DUNBLANE 25 YEARS ON
Twenty-five years ago, my eldest son was seven, my daughter six and my then youngest son, four. They were all of primary school age and had just had their class photographs taken with their teachers. Seeing them at school was particularly poignant for me, as in those days I was a weekend father, catching up with everything over a couple of days, then heading back to London on a Sunday evening to host the then breakfast show
GMTV for the rest of the week.
By Wednesday of that week, I was looking at classroom photographs again. Of children of a similar age, side-by-side under the protection of their teachers. They could have been any of my children, but they weren’t. They were the 16 children and their teacher murdered by crazed gunman Thomas Hamilton, as they prepared for a PE lesson. I was part of the world’s press that descended upon the pretty Perthshire town within hours, to report on what happened. I can honestly say I could physically feel sadness all around – in the air, emanating from people’s faces, in the bricks and mortar of the buildings.
I’ve covered some terrible tragedies in my career, but this was the saddest story of them all – and children were the reason. A child is the personification of innocence. Where that innocence goes, how it is shaped, is down to us adults around them. Murderer Thomas Hamilton took innocent lives and stole the innocence from the classmates, family and friends who survived. This was horror on a warped scale and it affected me deeply. It still does. Maybe because I look at my own children’s classroom pictures and think it could have been them. Please, don’t forget those little angels of Dunblane. I never can.
‘This was horror on a warped scale’