‘I hope to stagger on into my nineties’
Kate Adie talks to Joe Shute about a very special anniversary and life away from the frontline
akes and cards surround the woman who will forever be associated with bombs and bullets. Kate Adie, former correspondent from countless frontlines, has just reached a landmark birthday and two cakes stand on her kitchen table. The first is adorned with photographs of Adie over the course of her stellar career; the second is an iced recreation of her Dorset village home, which she ruefully admits is beginning to sag in the heat.
I spot the number 70 on one of the many missives lined up on a kitchen shelf, but she pooh-poohs that and points to another shocking pink card which occupies pride of place: “Keep Calm, You’re Not That Old” is emblazoned across the front.
We are not here to discuss Adie’s latest milestone, but rather that of another BBC stalwart. From Our Own Correspondent, the Radio 4 programme she presents, is 60 years old today, making it one of the longest-running shows on the airwaves alongside The Archers and Desert Island Discs. “The old warhorse,” Adie calls it with a wicked grin and a sturdy thump of the table, something she does so regularly one wonders whether her hand has left an imprint in the wood. The first episode of From Our Own Correspondents (the “s” disappeared) aired at 10.15am on September 25 in 1955. A script obtained from the BBC archives reveals it to be a somewhat more turgid affair than its modern-day incarnation. The half-hour programme touched upon the Argentinian revolution and its impact
on the United States; the divisions between East and West within the United Nations assembly; trouble stirring within the French colonies; and life in divided Berlin.
The same simple format, where each week foreign correspondents contribute short segments from their patches, has remained intact. Over the years, distinguished reporters (such as Brian Barron and John Sweeney) have used it to describe everything from scrapes with Mongolian gangsters to navigating the local traffic. In 1996, Fergal Keane’s “Letter to Daniel”, a heartfelt address to his newborn son about his life as a foreign correspondent, proved so popular, it was turned into a book.
Adie herself was an erstwhile contributor, sending in pieces from Serbia, Indonesia, Macedonia and Kuwait while at the same time haring about the world as the chief news correspondent (a post she filled from 1989 to 2002).
She says her most memorable contribution to FOOC, as it is known in the BBC, was for a special programme broadcast the night Diana, Princess of Wales died in 1997. Sadly, a copy no longer exists in the archive. “I was there in the tunnel very early on that night and the car was still there. I had been royal correspondent and met her. I just sat and wrote it because I wanted to say something.”
A few months later, Adie was stopped in the corridor by the series producer Tony Grant (who has been in post since 1992) to ask if she wanted to take over presenting FOOC from chief newsreader Peter Donaldson. She instantly agreed.
She has since fronted it from “a remarkable number of strange places”, including standing on top of a shipping container in Basra, Iraq. “We were on top because it seemed to be less noisy, but then the entire British Army engineering regiment arrived with vast vehicles belching smoke all around us. We shouted, ‘Could you switch off your engines, please – we are trying to do something for Radio 4?’ We did the entire programme with all the lads lined up staring.”
Adie still relishes stories from on the road. Her clear blue eyes sparkle as she acts out scenes with an impressive array of accents and finishes in a deep – almost masculine – belly laugh (she was, after all, often one of the few women in the war correspondent press pack).
Adie grew up in the North East as an adopted child – given up by her mother due to social pressure after she became pregnant in a wartime affair when her doctor husband was away on service. As a child, Adie was fully aware of being raised by foster parents (Wilfrid and Maud, a pharmacist and his wife) but insists her childhood was “hugely secure and happy”. “I had people who loved and cared for and supported me.”
She went on to read Scandinavian Studies at Newcastle University (the Norse parables were good preparation for war, apparently) before falling into journalism almost by accident after getting a technician’s job at BBC Radio Durham. She was moved on to reporting for local radio in Plymouth (for £925 a year) before joining BBC TV news in 1979. Her break came the following year, covering the siege and storming of the Iranian Embassy in London by the SAS while crouched behind a car.
Soon she was dispatched to conflicts across the globe, making her name as a fearless reporter, or “fireman”, as she calls it. In her downstairs loo – next to a photograph of Adie running alongside a wounded man in Kosovo on a stretcher – is a newspaper cartoon of two squaddies poised for combat and a speech bubble that became her hallmark: “We can’t start yet, Kate Adie isn’t here.”
Does she agree with her fearsome reputation?
“Not at all. I cry like anyone and get frightened. Once in a street in Beirut I froze dead and had to be picked up by the cameraman. I’ve screamed in fear at terrible things.”
What she doesn’t talk about is herself. She has never married, nor is there any mention of a partner. She is fiercely protective of her family’s and own privacy. (I am asked not to name her village.)
In 1990 during the Gulf war, Adie vowed that if she did return alive she would trace her birth mother. A few years later she did. “She died last year aged 94,” she says, “full of family, full of friends, full of life.”
She has previously remarked that she is the “spit image” of her mother and seems to possess the same vigour. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t countenance talk of retirement. “I don’t see it in that way at all, do you know how old Nicholas Parsons is?” her booming voice lowering conspiratorially. “91. I’m going to stagger on.”
Modern television, she concedes, is a very different beast. But radio provides some shelter from the storm of the 24-hour news cycle. “The thing about radio – if you’re still composmentis and have the voice – it’s not ageist. And I love broadcasting. All you need is a voice.”
She insists she has no regrets about bowing out from front-line reporting. “I had the most fantastic run when we went out to half the adult nation. There were often no mobile phones. We were usually the first on site. It was this amazing sense of discovery, even if I didn’t enjoy being trapped in a ditch feeling wet, cold and shot at.”
She says she remains unburdened by trauma. What she and other veteran correspondents remember are the people they met who never made it on to the news bulletins. It is in telling these stories from the “corners of life” that is the enduring joy of From Our Own Correspondent.
The million-and-a-half listeners that tune in each Saturday, a number that rises each year, clearly agree – as do the correspondents themselves. Adie says it remains a privilege whenever producer Tony Grant comes calling. “The correspondents will say: ‘I’ve done six pieces today and been up since I got called by some swine at 4am.’ And he will just say: ‘Go on, be a good chap. It is FOOC, you know.’ ”
‘The thing about radio – if you’re still compos mentis and have the voice – it’s not ageist’