Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Cameraman who was always first on the scene
FAMILY members, journalists and news photographers paid tribute to Gloucestershire BBC cameraman Leslie ‘Les’ Leach, writes Maisie Lillywhite.
He went from being a keen amateur photographer to the legendary ‘man behind the lens’ for others in his field as a professional news photographer.
Known for his hard work and unwavering dedication to the regional BBC news programme, Les also supplied photographs of local people and happenings to newspapers – the Gloucester Citizen, the Western Daily Press and the Dursley Gazette.
On Monday, family and friends paid their respects to Les at St Mary’s Church at Frampton on Severn, the village where he lived.
Reporters, photographers and news crew members who worked alongside him said their final goodbyes to a passionate photographer, with some of the photographers in attendance holding their cameras up to form a guard of honour.
Les was born in 1936, and lived in the Stroud district all his life, spending his childhood in the Nailsworth area before moving to Framilode, where his parents ran the Darrell Arms in the 1950s.
It was in the Severnside area that Les met his wife, Arlingham girl, Daphne, something that their son, Mark, suspects happened at Arlingham Youth Club.
The couple exchanged love letters in the late 1950s and married in 1963. Mark, their elder son, was born in 1964, with their younger son, Ian, some years later.
Before Les’s trailblazing time as a professional press photographer, he had a very different career lined up, working as an apprentice at the Gloster Aircraft Company.
Mark said: “He used to wire up the Javelin Jets.
“He was always keen on still photography; he entered a competition for ATV, a television company in the Midlands, which he won – they gave him a camera.
“From that, he started taking stills for local papers, and then for television.”
At this point, Les was around 25; it was 1961 and the world of cameras and photography was very different to what it is today.
Mark is now a cameraman for BBC Points West himself, proudly following in his father’s footsteps.
He said: “The first news story I went on with dad was in December 1969, when I was five.
“We went to a petrol tanker that had overturned on the Whitminster Roundabout before it was properly built, and burst into flames.
“As a youngster, dad took me there and sat me in the car, and I had the joys of watching lots of fire and flames coming out of every manhole cover.
“I was forever going out with him; on school nights, we’d go out in the middle of the night to a fire or an accident, driving up the Perry Way to the A38, I’d have his camera on my lap loaded up with film, getting it ready to go for when we got to wherever we were going.”
Les moved from film to video in 1986, and a two-man operation was required.
Mark, who was doing an engineering apprenticeship, formed a father and son team with his dad, and helped him bring some of the county’s biggest stories to living rooms across the region.
The pair were present at Cromwell Street as the news broke about Fred and Rose West.
After a career spanning 40 years of working for the BBC, Les retired in 2001.
In his spare time, Les was a fervent fan of satellite television.
In 1985, he was featured on Points West when he became the holder of satellite television licence number three in the country – the other two being held by GCHQ.
In Les’s back garden, a 6ft satellite was planted, and he was able to watch American and Russian news feeds.
Alongside watching foreign affairs, Les enjoyed pottering around the garden and doting on his grandchildren. He always had dogs, and enjoyed taking them for walks – labradors and German shepherds.
Mark said: “I have plenty of fond memories of him just being dad and always being around, and working with him for 15-16 years as a twoman crew.
“Some of the snappers at the funeral were his age, others are of the younger generation – he spans quite a wide age gap of friends.
“Everyone says he was a legend – ‘He was Mr BBC’, ‘He was the best reporter the BBC ever had’, because he was always first on a lot of the fires and accidents and things like that.”
Les died on June 7 at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, at the age of 84, after a short illness. He is survived by his wife Daphne, his sons Mark and Ian, his three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.