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The TV presenter Judith Chalmers, who spent almost three decades persuading British people to go on holiday as the host of Wish You Were Here … ?, has died at the age of 90 after living with Alzheimer’s in her final years.
Her family said she died peacefully at home on Thursday, surrounded by “the family she loved so much”, after becoming ill in recent weeks. They added that she would be greatly missed but left behind “a giant suitcase of the happiest memories”.
Chalmers, who presented more than 500 editions of the popular ITV travel show between 1974 and 2003, led an “extraordinary life that involved over 60 years in broadcasting and countless adventures all over the globe”, the family said.
When she landed her job as the launch presenter of the show, like many British people in the 1970s, the farthest she had ever travelled was across the Channel to France.
As cheap package holidays to Europe increased in popularity, her career took off and she became famous for her warm, approachable presenting style – and her sun tan.
In 2008, she made headlines when she told Graham Norton that she had never worn knickers on camera while presenting the show.
“I was told by the wardrobe mistress that I shouldn’t have a VPL – visible panty line. So I’m sorry to reveal that after 30 years of Wish You Were Here … ? I was pantless all the time,” she said.
Born in 1935 in the Cheshire suburb of Gatley, near Stockport, she began her career at the BBC at the age of just 13, after her mother encouraged her to audition for work as a child actor on BBC Children’s Hour in Manchester.
She debuted on TV in 1956, presenting a woman’s afternoon magazine programme and by the 1960s, she was working as a BBC television announcer and as a host of Come Dancing, the original BBC ballroom dancing competition show. Between 1966 and 1970, she presented BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Her younger sister, Sandra, would later follow in her footsteps by going into broadcasting and becoming an editor of Woman’s Hour in the 1980s.
She told the food journalist Mary Berry in the 1960s: “If you’re not fun, [the audience will] turn over to the other channel – and there’s only one more channel.”
She denied that presenting Wish You Were Here … ? was like being permanently on holiday. “We get to spend so little time in the places we visit and have to work 14-hour days, so that I’m usually too exhausted to enjoy them as holiday destinations,” she once said, according to the Times.
Her top tip to travellers was to not take too much luggage, although she did not always manage to follow her own advice. “I still take far too much,” she told Metro in August 2019. “I’m ashamed whenever I see my heavy case coming off the carousel at the airport, and I think: ‘Oh Lord, is this really all necessary?’ ”
She is survived by her 92-year-old husband, the former sports presenter Neil Durden-Smith, whom she married in 1964, and her son Mark Durden-Smith, also a TV presenter on shows such as ITV’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here and This Morning.
