9/27/2023 0 Comments Cheap autocueI imagine those things were already evident to George – his priorities had always been absolutely clear, his love for his family at the centre of everything. ‘His diagnosis had brought with it a kind of clarity’ He talked about how it had made him evaluate his life and what was important to him. His diagnosis was terrible – that he survived as long as he did is almost miraculous and a testament to the determination of his doctors and his strength of spirit and his will to live for Fran and the boys. I went to see George after he was diagnosed and he was remarkably candid about his feelings and utterly un-self-pitying. He didn’t have to he did it because he didn’t think he was more important than anybody else. I can remember one guy who was having a bit of a hard time with management and felt he’d been treated rather badly - George took up the cudgels for him and spoke up. George never lost sight of that – he was always so mindful of and grateful for the work people did. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The reason you can do your job well is because of all the hard work your team is putting in. Newsrooms can be hierarchical places – as a presenter you are aware you are earning a lot of money and are in a very privileged position. He was utterly devoid of ego, which isn’t a given. One of the things he loved most about the job was being part of a brilliant team. I suspect, in fact, that George was that person for many. When you’re in that position, you choose your friends carefully and George was absolutely one of those friends for me. It was just a given that he would hold anything I said gently and with respect. If ever I had any problem, whether it was a scuffle with management over something or other, or if I was just feeling a little worn down by the odd business of being in the public eye, George was one of the few people I knew I could absolutely trust. Knowing we were in the trenches together, even if we weren’t co-presenters, was always immensely comforting. As I was arriving to begin prep for the six o’clock news, George would be leaving, having presented the one o’clock news. ‘Being in the trenches together was immensely comforting’įrom then on, George and I were ships in the night. I think we were both aware that night that our lives were about to change. At the time, the news was very much appointment-to-view television fronting it seemed a terrifying responsibility. I didn’t really know George at the time as he was always away on foreign jobs and rarely in the newsroom, but I can remember both of us looking at each other that night as we nursed our first drinks, saying: “What on earth just happened?” We were told we weren’t allowed to go back to our desks but rather were to go straight to a restaurant. I can remember a long suite of rooms with doors joining them all together – you went into the first and spoke to the deputy head of the newsroom who offered you the job, then it was onto a room where the head of PR was waiting, and on and on until you were spat out at the other end. George had both in spades, and it came from such an authentic place. Authority and warmth is what you are always after when anchoring a live news broadcast. George was a brilliant choice, whether he knew it was coming or not. Neither of us had presenting in our sights, but the powers that be had plucked us out of the roster of reporters. I was a reporter at the time, in the middle of making a programme for Panorama, while George was considered one of our most brilliant foreign correspondents. That day, in a series of strange, entirely out of the blue meetings at the BBC, we had separately been informed that alongside Huw Edwards, we were to be the new faces of BBC News. The first time I met George, in a restaurant in 1999 somewhere in central London, we were both in a state of shock.
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