And then, roll of drums, fanfare, on 7th July 1985 Boris Becker became the youngest-ever player to win the Wimbledon men’s title. ‘He’s flying back to Monte Carlo tomorrow. It’s where he trains. Get on the plane with him,’ the foreign editor said to me. She didn’t need to say it twice, I can tell you.
Despite a thousand media scrumming, pushing, shoving, bribing, to get on that plane, I made it with my camera crew. In Monte Carlo his manager made it clear that there were to be no interviews. I hung around, and got good pictures of Boris, an interview with his manager, and plenty of colour. I satellited my report for News at Ten. The foreign news editor made a point of telling me my piece was well received, I had made the story mine, and so I would be sent in a fortnight’s time to Becker’s home town of Leimen, near Heidelberg, to cover his triumphant return. I duly went, covered the civic reception, filmed young boys on the tennis courts hoping one day to emulate their hero. Becker himself walked out onto the balcony of the town hall, to cheers from the throng below. Again my report was lauded.
Wonder of wonders, people in the newsroom were beginning to talk to me again. I was being treated almost normally. The foreign editor, who had chanced her arm by dispatching me to the Middle East, and to cover Becker, even took me aside to say things were going well for me.
But the rehabilitation was not yet quite as complete as I thought.
In London we live in a long narrow apartment, with a corridor that runs the length of it, rooms off to the side. Bon walks up and down this corridor, up and down, day after day. Unless I sit in front of the telly, of course, in which case she comes and sits with me. But if I am at the computer, as I am now, up and down, up and down.
A strange development. Uncanny as it may sound, but if I need to go into the bedroom, to hang something up, say, she is there ahead of me, just a few paces ahead of exactly where I want to be. If I need to go into the kitchen, there she is, just a few paces ahead of exactly where I want to be. Whatever room I am heading for, there she is, exactly a few paces ahead of me.
It made me smile to begin with, now it just makes me cross. This morning was pressured. I needed to wash loads of laundry—her clothes, my clothes, towels, bathroom mat, etc. I was under pressure. I needed to get it done, because I also needed to do some food shopping. Up and down, up and down, always just a few paces ahead of exactly where I needed to be.
I brought some dry T-shirts into the bedroom to hang up, needed to get to the narrow gap between the bed and the cupboards, and yes, bingo, there she was, exactly two paces ahead of me in the narrow gap. I lost it. I walked aggressively on, knocking her out of the way. Yes, you are gasping with horror. So am I, at writing it. But I did it. I had had enough; end of tether time. She cried out and staggered. I opened the cupboard door and hung up the shirts. I pushed past her again. She collapsed on the bed, horror on her face.
I walked back down the corridor, cursing myself out loud. Why, John, why? Why did you do that? Why?
She forgot pretty quickly, which is a hallmark of this insidious disease. I too calmed down. We had lunch, and in the afternoon watched snooker on the box. She hasn’t the slightest idea of what is happening on the green baize, but as long as I am happy watching, she is happy too.
At the end of 1985, President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines called a snap presidential election for March 1986. I’ll rephrase that. A nasty corrupt little dictator, kept in power by American backing, called a presidential election in the Philippines that he knew he could rig. To make sure that there would be no surprises, he had taken the sensible precaution of having the opposition leader assassinated. As you do. Interesting story, but interesting enough for the world’s media to decide to cover it? No.
But guess what happened then? The assassinated politician’s widow announced she would run in her husband’s place. Slightly more interesting, but still not quite up there. The Philippines were a long way away, nothing that happened there would have any impact on Britain. However, in the weeks that followed it became clear that the widow’s campaign was not some folly, but was attracting growing support, both nationally and internationally. It was becoming front-page news in the British papers.
You didn’t need to be an ace journalist to realise this was a good story. But from ITN’s point of view it was marginal. A long way away, expensive to cover, when we could easily take in video coverage from local television and the agencies, and voice it in London. I had always adopted a policy of not putting myself forward for a story. I didn’t hang around the home and foreign desks, pleading to be sent away. If they want me, let them come to me—a policy that had certainly not helped my cause in the months following my return from Washington.
Since things had been going rather better for me of late, maybe now was the time to be just a little more assertive. I did it on the spur of the moment. In the corridor between the newsroom and the toilets I happened to pass the senior foreign editor—she who had taken me aside to compliment me. ‘Er,’ I said, trying not to sound too hesitant, ‘the, er, Philippines, good story, I was just wondering, if, er, I don’t know if you are going to send, but, er, if you did, I would certainly like to, er…’
She cut me short. ‘We are not sending. Anyway even if we did, we wouldn’t send you.’
If she had punched me in the solar plexus, it would have caused less pain. Damn damn damn, why did I ever ask? I walked back into the newsroom, jaw set, pretending the encounter had never happened.
In television news, things happen more often by accident than by design. The same foreign editor, a few days later, said to me, ‘Hope you’ve been following the Philippines story. We want you to go in a couple of days.’ What had made her change her mind? Was the reporter she had in mind unavailable? I soon put all speculation out of my mind. I was going, that was all that mattered.
It truly was an extraordinary story. Corazon Aquino, in her own words a ‘plain housewife’, was having an impact not just in her own country but around the world. She was in every newspaper, on every television bulletin, as first hundreds, then thousands, then millions of Filipinos poured out onto the streets of Manila, all dressed in yellow—the colour of her party—and all holding up the thumb and forefinger of their right hand, making an L: Laban, or Freedom.
Marcos did what dictators do. He ordered the tanks onto the streets to open fire. But the world’s television cameras were everywhere. The army dared not. This was to be repeated with much more global impact less than four years later in Berlin and across central Europe, then in Moscow itself. People revolt against dictatorship? No problem, send in the tanks and open fire. But you can’t do that when there are cameras present. Still no problem. Censor the coverage, control it. But with satellite technology you can’t. The dictatorships of the world were learning a brutal lesson, which would bring their tyrannies to an end. Only in one country could some sort of control be exerted. Thousands died in Tiananmen Square in Beijing when the tanks opened fire. The Chinese put an instant lid on it, but even they could not stop news of the massacre leaking out. The world was changing, and my profession was at the forefront of it. It makes me proud today to think that television news played a part in the downfall of Communism.
And in the downfall of dictator Marcos. He won the election of course, with 99.9999999% of the vote. But Cory (the name by which the world had come to know her) was not giving up. On the same day, in two different parts of Manila, Cory and Marcos were both sworn in as President. For 24 hours, the Philippines had two presidents. But then the Americans told Marcos he was finished, and flew him and his flamboyant wife Imelda out of Manila by helicopter. As the rotor blades whirred overhead, the people stormed the palace and uncovered riches beyond their dreams, not to mention Imelda’s 2000 pairs of shoes.
(I can personally vouchsafe for Imelda’s ownership of one of the biggest diamond rings I have ever seen. Covering an election rally, we were filming the appalling president and his wife on a small stage that had been erected in a town square. At the end of his speech, they advanced to the front of the stage to extend their hands down to the crowd. I saw Imelda deftly remove the ring from her finger and slip it into her pocket before extending her hands.)
Night