Vera Mc Kechnie - Television Career

Television Career

She began her career when the BBC resumed TV broadcasts after the Second World War. On BBC Children’s Television she narrated the earliest live editions of Andy Pandy from 1950 where she told a story as it was acted out by string puppets. The programme was aimed at very young children under primary school starting age of five years old at the time. The programme was broadcast during the school day and part of a series of five known as Watch With Mother. This included The Woodentops, Picture Book, Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men and Rag, Tag and Bobtail of which one was broadcast each weekday. At the time the broadcasts began, the main BBC transmitters in use only covered London and the south east from Alexandra Palace, Birmingham and the Midlands from Sutton Coldfield and Manchester and the north west from Winter Hill.

She was also a presenter of Picture Book in the 1960s. She was a TV in-vision announcer, 1955 to 1960 and later worked for BBC children' TV as presenter of For Deaf Children, 1956. Other TV work was Focus, 1958 to 1960; Picture Book, 1963 to 1965; narrator, Andy Pandy, 1970.

From 1955 to about 1958 she was main presenter of Studio E, a magazine program for older children aged around 9 to 14. Studio E lasted around 55 minutes and came from the studio of the same name at the BBC's west London studios in Lime Grove, Shepherd's Bush, since demolished. The opening sequence of Studio E showed McKechnie arriving at the studio and taking the scissor-gated lift to the Studio E floor. The mascot of Studio E was a dog called Kim.