On the other hand, Cecil Bernstein took me into his office and said he would keep a light burning in the window for me. That’s exactly what he said. Sentimental, maybe, but I have never forgotten his kindness.
So I was off, but I would return.
20
THE SIX DAY WAR
When asked to sum up my stint on
24 Hours
, Sir Paul Fox, the man who gave me the job, said he thought I was ‘a lazy bugger’. It was one way of explaining my output for the programme, which, in the eighteen months I was there, was as meagre as it was unremarkable. I was never comfortable on the programme. I didn’t feel I belonged. All the old insecurities about not being able to step up to the level set by the reporters on
24 Hours
induced a kind of nervous paralysis. It didn’t help most of them were heroes of mine. I felt fraudulent.
My colleagues could not have been kinder or more supportive. Working with Cliff Michelmore and Kenneth Allsop in the studio was to watch two supreme stylists at work. It was obvious, however, they were not bosom buddies. There was a strained atmosphere in the office created by their mutual antipathy. Ken was a fastidious man who chose his company carefully. He could appear remote and indifferent, snobbish even. A journalist and author of great intellectual clarity, he enjoyed television but only, I suspect, because it gave him the means to be an independent author. By comparison Cliff was jolly in a blustery kind of way, savouring his reputation as the programme’s front man, delighting in his renown as a consummate broadcaster. Cliff is still alive, still vigorous at the age of eighty-seven, one of the great broadcasters of our time.
Kenneth died of an accidental overdose, aged fifty-four, in 1974. He took powerful painkillers to reduce the constant and severe pain caused by having a leg amputated because of tuberculosis during the war. Or did he lose the leg in a plane crash? The mystery of how Ken lost his limb added to what can only be described as his enigmatic magnetism. Men admired him, women were captivated by him. Mary thought him one of the sexiest men she had ever met. We met for dinner and he turned up in a black cloak, causing a pause in conversational babble when he entered the restaurant. The limp became part of the allure.
At the inquest into his death it was reported that a book of Dorothy Parker’s collected works was found beside the body. Two passages were underlined: ‘There is nothing good in life that will not be taken away’ and ‘Mrs Parker can find no other means of dealing with the pain of being.’
It was fascinating observing Cliff and Kenneth at work preparing for a programme. Kenneth would take the research and the suggested link and worry it to death. He would work and rework the material until he had the interview clear in his mind. Cliff, on the other hand, skimmed the research, and concentrated on writing notes in the margin of the running order. One day I asked him what it was he was writing.
‘I’m looking at the running order to spot where there might be a breakdown, and when I find it I write my ad libs,’ he said, which is why he was unflappable when things went wrong, as they often did.
The crucial difference between working at Granada and the BBC was that, whereas at Granada it seemed we were all too busy working and learning on the hoof to worry about office politics and pecking orders, Lime Grove was full of discontented people manoeuvring for position, scheming their way through the labyrinthine back streets of the largest and most powerful broadcasting network on the planet.
24 Hours
had taken over from
Tonight
and included many people who had worked on the early evening programme. Not all of them approved of the change. Moreover those who had experienced
Tonight
in its heyday were of a particular tribe memorably described by Grace Wyndham Goldie as ‘people who strutted about Lime Grove in a body respecting the audience but despising other broadcasters’.
At Granada we had direct access to the people who mattered most, at the BBC we were not sure who they were, never mind where they lived. Paul Fox was our boss. Indisputably so. After a poor studio performance we would flinch at his approach, certain of an uncompromising reprimand. On the other hand, the next day the slate was wiped clean and we started afresh. I think I exasperated him. He backed me to do the job and he never lost the belief he was right. So did Derrick Amoore. He gave me every opportunity to prove myself, became a friend and a sturdy drinking companion, but I was never able to do my best work for him, or indeed work him out. He was a man of eccentric habit. He would spend the morning shooting an air pistol at a dart board in his office. In the middle of a conversation about football he would say something like, ‘Tunisia. Why don’t we hear about Tunisia?’ and a film crew would be duly despatched. He handled his staff with a light touch, treating rumours of discontent and possible mutiny with amused disdain.
After my studio stint they sent me on the road with a film unit. In December of 1966 I flew to Jordan to interview King Hussein about an Israeli raid on a Jordanian village. We visited the village, talked to the survivors and looked across the border into Israel, little realising we would be back in six months covering what became known as the Six Day War.
I covered the war with one of the most remarkable men I ever met in journalism, Slim Hewitt. He was one of an influential group of journalists who had moved to the BBC from
Picture Post
in the early days of television. He was a tall, stooped, lugubrious-looking man with a long nose and soulful blue eyes. He was at the end of his career when I worked with him but his reputation was such that whenever I had to do a piece to camera with Slim behind the lens, it seemed to me I was speaking to a monument. He had been everywhere, seen everything and was generally unimpressed. The only reward he sought at the end of a day’s work was ‘egg and chips and a cuppa tea’. He ordered the treat wherever he went, whether it be in a Bedouin tent in the Sahara or at the traditional blow-out after filming, in the best hotel in town.
We arrived in Tel Aviv with the war rumbling in the distance. It was a waiting game; would it, wouldn’t it happen? At the time I was writing for
The Sunday Times
and, having composed an article about Barnsley Football Club and their legendary hard man, Skinner Normanton, took it to the Israeli censor for onward transmission. He was a scholarly man who taught English at the university. He looked bemused as he read my article. At the end he said there were certain words he had not come across before such as ‘ayup’ and ‘tha’ what’ and ‘siree’. Might these be coded messages for Israel’s enemies, he enquired?
He was teasing me but clearly thought I was wasting his time with such frivolous and incomprehensible nonsense. He handed my copy back to me unaltered.
‘I suppose some might find humour in it,’ he said, and then, as an aside, ‘By the way, the grammar leaves a lot to be desired.’
I did, however, have some more appreciative readers in Tel Aviv. I was telephoned by a young South African medical student who asked if I was the Michael Parkinson who wrote about sport for
The Sunday Times
. I said I was and he said, ‘I know you love cricket. Would you like to play for the university at the weekend?’ My caller was captain of the team, a tall red-headed pace bowler. I took a catch at third slip off his bowling and spent the game wondering about the seeming absurdity of playing cricket in Jerusalem with a war brewing.
Then the office asked us to fix an interview with Abba Eban, the Israeli Foreign Minster. We were told to set up in his study at the official residence and the first thing I noticed was a bookcase with a complete set of
Wisden
. Mr Eban was an enthusiastic and knowledgeable talker about the game and we needed reminding by Slim Hewitt that our conversation was supposed to be about more serious matters. The interview took place on Saturday and as we were leaving we were told it was embargoed until Monday.
Monday morning I awoke to the sound of air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv.
Panorama
called me in my room and asked for an update on the war. I didn’t know it had started. Nobody told me. I waffled on to no great purpose. No one should be awakened by a call from Robin Day – particularly when he hasn’t a clue what is going on.
The Israelis enforced a news blackout throughout the day while their planes and tanks effectively destroyed the opposition. Cairo Radio told us Tel Aviv was in flames. At least we knew that wasn’t true, and we bitched and threatened to no great effect to be let off the leash. We were told there would be a press conference at 9 p.m. It eventually took place at 2 a.m. when a half colonel in the Israeli army, Moshe Pearlman, announced that Israeli armoury was approaching the Suez Canal and the Israeli air force had destroyed 374 Egyptian planes.
At the end of his announcement, with the media straining to get to the fighting, Colonel Pearlman asked, ‘Any questions?’ I was sitting next to one of the great journalists of our time, James Cameron.
‘I have a question, Moshe,’ he said.
‘What is it, James?’ asked Colonel Pearlman, recognising an old Middle East hand.
‘Are you telling us the truth?’ Cameron asked.
The basic trade of the reporter summed up in one question.
We set off in a car into the desert towards the Canal. Everywhere was devastation, evidence of the lightning savagery of the Israelis’ pre-emptive strike. Our car broke down and we hitched a ride on a bus taking journalists to the action. We saw a squadron of tanks parked off the road, the crew brewing up, and went to meet them. The squadron commander’s face was blackened with the desert sun. He removed his helmet to reveal his red hair, grinned and said, ‘We meet in strange places.’ It was the young student I had played cricket with.
On the way back the bus was forced to leave the road to make way for a convoy, five miles or more long, carrying supplies to the front. When we tried to get back on the road we were stuck. We also discovered we were in a minefield. This information was given to us by a jolly accompanying officer who suggested we get out and give a communal push while praying we didn’t step on a mine.
‘By the way,’ he said as we laboured together at the rear of the vehicle, ‘did I hear you talking about playing cricket back there?’
I nodded.
‘Good. Then maybe you can explain to me something I have always wanted to know about that game. What is a googly?’
At least it took my mind off the possibility of blowing myself up.
When I returned home I knew I had gone on my last assignment. I simply wasn’t designed to be one of that special breed who lived with a packed case by their beds and couldn’t wait to be sent to a foreign land. I was a feature writer trying to be a hard-nosed foreign correspondent and it didn’t work. I had tried but was found wanting. If I had a future on television, it would be elsewhere.
Fyfe Robertson, that exemplar of television journalism, took me for lunch and offered me advice I have never forgotten.
‘Get into the studio as soon as you can,’ he said. ‘No one ever became rich standing in a ploughed field in Peterborough talking about the price of potatoes. The money is in the studio. And besides, it’s warmer.’
The BBC was understanding and accommodating in dealing with my discomfort. It was decided I would take a six-month break from my remaining year of contract to write a biography of Fred Trueman. We had bought a lovely old Victorian terraced house in Windsor, Mary was pregnant and I looked forward to spending time at home with our growing family.
I was eager to write about Fred Trueman. He had been an inspirational figure in my life, and not just as a sporting hero. In the fifties, when my generation began to articulate the need for change, it looked for leaders to march at the head of the column. Fred Trueman seemed ideal. He was the son of a Yorkshire miner and a fast bowler with attitude. He didn’t know his place. An opponent with a striped blazer and a fancy hat added a yard or two to his pace.
Of all the popular games of the time, cricket most represented the status quo. The amateur was captain and lived in a separate dressing room. The pro did most of the donkey work and was not expected to complain. From the very beginning Fred displayed a mind of his own. He could be both crude and objectionable to anyone who stood in his path but reserved his special contempt for those he believed disliked him because of where he came from or the way he spoke, or both. He became a hero to my generation, particularly in Yorkshire, because we imagined ourselves striding into battle behind his broad shoulders.
Fred didn’t quite see it like that. His crusade was a one-man war, F.S. Trueman versus the Establishment, and he went his own way until, after his retirement, he announced his admiration for Mrs Thatcher and left a lot of people ruminative, not to say baffled.
I set about the task of exploring his life and it seemed to me the first job was to strip the myth from the reality to discover which of the thousands of anecdotes about him were true and which were false. One I knew to be true was when I played against him while he was on leave from the RAF and on the fringe of the Yorkshire team. I opened with Dickie Bird and watched in trembling fear from the other end as he bowled like the wind at my friend. The third or fourth ball struck Dickie in the chest and, amid great palaver, he went down. I joined the opposition players in a sympathetic circle around Dickie who was giving every indication of being mortally stricken. Eventually we had him on his feet and ready to proceed.
As I walked back down the wicket I saw the only person who had not commiserated with my pal was Trueman, who was settled in a miner’s squat, chewing a blade of grass.
As I passed he asked, ‘How’s thi’ mate?’
I attempted to be jocular. ‘He’ll live, Mr Trueman,’ I said, using the prefix as a pathetic show of respect.
‘That’s all right then,’ he said. ‘But think on, you’re next.’
I asked Fred how many such stories about him were true. Not many, he said, but, on the other hand, strange things happened to him.