Nationwide and Antiques Roadshow host Hugh Scully dies

Former Antiques Roadshow and Nationwide presenter Hugh Scully has died aged 72.

The BBC presenter and journalist died on Thursday at his home in Cornwall reportedly while watching television. Hugh joined the BBC in 1965 as a freelance reporter, however is best known for his nineteen years as host of valuation show The Antiques Roadshow. He also featured occasionally on yearly fundraiser Children In Need, was a regular host of national news and magazine series Nationwide for the beeb as well as local news show for the South West BBC Spotlight.

Other shows for the corporation include radio series Talking about Antiques in the late 1960s, the 1970s BBC TV antique panel series Collectors World, as one of the presenters of General Election coverage in both 1983 and 1987 and as the presenter and interviewer on series The Downing Street Years – which he interviewed former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher about her time in office.

Scully resigned from the BBC in 2000 when he joined an online antiques company, the beeb deeming his decision would be a conflict of interests. With it feared his new job would jeopardise The Antiques Roadshow’s impartial reputation towards auction houses he quit the show.

“I have particularly enjoyed my long association with the Antiques Roadshow which has always been a delight and one of the best jobs in broadcasting. Now the time has come when I must pursue my commercial interests which, sadly, are incompatible with my role on the programme. I wish my successor well.” – Hugh Scully speaking to the BBC in 2000.

Subsequent presenters of The Antique Roadshow have included Michael Aspel and Fiona Bruce. In more recent times he hosted Britain’s Finest Stately Homes for Channel 5. Hugh was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. He married his wife Barbara in 1966, she died in 2009 aged 69. Speaking to the Falmouth Packet Newspaper at the time he said:

“I miss her terribly. She was not just my wife for 43 years but my best friend and soulmate. I don’t know what I will do without my dearest Barbara. I am devastated by her death. I will mourn her for the rest of my life.”

The newspaper reported at the time the couple had moved to Mawnan in 1993 after the couple ‘fell in love’ with a house they saw located there in Country Life magazine. During his 22-years in Mawnan the Scully family raised tens of thousands of pounds for the RNLI and Mawnan Parish Church holding antique valuation days in the garden of their home.

Below a clip of Hugh Scully on BBC’s Nationwide.

Pictured top: on BBC regional news show for the South West Spotlight, Middle: BBC publicity shot for The Antiques Roadshow and Bottom: Channel 5’s Britain’s Finest Stately Homes.