Farewell to a loyal and tenacious radio talent
Steve Hewlett was not the first Radio 4 broadcaster to share with listeners the story of his impending death. Think of Glyn Worsnip explaining, in
A Lone Voice (1988), the neurological condition that was progressively affecting his speech to the point where listeners assumed he was drunk. He died in 1996, in hospital, cruelly robbed by then of both mobility and speech. Think of Nick Clarke and the candid on-air diary he did a decade later, charting his cancer from diagnosis to amputation and beyond. He presented his last World at One in September 2006, died shortly afterwards. We remember both of them, miss them still. As we will Steve Hewlett, who died on Monday.
Hewlett’s attitude to what was happening to his body was frank and inquisitive. I last saw him months ago in The Media Show studio when, live, he whirled his four guests through a crowded menu. By then, it was known he had cancer and was having to skip programmes. Off-air, I asked him how the treatment was going? He was pragmatic, phlegmatic, said it was OK so far, a new series of chemo would start the next week. I recall him waving an arm as if at a misty road ahead.
I first met him years before, at an Edinburgh TV festival when, in a fast walk down a steep hill, he concisely explained to me “producer choice”, the system introduced by directorgeneral John Birt to enable more efficient BBC programme costings. Hewlett was still at the BBC then, respected and suspected in equal measure for his loyalty to Birt. Ahead, though neither of us knew it at the time, would be his move to Channel 4, then ITV, to independent production, journalism, radio and becoming a presenter as well as a producer.
What always distinguished him was his talent to find the hidden side of any story. His ardent pursuit of the “why” distinguished him from those who concentrate on the more usual “what”, a preference shared with Radio 4’s Eddie Mair. Their conversations on PM have started discussions all over the UK about the cost and provision of cancer care. They have helped hospitals, patients and families to understand the gaps between what can and what has to be provided. Other Radio 4 programmes regularly explain the NHS: many an Afternoon Play; brilliant exposés on File on 4; the admirable day-to-day diligence of
You and Yours and Woman’s Hour. Hewlett’s conversations with Mair, however, have enabled a fresh comprehension of both the possible and the inevitable.
Reality, after all, is a matter of perception. A reporter, Radio 5 Live’s Chris Warburton for example, can observe a tricky heart operation and, live, tell us (as he did so well last year) what is happening, stage by stage. A surgeon would see it differently, as would a family member. A good reporter makes us understand that and allow for it in our reactions.
But what happens when the line between the real and the reactive is blurred? All this week Radio 4 is running a daily factual feature at 1.45pm, The Untold. What would you do if the person you loved just went missing? That’s the opening question posed by narrator Grace Dent. Dent is neither the reporter nor the producer. She provides the narrative voice.
Here’s the story. Kirsty and Zack (not their real names) have just celebrated their fifth anniversary. They have a new baby. Kirsty also has a seven-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. One day Zack said goodbye to them all as usual. He didn’t come back. After a couple of days Kirsty, knowing he suffered from bipolar disorder, called the police.
They said “He’s OK.” In other words he had notified them that he had left, but not her. The police are not obliged to tell her what they know. He hadn’t taken clothes, just his passport and birth certificate. Is he ill, she wonders, or “a complete b-----d”? She inclines to the first. In yesterday’s episode we went forward three months. She’d found practical ways to determine whether he is alive and where he is. Today, she will go to Nottingham to see if her deductions are correct. We are promised revelations. Meanwhile, questions bubble.
Is this objective reality or Kirsty’s reality? Do Dent’s interjections push me into an emotional corner? Should my sympathy automatically be with this programme’s form over its journalistic substance? How can I trust a programme that keeps telling me things but calls itself The Untold? By this time next week I may have the answers.