The Rotary Club of Bangor recently enjoyed a presentation from former BBC Journalist Roisin McAuley.
Roisin entitled her talk “Rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability”, a quote from journalist Nick Tomalin about what is required to be a journalist.
We heard how she became a reporter for the BBC on programmes such as Spotlight, Newsnight and Panorama. Among many fascinating tales, she recounted how she spent time reporting from Argentina during and after the Falklands war, having been able to get in because she held an Irish passport.
She told of an interview with PLO leader Yasser Arafat, when she had immense difficulty making any sense of the garbled English he insisted on speaking. There were also stories of time spent in Angola during the post independence civil war and in Sarajevo, where the journalists were accommodated in a hotel with no windows- they had all been blown out.
Having retired from journalism, she is now a published author, but that is a story for another time.
(Pic PP Bill Aiken : Words President Margaret Francey)
