Judith Chalmers obituary

TV presenter who became a household name for her sunny broadcasts from holiday destinations in ITV’s Wish You Were Here

Long before people scanned Tripadvisor or started booking their own holidays, they looked to TV travel shows to tell them where to go, and foremost among these was Wish You Were Here …?, fronted by Judith Chalmers. A triumph of middlebrow escapism, the show ran on ITV for nearly 30 years, from the early 1970s to the early 2000s.

Chalmers, who has died aged 90, was the welcoming, lightly glamorous face of Wish You Were Here, on which she was part champion of “abroad” and part consumer watchdog, balancing those roles with a warmth that made her one of the most admired and accomplished broadcasters of her generation. In many years’ worth of globetrotting – from African safaris to US theme parks to funiculars in the Alps – she never lost her poise. TV travel royalty was how she was widely regarded.

The BBC’s rival programme – Holiday – suffered from too rapid a turnover in presenters, whereas for ITV, Chalmers became a fixture. Millions tuned in, and the travel industry hung on her judgments, which were invariably considered and fair-minded.

Chalmers had an instinctive understanding of her viewers’ aspirations, and indeed apprehensions. Danger was seldom in the air on Wish You Were Here, the programme’s character formed in the era before gap years and the rise of adventure holidays.

Prominent on TV from when her career began in the 50s, and with a distinguished track record in radio, Chalmers embodied the genteel values of a now vanished age. That she hosted both Woman’s Hour and the Miss World contest speaks of how minimally feminism impinged on the mainstream media during her heyday, and the mainstream was precisely the space that Chalmers occupied.

In the hands of Victoria Wood, she became an object of parody: a character who was clearly modelled on Chalmers, all chirpiness and tanned skin, turned up in Wood’s sketches. “I came out looking more like her than I intended,” Wood said. “I’d hate to think she minded. If she did, I’d stop.”

Born in Stockport, Judith grew up in Cheadle, attending Withington girls’ school. Her mother, Millie (nee Broadhurst), was a medical secretary, and her father, David Chalmers, an architect; he died when Judith was 17. The family had Scottish roots, and at Twickenham, Chalmers would support Scotland over England. It was her mother who encouraged Judith and her younger sister, Sandra (who went on to be editor of Woman’s Hour), to the performing life, and at the age of 13 Chalmers passed an audition to appear on the northern edition of Children’s Hour, the BBC’s children’s magazine programme.

In 1959, aged 24 and by now almost a TV veteran, she became an announcer on BBC television, in those days consisting of only one channel. Announcers provided the links between the programmes, and Chalmers – who had had elocution lessons as a child in order to remove her northern accent – became a familiar, trusted figure, her professionalism soon leading to other opportunities in a rapidly expanding medium.

In 1963, a gushing mini-profile appeared in Radio Times that sought to capture her swinging London essence: “Home is a mews flat shared with sister Sandra, but Judith at a standstill is a sight seldom seen in London, except when the red Mini in which she nips around town is balked by traffic lights.”

Other TV shows she went on to present included Come Dancing, Royal Ascot and ITV’s daytime show Good Afternoon, on which she was instrumental in setting Mary Berry on a path to stardom by inviting her on to the programme.

Chalmers’ radio career dated back to the 50s, when she appeared on the Ken Dodd Show, proving an able foil. She deputised for Jean Metcalfe on Two-Way Family Favourites – a Sunday lunchtime request show that started life on the Light Programme, the precursor to Radio 2 – and from 1966 to 1970 she presented Woman’s Hour.

It was only with Wish You Were Here, first broadcast in 1974, that she settled into a long-term berth, and in 1990 she got her own Radio 2 show, a mid-morning slot of relaxed listening and an ideal environment for her talents. Away from TV and radio, she was involved in cricket-related charity work for the Lady Taverners. She was appointed OBE in 1994, and in 2004 she received an award for outstanding contribution to tourism at the annual Excellence in England Tourism awards.

A brief marriage to Alfred Lea, a salesman, ended in 1962. In 1964 she married the sports broadcaster Neil Durden-Smith, and they lived in Highgate, north London. After Wish You Were Here came to the end of its run in 2003, it was their son, the TV presenter Mark Durden-Smith, who presented one-off revivals. In 2013, Chalmers appeared with Mark in an episode of Celebrity Antiques Road Trip.

She is survived by Neil, Mark and her daughter, Emma.

• Judith Rosemary Locke Chalmers, broadcaster, born 10 October 1935; died 21 May 2026