Sheila Lal

Some great memories exchanged today at the funeral of Sheila Lal, a radio producer of flair, commitment and energy, who moved from Radio 5Live to the World Service, in a career starting back in 1994 as a broadcast assistant. Mike London, who arrived at 5Live at the same time remembers Sheila summing up the production office pretty early on: "a sort of cross between a minor public school and a long stay secure unit".

Lynn Bowles, pioneering the travel beat on 5Live Drive, remembers a trip round the M25, set up by Sheila. “Sheila found this guy that had written a song about the motorway… yes, of course she did. The OB was set in a van… a moving one, we made our way around the M25 during the course of the show. This broke several radio transmissions laws, I believe. Trouble was we were going too fast. We were likely to do the circuit before the show ended. The driver had to slow down. Magnificently this resulted in the Traffic Reporter in the people carrier causing a traffic jam on the M25. Pure Sheila.

"As for our guest, he was trapped in the vehicle with us. He would sing his song accompanying himself on his guitar. Sheila learned the words and she and I sang it on our last link together with our guest.”

World Service presenter Fergus Nicoll recalled the Lal technique with talent. “When there was a 'free and frank' exchange of views about the merits of various items in the running order, these discussions would often be terminated by Sheila pressing her invisible limo driver's button that raised an imaginary partition window between her and the disputing party. Bzzzzzzzzz, she would say, conclusively."

Rahul Tandon remembers a reporting trip with Sheila to the Mohali stadium, home of the Punjab Cricket Association, in 2001: "There was a buzz of excitement around the ground as she strode in with a BBC mic in her hand. Some fans walked up to me asking me, who is that woman, is she famous? Of course, I replied: she is an actress from England who has just finished shooting her first Bollywood film. Then there was chaos. Hundreds of people tried to get her autograph and touch her. We needed a police escort to get to the pavilion. And when she appeared on the balcony thousands of fans waved and cheered - they had no interest in the cricket. A certain Sachin Tendulkar was not very happy, but a certain Lally was."

There was plenty of serious stuff in the Lal cv too, including a week of Nicky Campbell shows from New York after 9/11

Sadly there's not much about Sheila before 5Live - but we do know that she was the subject of The Smiths' 1987 song, "Sheila, Take A Bow".  It all fits....