Bill Giles - the Mildest Weather Forecaster

It’s easy to take weather presenters for granted. The forecasts are always there several times a day, rain or shine, straight after the main news bulletins and also play a major role in breakfast TV and regional news programmes. As part of the Beeb’s audience research department I carried out projects and analysis of viewing data which proved what I had long suspected, namely that the weather segment, if only a few minutes long, was the viewers’ favourite bit of the whole broadcast. 

Of course, whatever the medium, how the weather forecast is presented is crucial. ITV’s preference for a pretty woman smiling in front of a map displaying a few symbols for rain or sun has never cut it for me. Sian Lloyd actually made me switch channels just to avoid her over-precise diction and expressive hand gestures more suited to ballet than meteorology. It didn’t stop her enjoying a 24-year TV career, though.

No, I favour the Beeb’s policy of story-telling with complementary visual aids – just like any good presentation. When you have to squeeze what can be a complex narrative into two or three minutes, it’s more than mere science; it’s an art. So if it’s not Ms Lloyd, what makes the perfect weather presenter? For me, it’s a mix of professionalism and credibility, understated charisma, engaging smile in appropriate places and scripts which tell a story in language we all understand but don’t treat us like idiots.

We’ve all felt for the newbies who, despite likely intensive training, often present like a rabbit caught in headlights. I know; I’ve been in that position myself, only without millions of people hanging on my every word. However, they all seem to quickly bed in and become part of the on-screen furniture. 24 year-old Helen Young was a case in point. From a stuttering start she went on to lead the BBC team for three years before quitting to raise her family.

Many national weather presenters cut their teeth on regional programmes while others remained on their patch to become the most popular personalities on TV. In particular, I fondly remember from my university days up to twenty-first century holidays in Cornwall the friendly face and distinct West Country burr of Spotlight South West’s Craig Rich. There have been some memorable accents on national bulletins, too. Carol Kirkwood’s perpetually cheerful Highlands delivery brightened my mornings in the days I would watch BBC’s Breakfast News before the daily commute, and John Kettley’s trans-Pennines voice was an iconic ingredient of evening telly in the late Eighties and Nineties before he returned to radio.

I also have happy memories of Jim Bacon’s pudding basin haircut, fellow redhead Isobel Lang, Michael Fish’s strobing jackets, John Hammond’s inadvertent George Clooney impression and the sinister Rob McElwee who, with a unique turn of phrase and tendeny to lean into the lens, often seemed to be operating in a parallel universe. Then there’s the inimitable force of nature that was Ian McCaskill, whose presentation was so quirky that he became a mainstay of satirical puppet show Spittin’ Image and also Rory Bremner’s cast of impressions. However, the ‘weatherman’ who just about tops the lot is Bill Giles.

He may not have possessed the easy-going manner of today’s leading exponents like Darren Bett nor the larger-than-life personality of his contemporary McCaskill but Giles successfully bridged the eras of the troublesome magnetic map symbols and computer-generated graphics.

He is unique amongst weathermen that I actually saw him in the flesh, presenting lectures not once but twice, nearly two decades apart. The first was in, I think, 1981, not long after he started out on national TV. It was at Exeter University, not far from his Devonian roots. The second time was towards the end of his BBC career, giving a talk at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Like many weather broadcasters of his time he had started out as a Met Office scientist in the RAF before eventually ending up on air, and he had a fair few stories to tell. A shame he wasn’t allowed to relate them all!

Bill Glles may have expanded his waistline between this informal farmers’ forecast (lots of isobars but curiously no temperatures) in 1984 and his grey-haired dotage on a wet and windy New Year’s Eve in 1997, but he didn’t change that much in terms of presentation. His light grey jacket was never far from our screens, even on Christmas Day, projecting just the right blend of formal and smart casual. Like Angela Rippon behind her Seventies news desk, goodness knows what, if anything, he wore over his legs!

He was awarded an OBE in 1995 and retired five years later, and it seems like only yesterday. Reliving Bill’s old forecasts, he looks rather staid and stodgy compared with Tomasz Schafernaker or Lucy Verasamy but he always commanded attention with this keen (very) amateur student of meteorology. In some ways he was way ahead of his time, warning of climate change when it was most unfashionable and indeed frowned upon. The world needs more people like him.