can find out more and book your tickets HERE.

Want more? You can also explore the digital Alan Whicker collection in the free BFI Mediatheque. Whether you’re just dropping in before a screening or settling in for some serious research, there’s a comfortable viewing space and an exciting journey of discovery waiting for you…  In this extensive new collection of 100 programmes broadcast from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s you’ll find classic episodes of Whicker’s World (a three-decade mainstay of BBC and ITV schedules), plus spin-off series including Whicker Within a Woman’s World and Whicker Way Out West. Landmark investigative documentaries include Whicker’s 1969 portrait of Haiti and its infamous dictator ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

Find out more about the free collection HERE.