More thrills than skills – A half-life in journalism, part 43

Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, edited extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More thrills than skills: A half-life in journalism’, is being scheduled for publication next year.

‘TV Alley’ was a long, winding road next to the British base, so-called because of its population by the great names of broadcasting who rented virtually all the houses there.

The firmly secured satellite dishes pointed skywards to all corners of the globe: to the headquarters of RTL, ABC, CBS, BBC and Reuters in faraway New York, Washington, London and Luxembourg.

Sitting one Sunday morning in the BBC house in TV Alley, the Inspector was asked by yours truly who he suspected of the latest crime. “To me, everyone is a suspect,” he declared and his icy gaze swept the roomful of heavily hungover TV persons. “Perhaps it is an ‘inside job’,” he mused Poirot-like and disappeared into the garden to examine some mysterious footprints.