Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Ian Hyams http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1209306345 Message started by alan_ashton on Apr 26^th, 2008, 7:41am

Title: Ian Hyams
Post by alan_ashton on Apr 26^th, 2008, 7:41am

Ian Hyams, stalwart of the GNS desk in the BH radio newsroom, news editor Radio Norfolk and latterly a freelance in New York, has died of cancer at his home in Norfolk.
His funeral is at 2pm on Tuesday (April 29th) at the Jewish section of Bowthorpe Road Cemetery, Norwich at 2pm.
When I first met Ian he was a traffic manager in foreign news from where he got an attachment as a sub in the BH newsroom. An eager beever character whose journalism was self taught, as a born fixer he naturally moved to the GNS desk where he was promoted to chief sub and then on to news organiser.
A devoted family man, on his retirement from the BBC he moved with his wife Stephanie to the U.S> to be near his married daughter. Once there, he started working as a freelance for local radio and after 9/11, he took up temporary residence in New York and filed countless pieces individually tailored to the various local radio stations.
Having contracted cancer, he moved back to Norfolk only a few months ago. Our sympathy goes to his beloved Steph and their family.

Title: Re: Ian Hyams
Post by alan_ashton on Apr 27^th, 2008, 3:19pm

Mike Chaney, his manager at Radio Norfolk and former ly of Bush House and then current affairs group at BH, has asked me to add the following:
Ian had the indispensable journalistic quality of irrepressibility. He was truly an india-rubber ball of a man, constantly on the move, but it was not just energy for its own sake: he always had an accurate eye for a suitable outlet for whatever story he was handling.
He joined the BBC as a teleprinter operator, a skill he had learned in the RAF. But unlike so many doing the dull work of the old Creed room, Ian read the copy that passed through his hands and had the enterprise and nose for news to direct it to the editors and programmes that could make the best use of it.
Because of his lowly entry point into the BBC editorial edifice, he suffered a great deal of sniffy snobbery from "proper" journalists and had to endure endless rebuffs in his inexorable rise up the news tree. But he had (or at least pretended to have) a skin like hide and his obvious talents won him the promotions he deserved.
As a neighbour in Norfolk, and as a family friend, I lament the passing of a true family man: in the Yiddish of his East End background, Ian was mensch - a man you could always rely on.

Title: Re: Ian Hyams
Post by grahambardgett on Jul 6^th, 2008, 1:24pm

It is with great sadness I learned today of Ian Hyams' death.
I knew Ian when I worked for him on the GNS?News Intake desk of BH London, 1974-1975, and again worked alongside him during my five years at BBC Northern Ireland news and current affairs, 1990-1996. Ian and I worked for Martin O'Brien, the Senior Producer of current affairs radio, and for Rowan Hand, the Editor of Current Affairs, reporting the Ulster Troubles. Ian was a great friend and colleague. He moved back to Norfolk and later to the United States from where he was a frequent contributor to Good Morning Ulster.
As a member of the Northern Ireland Broadcasting Branch of the NUJ, and as a friend of Ian Hyams, I extend my sincerest condolences to his family.
GB