George Alagiah remembered by Mishal Husain
Ithink George must have been southern Africa correspondent when I saw him on air for the first time, in the 1990s. I was just starting out in journalism and there he was on TV one day; filling the screen, telling a story with his unique combination of sensitivity and authority. What story it was, or even what country he was in, I cannot recall, but I remember looking at him and thinking – there is someone from a background like mine, a south Asian, who is a foreign correspondent. It was a huge deal; this was surely the most glamorous and exciting job in the world, and all of a sudden I saw a person who looked like me doing it.
Audiences sensed that what they saw on air was no act, but his natural grace
It was only after I met George several years later that I came to know his many personal qualities and appreciated how he did the job as well as the mere fact of it. By then he was a presenter. When BBC Four launched in 2002, he was the face of its news programme and there was an advertising campaign picturing him with the slogan “Everybody needs a place to think.” It was perfect, for with him this was no manufactured tag line: he was a man who wrote and spoke with consideration and deep thought, weighing up the words he used. We were presenters at the same time at BBC World News and I saw how George seemed to effortlessly lift the work of all alongside him before putting his pen into his breast pocket and walking over to the other side of the newsroom to join the News at Six team. When I got the job at Today he stopped me in the newsroom and said he was proud of me: I know I thanked him but now I wish I had said more, that without him on my TV all those years ago, I might never have lifted my eyes to such roles.
Alagiah on BBC World News in 2006. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC News & Current Affairs/Getty Images
After he died, one of our former news executives wrote and shared a memory of his own: that when George first came to the BBC as developing world correspondent, he wasn’t given much support. His background made him unusual in the world of foreign reporting back then, in 1989, and he was not assigned his own crew, or given much of a budget. He had to do what he could with patchy resources, and then, thanks to his knowledge, insight and unique lens on the world, the organisation realised it had a gem. He earned respect, and airtime, and later entered the ranks of the star presenters, though that never changed him. I think UK and international audiences who saw his work over the years sensed that what they saw on air was no act, but his natural grace. His family’s story was one of journeys, from Asia to Africa and Europe, but he also forged his own identity and made this country his own. The tragedy is only that we did not have him with us for longer.
George Alagiah was a trustee of the Migration Museum