Back to the Future

I was the future once. I think it was a Tuesday.

As I depart the payroll of the BBC, I have been reflecting on how much ground I have covered, most of it wet. And it has struck me how the span of my career has mirrored a typical day in the life of a journalist. It can pass slowly, waiting around for hours on end for something to happen. Then suddenly, pandemonium breaks out and minutes are condensed into nanoseconds.

But this slow, slow, quick, quick, slow continues to play out and at some undefined point it’s apparent you’ve foxtrotted from cub reporter to “seasoned” veteran. Seasoned with a pinch of salt, perhaps.

I arrived at the BBC when typewriters were bashing out their goodbyes and reporters queued up for the available computer terminal. The days of razor blades and quarter-inch editing - a craft I’ve long thought would suit a bank holiday workshop at the St Fagans National Museum of Welsh History.

My first real TV break was on Wales Today, co-presenting with a big hitter in Welsh journalism, Vincent Kane. It was an era when the BBC rather rashly thought it could afford two newsreaders at the same time. Consequently, the budget didn't stretch to height-adjustable chairs so I was furnished with a cushion to bring me on a par with Vincent. Intellectually, he was several cushions higher, possibly a bean bag’s worth.

Naturally, over such a long time, so many life experiences have been woven into the fabric of the job. I met my life-partner at the BBC, got married (same woman), and regularly rushed from a broadcast to collect the children from the work nursery across the road, hoping their toddlers' fingers weren't wrapped around an invoice for added time.

For most of the three-and-a- bit decades as a BBC staffer, I’ve focussed primarily on radio, my job with 5 Live taking me from Rhyl to Russia, Solva to Saudi Arabia, covering riots and World Cups, to the daftest of stories and, all too frequently, to the saddest.

I have always seen it as a huge privilege and responsibility to be allowed to walk into people’s lives, often when they were at their lowest. And I have tried not to trample all over their experiences but to tell their stories, leaving behind the lightest of footprints.

And yet there are those, often big organisations and people in power, whose failings or misdemeanours deserve the greatest of scrutiny.

I will never forget my time as Westminster Correspondent, covering those Groundhog Days of the Brexit "impasse". It was a time when being in the media, particularly the BBC, attracted the occasional unsavoury critique.

"F**k off you treacherous scum," one observer once shouted across to me on Parliament Square.

Still, that's producers for you.

Certainly the BBC is by no means perfect but for all its mistakes, bureaucracy and occasional W1A-style job titles, it is something to cherish.

In his final months, my father was often taken in at short notice to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. I’d get the call and, almost invariably, on my arrival the nurse would greet me with: “Oh you must be the one who works for the BBC.” Swiftly after giving his name and date of birth, my dad would have passed on unessential details of his son’s profession. I did wonder if it was an attempt to get a better bed – or simply, a bed – but in truth he just wanted people to know.

Yet it pays not to take yourself too seriously. Certainly in my case. My equally-proud mother has helped with that. During my time as Westminster Correspondent, I interviewed Stephen Kinnock MP. It didn’t merit a full report but ran as a short TV clip, just of him.

Later my mother said: “I saw Kinnock interviewed on the television. I thought it must have been done by you, because he was looking down.”

Important, then, to keep your feet on the ground, although maybe in my case, on tip-toe.

So for now, from me, that’s all we have time for. But we’ll soon see what’s coming up.

Who knows, maybe I can be the future? Twice?