Blair Thomson

Blair Thomson, a former Editor of The World Tonight on Radio 4, has died at the age of 71.  I first met him when he had been thrown out of Ethiopia in 1975, and was learning the ropes in the Broadcasting House Newsroom in London - him already a grizzly Indiana-Jones-figure with a gruff, largely unplaceable accent, myself a callow news trainee; both of us at the end of the subs' desk hoping to be tossed the weather story for the 1800 bulletin.

Blair was in Addis Ababa for the successive coups of 1974 that eventually led to the end of Haile Selassie's regime. He was a stringer (a reporter paid by the piece) for the BBC, and also worked for the respected Radio Voice of the Gospel.  He wrote the story of the revolution up in his 1975 book, "Ethiopia: The Country That Cut Off Its Head" - reviewed as "vivid".   Blair was soon part of the "Intake" operation at BH, working as a Foreign Duty Editor on shift, dealing with stringers in the field himself.  At nights, he would occasionally scare the pants off other shift workers by finding his way into the Concert Hall (now the Radio Theatre) to play the organ, whose low throb echoed eerily around empty corridors in the early hours.  He rose to be a respected international fixer, and eventually Home News Editor, before a move to run The World Tonight in the 1980s.

There we met again - with my home base, Newsbeat oddly-placed across the corridor from the R4 deep-thinkers.  Blair particularly enjoyed the reporting of the European Parliament ( The World Tonight was given special funds) and found time for regular supervisory trips to Strasbourg, where his knowledge of budget hotels and pricier restaurants was unsurpassed. He also moved his home to Cornwall, which added to his time on the road.

He then moved on to Television Centre, as Editor of CEEFAX, which gave him a lead for his post-BBC career - running text services for CNN and others.  In recent years, he'd become one of the great and good in Cornwall, serving on many a voluntary group and quango with relish and vigour from his home in Truro.  He was always convivial company on visits back to London, and I'll remember with pleasure bashing out the blues with him on an elderly upright at one of Jenny Abramsky's parties.