It's not always so comfy. The press corps, covering a Prince of Wales visit to Gdansk in 1993, bash copy into those old Tandy computers we all used in those days. L to R: James Hardy (Press Association); Robert Jobson (Daily Express); Gervase Webb; Philip Sherwell (Daily Telegraph); Charles Rae and Richard Pendlebury (Daily Mail). Photo by Martin Keene (PA)
Salut! makes no apology for championing good journalism, especially newspaper journalism, since doing so offers a useful riposte to the dim and ungracious trolls who patrol online news sites in search of some reporter or feature writer to trash.
Gervase Webb is one of our trade's finest practitioners. His work for the London Evening Standard was beautifully written and compelling, two rare qualities when it is remembered that he was often gathering information, and then composing, at speed and in discomfort. He was also, incidentally, good company on the road, a virtue that rose above the often competitive nature of the job.
This week, at Facebook, he gave his friends and former colleagues a reminder of his perceptive and descriptive skills, recalling - better than many could remember the events of a week ago - the occasion he was dispatched to Israel after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago tomorrow (Nov 4 1995). Rabin, then serving his second term as prime minister, was murdered by Yigal Amir, an extreme right-wing Orthodox Jew opposed to the signing of the Oslo Accords, which sought conciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Here, with Gervase's consent, are his reflections. They may be mere jottings but they bring to life a reporter's labour - and you can see how his original report beggn, in the Comments below...
Blimey, is it really 20 years since Yitzhak Rabin was murdered?
It was one of those bizarre jobs where I was plucked, wearing a heavyweight tweed suit, from frosty London to balmy Jerusalem in the space of a few hours to try to make sense of a country running around like a flock of headless chickens.
It was an extraordinary few days [and here are some] some hasty memories...
... Sitting in a restaurant in Jerusalem and being approached by a Brooklyn-born Haredi, who had himself arrived in Israel only a few weeks before, and being harangued throughout my lonely (but otherwise excellent) meal on the iniquities of the British government in general and the British press in particular.
I tried telling him that my then editor, Stewart Steven, was probably the most pro-Israel editor in Fleet Street, but he was having none of it, and as he left he turned on his heel he spat wetly and viscously into my food. At which the Irish-born restaurateur came over and kindly and gently apologised for the "blow-in" who had ruined my evening and insisted on giving me a bottle of wine.
There followed a delightful evening talking about the Jewishness of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses and a lamentation that the death of Rabin would, in his view, allow such zealots to elect men like Sharon and Netanyahu, and that Israel would be shunned by the liberal world for a generation as a result. In hindsight, his analysis wasn't far off the mark.
... At the funeral, being handed a paper kippah and a hairclip and queuing in a ragged line behind Bill and Hilary Clinton, the Prince of Wales, John Major and the great and the good from across the world; all made equal by having to trudge through dust and excitable checkpoints manned by 18-year-olds on a scrubby hilltop that no limousine could access.
... Then struggling up the hastily erected tiered seating on Mount Herzl to sit next to Stephen Sackur, who was doing a live-feed for Radio 5. Terrified of "dead air", his London desk insisted he keep talking throughout, which he did, whispering hoarsely into his mike as potentates and statesmen all around glared and became almost murderous during the most solemn moments. He was heroic.
... Watching Hosni Mubarak moved to tears by the simple and poignant recital of Kaddish by Rabin's 14-year-old grand-daughter, Leah. In that moment the humanity and loss to the peace process in the region suddenly became tangible.
...Trying to file copy with 10 minutes to deadline and no mobile coverage, and then stumbling across a former British Army mobile telephone exchange being run by a team of resourceful and helpful IDF engineers, chain-smoking in a dip hidden behind some olive trees. With minutes to spare they'd patched me through to London and I was on to the copy-takers - and struck dumb. Unable to think of an intro, I suddenly heard the air-raid sirens going off all around me as a mark of respect - a sound that was carried across the country in the following minutes - and remembered my conversation with the Irish restaurateur the previous evening. Shamelessly plagiarising Joyce, I ripped off the last paragraphs of The Dead for my intro and filed on time and at length. A check call half an hour later and the newsdesk says the editor was moved to tears by the poetry of the copy. Clearly not a Joyce scholar...
...and then, getting back to London after several more days of angst (and a search for cooler clobber than a tweed suit), only to find that the back bench had forgotten to byline the funeral copy.
* As another journalist, Geraint Smith, put it in a comment at Facebook, responding to Gervase's post: 'selecting from all one has to hand in order to craft something new that suits your purpose. Isn't that what all really good writing is all about? You were always great at it (which is why you were sent) and it seems you've not changed.'
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