Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Tony Trebble http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1450193978 Message started by JH on Dec 15^th, 2015, 3:40pm

Title: Tony Trebble
Post by JH on Dec 15^th, 2015, 3:40pm

Glynne Price has written this tribute to Tony Trebble who worked in Film Library, Sound Archives and Personnel.

Few who had the inestimable pleasure of knowing Tony Trebble who died last April would quarrel with the notion that it might have been him for whom the term ‘sui generis’ was coined. Someone as boisterous, a lifelong dependant on ill-fitting, ill-assorted charity shop clothing from top to toe, with a huge appetite and table habits suggestive of medieval times, given to persistent tuneless whistling and seldom to be seen outdoors separated from his bicycle, he certainly ran the risk of seeming eccentric. Anyone tempted to dismiss him as such missed a remarkable human being. Among his acquired expertises he numbered a compendious musical familiarity (he was a notably skilled keyboard exponent) , a remarkable literary intimacy (his own writing was direct, lucid and unambiguous) and an extensive knowledge of the world of cinema.
Besides which his inherent personal qualities and unquenchable enthusiasm for life made him the thoroughly lovable character he undoubtedly was – though equally undoubtedly it would have have embarrassed him to be told so. Rarely in our milieu he was the most unjudgemental of men – the clearest evidence of a profound generosity of spirit. He was an ageless figure himself and was quite oblivious to the age of others, as much at ease with infants as with the elderly. Scrupulously fairminded himself he deplored discrimination and prejudice in others and was never slow to say so, if gently.
Uncommonly among his BBC contemporaries his parents had been ‘in service’ – his father a sometime butler in the Argentine Embassy – an only child he spent most of his life in Putney, becoming a professional librarian. The first half of his BBC service was in library services, film and radio, when his reliability and discretion led to him being entrusted with the confidential recording for posterity of the career experiences of eminent BBC hierarchs. Moving on to Television Personnel eventually he settled effectively as a one-man Secretariat to successive Controllers and as such was ideally well-suited. Affably trustworthy he was able to deploy his own orderly-mindedness and the precise love of language that he so much admired in others particularly in navigating the treacherous waters which separated management and unions. His irrepressible capacity to find humour in most human dilemmas never succumbed to the many incipient idiocies of bureaucracy. He was a dependable source of honest counsel for anyone shrewd enough to seek it.
To the dismay of his many metropolitan friends, in retirement Tony removed himself to the north coast of Kent, a part of the world he knew well. There he was able to benefit from his instinctive gregariousness and – miraculously as he judged it – from surgery which relieved the poor eyesight he had endured from birth. He took increased pleasure in music, especially in facilitating productions mounted by local schools and adjacent university students in whose company he revelled.
Unhappily he was not allowed a healthy retirement and suffered a succession of ill-diagnosed ailments which among other things denied him his appreciation of red wine, a deprivation he viewed as a bereavement. Faced with another bout of the gruelling treatment which had caused him a derangement he abhorred, he firmly and formally declined and died within days. He so ended his days with a characteristic resolve and bravery which his myriad friends could not but admire though it caused them immeasurable sadness.
It would require a real effort of will to forget such a wise, kind, cultured, forceful, companionable yet unassuming man while his laughter, worthy of someone at least twice his smallish size, still rings in the ears.