After doing a "live" commentary one Saturday for the newly created Hospital Radio Service, the BBC Controller in West Region, the former war correspondent Frank Gillard, offered him a job, initially as a resident freelance, reporting and presenting the regional magazine The Week in the West.
After four years in Bristol, Tidmarsh was invited to join the reporting staff at Broadcasting House in London and within two months was sent on a four-month assignment at the United Nations in New York.
Most of the time he was reporting on foreign news, often in France during the crisis over Charles de Gaulle and independence for Algeria.
From there he flew to London every Thursday morning, back again on Friday night, after presenting Outlook, a new current affairs and magazine programme which he had been asked to join on BBC World Service.
Tidmarsh was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcasting in 1997, the same year he signed off from regular presenting.