Sally-Anne Thomas

Sally-Anne Thomas, long-time stalwart of the Bush House World Service Newsroom, has died. 

She was born into a travelling theatrical family. Father Wally ran and acted in touring companies after distinguished World War II service; he married actress and playwright June Garland in 1949 whilst they were performing at The Empire Theatre, Cleethorpes, and Sally-Anne arrived in 1951.  School, I am told, was as a boarder at Westonbirt, near Tetbury, from where she won a place to Somerville, Oxford to study modern history.  

During one long vac, she re-joined her mother and father at the Leeds Grand Theatre and Opera House, where they were touring in the P G Wodehouse adaptation, "Oh, Clarence !". Wally Thomas was also company manager, with a cast which varyingly included Cicely Courtneidge, Roger Livesey, Ursula Jeans, Jack Hulbert, Robertson 'Bunny' Hare, Austen Trevor and Jimmy Edwards. Sally-Anne was rather surprised to be appointed dresser to Dame Cicely and wardrobe mistress, washing tennis kit and dress shirts every day in a range of laundrettes with dodgy ironing facilities.  Cicely didn't like Jimmy Edwards, and father Wally used to push Sally-Anne into her dressing room saying "Don't let them come to blows". 

In 1972, she started at the BBC as a News Trainee, alongside Jeremy Paxman, Richard Ayre, Chris Lowe, Colin Stanbridge, and Liz Ramsay. They're pictured below on their 40th anniversary lunch, which ran from 12.30pm to 7pm. 

Sally-Anne didn't enjoy her trainee time with tv news, which she found to be a pretty misogynistic place; but soon made lifelong friends at World Service. The next photo, from the Ian Richardson archive, has her at the newsroom blackboard, in the days of bakelite phones, ashtrays and Roneo duplicators.  Sally-Anne put her own memories of those days into a blog post for the BBC in 2015. 

She rose steadily up the editorial ladder, and when we worked together at Bush, she was one of the rotating editors, managing her beloved team which followed the same shift patterns. She liked clear, plain English, properly pronounced. She enjoyed debates about the right leads, and was always calm, reasoned and assured in her choices. And she enjoyed the work, and was determined that others did too. A compliment about your writing from Sally-Anne always meant something.  She was in charge of the newsdesk when World Service won silver at the Sony Awards for the breaking news coverage of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2008. 

I wrote about her BBC retirement 'do' in 2010.  In 2012, she was an Olympic volunteers, and interviewed paralympic winners for the world's wire services. 

Retirement was a mixed bag of international travel and increasing health worries. She had shared ownership of a cottage in Brittany (bought with three other Bush hacks, at £6k each), and visited relatives in Australia. She was a very proud Member of the Association Cirneco dell'Etna Adozioni Rescue from 2013, and owned two, Agrippina Julia Augusta and Lucrezia Borgia, from 2011. 

Sally-Anne entertained many friends with her Facebook posts. Many featured Agrippina eating her lunches, chewing her bras or setting about 'barkerations' (copyright SAT). Both dogs had Facebook pages.  Other posts were insights into history; she was a member of the London Historians. Others described her loathing of 'hair-torturers', and the very odd people she seemed to encounter in some prolonged spells in hospital.  She kept a good ear across World Service output, and quietly passed on thoughts. 

A splendid colleague and friend, with more influence for good than perhaps she realised.