for the bbc world service and bbc africa service. hejust handed it to me. i knew nothing aboutjournalism. the only thing i knew was what my father told me, dog bites man is not a story, man bites dogs is a story. i had to learn very fast doing broadcasts, i think i was terrible, they were really nice at the world service and they encouraged me and so i did a series of interviews and told them what was going on in southwest africa, which was a really interesting time. because as i say, it was apartheid on steroids. it had a large africana and german population who were very hard line. it was a very difficult time and the people i was working with, three of them got expelled, two of them were put under arrest in south africa. so we were seen as a kind of hot bed of anti apartheid. but it was a really fast learning curve and that s when i really got the bug. and from the beginning of your career and then from there you focused on foreign reporting. you covered the iranian embassy siege in
fast doing broad casts, i think i was terrible, they were really nice at the world service and they encouraged me and so i did a series of interviews and told them what was going on in southwest africa, which was a really interesting time. because as i say, it was apartheid on steroids. it had a large africana and german population who were very hard line. it was a very difficult time and the people i was working with, three of them got expelled, two of them were put under arrest in south africa. so we were seen as a kind of hot bed of anti apartheid. but it was a really fast learning curve and that s when i really got the bug. and from the beginning of your career and then from there, you focused on foreign reporting. you covered the iranian embassy siege in your first week, i think. then the iran, iraq and falklands wars. is a foreign news really where your heart lies? no, it was then. by the way, i was a terrible war reporter. why? but i seemed to be sent
under arrest in south africa. so we were seen as a kind of hotbed of anti apartheid. but it was a really fast learning curve and that s when i really got the bug. and from the beginning of your career and then from there you focused on foreign reporting. you covered the iranian embassy siege in your first week, i think. then the iran, iraq and falklands wars. is foreign news really where your heart lies? no, it was then. by the way, i was a terrible war reporter. why? but i seemed to be sent to all these wars. what made you a terrible war reporter? i tried to cover the wars in a kind of objective way, particularly the falklands. max hastings was there and he understood no, you had to do and in the way the british want to read about it. i was still applying old reuters rules which is nonsense. and max hastings outgunned all of us then. so it was a fantastic experience. then i did. i got better at it.
and the people i was working with, three of them got expelled, two of them were put under arrest in south africa. so we were seen as a kind of hot bed of anti apartheid. but it was a really fast learning curve and that s when i really got the bug. and from the beginning of your career and then from there you focused on foreign reporting. you covered the iranian embassy siege in your first week, i think. then the iran, iraq and falklands wars. it is a foreign news really where your heart lies? no, it was then. by the way, i was a terrible war reporter. why? but i seemed to be sent to all these wars. what made with terrible war reporter? i tried to cover the wars in a kind of objective way, particularly the falklands. max hastings was there and he understood no, you had to do and in the way the british want to read about it. i was still applying old reuters rules which is nonsense. and max hastings outgunned all of us then. so it was a fantastic