This is hard to believe, and even harder to write. The intimacy has gone, and it is slowly killing me. There, I have said it.
The task ahead of me was not just daunting, it was well-nigh impossible. Back in London I was persona non grata, a leper, unclean. No one would make eye contact, let alone speak to me. I sat at the reporters’ desk, my head buried in a newspaper. Less than three years before, I had been not just a popular and gregarious reporter, but lauded by my peers for having secured the impossible, the Washington job. I was the toast of the newsroom. My parting gift was a reference to the fact that on my final day in the office before leaving for the States, I had been bought one drink too many by my colleagues—a t-shirt which said ‘John Suchet, Newsh at Ten’.
A couple of weeks or so after my return, there was a leaving dinner for a senior ITN executive. I arrived, sat down, and realised fairly quickly that the seats on either side of me were being left empty. No one would sit next to me. Finally a fellow reporter sat beside me, but only because she was a late arrival and there were no other places, and she didn’t exchange two words with me throughout the meal. Much later I learned that in the days following she had raised many a smile by saying her career was cursed, she had sat next to John Suchet.
Shortly after this I was summoned by the managing editor—he who had phoned me ordering me back to London to face the editor—to tie up administrative loose ends from my inglorious tenure in Washington. By now the treatment I was receiving was beginning to stir a certain amount of anger in me. Yes, I had failed, yes, I expected no hero’s return, but this was all going a bit far.
I sat opposite the managing editor, listening stony-faced as he went through a checklist of issues to do with the house which ITN rented in Washington. Moya and the boys were still over there, and arrangements had to be made to bring them back. The managing editor was a man I had known for more than 10 years, yet the way he was speaking to me, his tone of voice, was that of a headmaster addressing an errant schoolboy. Finally I decided to make a stand. I didn’t lose my temper, but I came out with a sentence I had prepared, carefully honed, and rehearsed in the bathroom mirror. I injected menace into my voice, because I knew I had a clincher that would throw him, put him on the defensive.
‘My contract in Washington is for four years. By bringing me back early, you have broken my contract.’ ‘Sue us,’ he said, without missing a beat.
I walked home with tears pricking the back of my eyes. It wasn’t just humiliation, it was total humiliation. I could take so much, I decided, but things had gone too far. I was now a senior television journalist with a wealth of experience. All right, I had fallen down on the Washington job, but I had proved in the preceding years that I was not just a capable reporter, but a pretty good one. Why else had David Nicholas given me the Washington job? And I had had enough. I would resign. Simple. Resign and get another job.
Bonnie took one look at me as I walked through the door, and said ‘I’ll fix you a drink, you look drained. What on earth has happened?’ I relayed the conversation to her, and said ‘But don’t worry, they’ve humiliated me for the last time. I am resigning. I will hand in the letter tomorrow.’
Just as I remember word for word how she said That’s all right, we’ll do something else, so I remember word for word what she said then. ‘No you won’t. You’ll go back in and you’ll show them. You’ll work your way up again, and prove them wrong.’
I could have told her my mind was made up and that was that. But I didn’t. I knew deep down she was right, but my reasoning was different to hers. She believed in me, she knew I had been a good journalist, and she didn’t want to see me throw it away. All I knew was that there was nothing else I was qualified to do.
Mind you, I came close to carrying out my threat a week or so later. Still stuck on the reporters’ desk, with no story. Neither the home news editor nor foreign news editor would assign me to any story. The only time I ever got on air was when I put my voice on some agency picture that had come in from the other side of the world—floods, a volcano, Korean riots, that sort of thing. I decided to do something about it.
I knocked on the senior news editor’s door and asked if I could have a word. I should point out that this was a chap who had joined ITN within a few months of me. We were very good friends as well as colleagues, had socialised outside the office and had worked together in Northern Ireland.
‘Look,’ I said, trying not to sound too aggressive, ‘I’m getting a bit fed up. No one will give me a story. Not home desk or foreign desk.’
He shot up from his chair, slammed his hands down on the desk, and said, ‘Listen mate. You are in disgrace. Do you hear that? In disgrace. Now get out of here and go back to the desk. You’ll get a story when you prove you know what to do with it.’
My jaw dropped. I walked—limped—back to the desk and quickly pulled a newspaper up in front of my face. I really did have tears in my eyes.
On the news they showed one of the few remaining copies of the Magna Carta, which had sold at auction for zillions. ‘God, look at that writing, how small it is,’ Bon said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘probably written by a…a…’ I couldn’t think of the right word. Clerk? Squire?
‘Scribe,’ she said, quick as a flash. I looked at her in utter amazement. She had a satisfied smile on her face.
A while later it seemed my luck changed. I was sent to Beirut. In the middle of the night I was the only passenger on board a ferry from Limassol in Cyprus to Jounieh, a port just north of Beirut. I stood on deck in the darkness, the salty wind blowing in my face. In the distance was the red glow of a city in the grip of civil war, and I was moving slowly towards it. Most sane and rational people would have been heading as fast as they could in the opposite direction. I cannot pretend I was totally at ease, but a blast of Beethoven’s Eroica into my ears from my battered old Walkman gave me the courage I needed and fired me up. A war zone. A big story. At last, at last.
From the moment I set foot on Lebanese soil, it was as if the civil war stopped. It seemed I had brought peace to the region. I managed to get just a single report on News at Ten in two weeks, before coming home. Hardly my fault that I had not been given the chance to prove myself, but galling nonetheless.
It wasn’t long before I was back in the Middle East. The war between Iran and Iraq was at its height, putting at risk the safe passage of oil down the Gulf, out into the Arabian Sea, and on to the Western world. At the southern end of the Gulf lay the narrow Strait of Hormuz. It was vital that this stretch of water be kept open, and that task fell to Oman. It just so happened the Sultan of Oman was a graduate of Sandhurst, a great Anglophile, and more than happy to have British forces on site to patrol the waters.
ITN dispatched me to cover this British effort for News at Ten. I didn’t know why it seemed as if I was slowly being brought out of the wilderness, what with Beirut and now this, and I didn’t stop to ask. Simple, I hear you say. They were giving you another chance, another opportunity to prove yourself. Television news should work like that, but usually doesn’t. Much more likely that the reporter, or reporters, they wanted to send were unavailable for some reason, and yours truly was not.
Whatever the reason, I hooked up with a camera crew and went. I was back in my element: a strong picture story unfolding before me, with British forces naturally keen to get as much favourable coverage as they could, therefore being highly co-operative. I got several reports onto News at Ten, and was told on my return they were highly thought of.
More. On 14th June 1985 a TWA passenger plane was hijacked en route from Athens to Rome. With a primed grenade held to his head, the captain defied Beirut control tower and landed. Over the next three days, the plane made four flights between Beirut and Algiers. It wasn’t long before they began to carry out their threat to kill passengers. I was sent to cover the Algiers end. There I got close to a senior TWA executive, who, when the drama appeared to