Shropshire Magazine

Kate Adie at Shrewsbury School.

Andy Richardson talks to a BBC legend about wars, work . . . and what’s next

Some things don’t change. It’s a damp, dreary Friday evening in Shrewsbury but Kate Adie has a deadline to beat. She’s racing along the M6, around the outskirts of Birmingham, anxiously watching the clock. It’s 6.30pm and the traffic is at a standstill on the busiest night of the week on Europe’s busiest stretch of motorway. She’s due in Shrewsbury in an hour to talk in aid of the charity Hope and Homes for Children. Yikes. But Adie is a stalwart and presses on. ‘Don’t worry,’ she tells herself. ‘I’ll be there.’

At Shrewsbury School, marketing manager Caroline Foster is anxiously pacing the length of Alington Hall. ‘I’m sure there’s not a problem,’ she says, though her expression betrays a lack of confidence. A group of volunteers suggest they could tell anecdotes to tonight’s 250 guests. Foster laughs nervously. Time marches on and the clock reads 7.29pm. The hall is full. Foster is pale. Adie is nowhere to be seen.

A minute later, Adie, the former BBC chief news correspondent, strides purposefully from her car. She looks sensational. Dressed in a flattering brown-and-cream frock, she beams a bright ‘hello’ and gets on with the job. Deadlines? Pah. Adie has them for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Adie has agreed to talk to The Shropshire Magazine about her career. It’s a rare and exclusive interview. Though she joined the BBC’s national news team in 1976, she prefers to stay behind the camera, radio mike or reporter’s notepad. Her celebrated career took her around the world and she became a national treasure, famed for reports on the London Iranian Embassy siege in 1980, the American bombing of Tripoli in 1986, and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

Assignments

She was promoted to BBC chief news correspondent in 1989 and held the role for 14 years, reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests and covering major assignments in the Gulf War, Balkan conflict, the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the war in Sierra Leone in 2000. It became something of a joke in the British army that when Kate Adie arrived on the scene, the soldiers knew they were in trouble.

She withdrew from front-line reporting in 2003 and currently works as a freelance author, journalist, lecturer and public speaker. She presents From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4, has released a best-selling autobiography, The Kindness of Strangers, as well as two further titles. A fourth book will follow this autumn.

However, Adie insists she does not miss working at the sharp end of world affairs. She says: “I do radio, public speaking and a certain amount of lecturing, it’s a mixed bag and I love it. You can’t hanker for something that’s gone. It’s disappeared.”

She loved her globetrotting years but knew they could not go on for ever. “That’s the point,” she says, in trademark stacatto tones. “Once something goes, it goes. There’s no good hanging around saying, gosh, I want to do it.

“I never waste a second thinking back. I had a terrific time and now I do other things. It was wonderful, it was an enormous privilege. But I enjoy this as well; if I don’t I’m making a big mistake.”

There’s a welcome humility to Adie, a quality not always evident among those who spent their careers before an audience of millions. When I suggest she redefined the role of television journalists, she politely tells me I am wrong.

“Ooh no, I didn’t, I would dispute that,” she says. “I coincided with a lot of very big stories. There was an element of luck in that. I was there at a time when television was expanding. Television was very dominant and had very big audiences every night. There was a third of the adult population watching, it was extraordinary. But that was part of an era of television news. Gosh, oh dear, not at all.

“All I aimed to do was get the facts. You had these wonderful tools with very cutting-edge technology. I thought it was extraordinary year on year to get news back to people faster and better. It was thrilling and I loved doing that. Being sent around the world was extraordinary. I never dreamed of doing that, I never thought of being a reporter. I had no career prospects. It just happened and I never quite got over it.”

Unkempt

Adie talks at length about the dreadful conditions she endured in wartime: the lack of food, water, basic facilities and being unable to wash her hair in sandy desserts. She laughs about cameramen who would torment her about her slimline, unkempt appearance. Tonight, of course, she is in rude health. Her hair is silken and she is clearly better nourished than during her frontline years.

Adie talks in Alington Hall to generate funds for Hope and Homes for Children. The charity helps foundling children – Adie, herself, was a foundling – in central and eastern Europe and Africa. She became involved after meeting Colonel Mark Cook, a former British Army officer who founded the charity after witnessing the horrors of state orphanages, which still house 1.25 million children across Europe in often appaling conditions. Colonel Cook enlisted the help of Adie, her erstwhile colleague Martin Bell, and others to assist his global charity.

Adie says: “I’d been very aware of these awful orphanages. They were ancient, horrible, gloomy, grim places. At one point we went with an army group and tried to do something about an orphanage that was actually under fire. These were disabled children, it was absolutely horrendous.”

The former face of BBC news has received an OBE, numerous television awards (including the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA), honorary degrees from 10 universities, an honorary professorship of Journalism at the University of Sunderland, and three other honorary fellowships. Adie says she enjoys her work with the charity and has no plans to slow down. “I’m one of those people who believes that if you get a lot out of life you ought to put a lot into it.”

And with that, the indefatigable foundling from Sunderland who lived out a remarkable life in our nation’s front rooms is off. She’s ready to write another chapter in her own compelling story.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall pictured with the Prince’s Trust ambassadors – Kate Adie is at the rear.