The retired BBC correspondent Jim Biddulph has died in London of a heart attack. He was 78.

This is the eulogy to Jim, delivered at his funeral by his friend Peter Mosley:

I’m Peter Mosley and my wife Ann and I got to know Jim and Rita almost 30 years ago in Hong Kong and have been close friends ever since.  Rita has done me the honour of asking me to pull together some of the wonderful warm tributes that have been flowing in for Jim.  There’s not time here to cover all of them.  I also understand that a group of as many as 60 of Jim’s old friends in Hong Kong are gathering at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, where Jim was once president, even as we are gathered here.  It’s a special club event at which they’ll raise a glass in Jim’s memory.

First, let me give you some of Jim’s history as provided by the family, although I understand that both the Times and the Guardian will be running obituaries.

Jim  - he was actually Albert James Biddulph – was born in Bilston, Staffordshire, only son of Albert and Winifred Maud.  They moved to Falkirk when he was very young, then back to Bilston and Junior school for Jim - with a derided Scottish accent.  Between 10 and 14 he was a wartime evacuee in Canada and then came back to Wolverhampton and grammar school – this time with a Canadian accent to overcome.  These experiences may  have bequeathed him his distinctive and instantly recognisable broadcast voice, a recording of which, taken ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, forms part of the corpus of Received Pronunciation voices on the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English.

Jim started out in journalism at The Walsall Echo and then The Surrey Comet, but clearly had developed a wanderlust, venturing out to the colonies and The Rhodesia Herald in about 1957.  He married Marie Wilson in 1958 in Salisbury, Rhodesia, and Susan was born the following year.

Jim went on to work for the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, later Rhodesia Broadcasting, and covered the war in remote Katanga, a breakaway province in the newly independent former Belgian Congo.  In 1961 he was driving the hazardous journey to Zambia to file the latest reports from all the correspondents (no satellite phones in those days) when they came to a United Nations roadblock. One of the other passengers, it turned out, was some sort of VIP with a suitcase full of bearer bonds who ordered the driver not to stop.   A Swedish soldier reported to have been drunk machine-gunned the car, the VIP was killed and Jim was very seriously wounded.  Later on, he was greatly amused to find that rumours of his death had been greatly exaggerated for posterity in a fellow journalist’s book.

In fact, luckily there was a field hospital nearby where, under very primitive conditions, an Italian neurosurgeon released the pressure on his brain and removed several pieces of shrapnel.   Later on, Jim had bits of his hip removed to replace missing piece of skull - and ever after that, so the family tell me, he claimed to keep his brains in his bum.  

Jim was soon back at work – and Chris Wain, a former ITN and BBC correspondent who knew Jim in those days, sent a message last week saying it says a great deal for Jim’s personal courage that he was able to keep going through such a horrendous experience.  Courage was something Jim had plenty of, and it showed again during his long final illness when, as Rita told me, he bore much pain without complaint.

Back in Africa, when Ian Smith proclaimed Rhodesia independent of Britain, Jim set up shop with another well known reporter, Peter Niesewand, to form Afrinews, covering the conflict for Time magazine, the BBC and many British papers despite severe censorship. To beat the censors when covering the emerging black nationalist movement, they developed a musical code for the names of imprisoned leaders and prison camps.  When Ian Smith found out he sent Jim packing with only a week’s notice despite his having lived in Rhodesia for nearly ten years and with three children Susan, Ralph and Simon born in the country.

There’s a topical footnote here: Gwyn Jones, who was reporting from those parts at the time, says in an email that Jim’s rapport with the nationalists was very strong, even with Robert Mugabe - whom he couldn’t stand.  Gwyn says Mugabe told him sourly one day: “You are nothing like Jimmy. He really understood us.”

Jim then joined the BBC in London, working for many famous programmes: Today, The World at One and In Town Tonight.   He covered riots in Paris, the inauguration of Pompidou, the Torrey Canyon Disaster, the first British Troops into Northern Ireland and subsequent horrors, the Biafra war in Nigeria, and upheaval in East Pakistan leading to Bangladesh.  

From Belfast there’s a lovely moment recalled by Ian Richardson which demonstrates both Jim’s dead-pan humour AND his consummate professionalism. The BBC had been building up an expected riot one night in the Falls Road and primed Jim not only to cover it but to produce a package next morning. The riot never happened but the London TV Centre still insisted on a voice-to-camera piece.  So Jim duly stood up in the Falls Road and began, “If there’d been a riot last night, this is where it would have happened...”

It wasn’t all harem-scarum reporting. David Tindall gleefully recalls that it was “Jim, civilised man that he was,” who introduced THE SIESTA to the correspondents’ office at TV Centre.  At first David thought the odd-looking screens in front of everyone’s desk were to give them quiet privacy when they were on the phone. “After lunch though, things became clearer,” he writes. “Dear Jim, unseen behind his screen, could be heard snoring deeply.  Soon, there was Ian Ross, the industrial correspondent, joining Jim in a post-prandial snooze, then Michael Blakey.  The only sound you could hear during the lunchtime was the newsreader Richard Baker whispering sweet nothings to Meg, the correspondents’ secretary, over a game of Scrabble.  Fortunately, MANAGEMENT were sleeping somewhere else in TV Centre.”

Expenses always posed a creative challenge for correspondents.  Jim’s one-time news editor at TV Centre, John Exelby, describes him as “one of the old heavies who had lived a full life and showed it, an old Africa hand and a first-class, no-messing correspondent” - but remembers having to query his expenses on one occasion.  John said he did not recognise many of the names of people who Jim had been wining and dining as reputable sources.  “Of course they aren’t,” replied Jim, wearily.  “I take them out of the cast lists for plays in the Radio Times.”  He went on to explain that he was far too busy to make up plausible names himself. John Exelby says they “agreed a compromise,” adding that Jim was a good man who never let his editors down.

In London, Jim also became Commonwealth Correspondent, then Diplomatic Correspondent of the BBC before being appointed Far East Correspondent based in Hong Kong - and many of the tributes that have been flowing in relate to his time there.  

He covered a wide range of top international stories from Asia including wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and the bombing of Laos. By this time, he had a family of four, Jemima having been born in 1971.  His journalistic reputation kept growing; he became, in fact, a world famous reporter - although being an essentially modest man he would have shunned such accolades.

Philip Bowring in a toast prepared for today’s wake at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, called  Jim “an example of  BBC radio journalism at its very best. No breathlessness. No histrionics. Just a well-tempered voice describing an event, a situation or an argument unhurriedly and with a minimum of well chosen, well enunciated words. A  touch of gentle humour. A pinch of mild scepticism. A sense of humanity without need for tear-jerking.”

Jim’s first marriage foundered under the inevitable strains of a high-pressure life.  In 1985 he married Rita Gomez, a reporter for Reuters (my old firm) who was later Courts reporter for the South China Morning Post.  Their daughter Carrie was born in Hong Kong in 1987.  Jim had parted company with the BBC by then and become a celebrated local journalist.  Brian Hanrahan recalls, and I quote, “when he left the BBC and was given his opinions back, he displayed them all over Radio Hong Kong in his weekly Biddulph Report.

“It was unprecedented for anyone to use the government radio station to poke fun and pillory the local establishment, let alone the Beijing authorities. But Jim set about both with gusto. It was a delicate time as Britain and China haggled over Hong Kong's future. And Jim's enthusiastic demonstration of what free speech meant in practice helped create precedents which benefited everyone.”

Carrie’s Godfather Colin Niven, who in those days was a headmaster in Hong Kong, has sent some amusing recollections. One not-so-funny one concerns the time Typhoon Ellen struck Hong Kong at night.  It seems Jim had just got up to go the loo when the gale blew an air-conditioning unit the size of a tv set onto his pillow.  Rita awoke to a fearful sight, only for Jim to return a few moments later.  

Colin also recalls Jim, on being invited to speak at a school assembly, teaching the (mostly expatriate) pupils how to swear in Chinese. They loved it.  

Jim was also an after dinner speaker and had a weekly radio slot, the Biddulph Report,  on RTHK (Radio and Television Hong Kong). This was made into a book, the ascerbic ‘Hong Kong in Turmoil’. He made many friends and won many admirers. Martin Evan-Jones called him “a mighty, feisty and spritely broadcaster.”  Clive Grossman in Hong Kong remembers him as “a very bright and intelligent man and a great host.”  

Jim was also a fine cook. Sok Inn sent a long and touching tribute from Hong Kong, ending up: “I shall miss all his cooking, his special fish pie with his best-in-the-world mash potatoes with chopped chives, spring onions, nice roast and Yorkshire pudding.”  Wow! Closer to home, Kim O’Neill says her daughter Emma was telling her friends only the other day that Jim “makes the best roast pork.”

Jim and Rita’s dear friend Brian Barron of the BBC pays tribute to “a great colleague with a mordant wit, and a warm-hearted friend who managed to reinvent himself journalistically as the decades came and went. What a life, what a tough old survivor, and an inspiration to the rest of us.”

We can’t leave Hong Kong and China without mention of Confucius.  In sending condolences, Khing Hwang in Hong Kong said Jim reminded him of a saying of Confucius:

“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool, shun him
“He who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is teachable, teach him.
“He who knows and knows that he knows, he is wise, follow him.”

Khing Hwang says Jim belonged in the last category, with his knowledge, humour and above all humility.

In late 1994 Jim decided it would be best for the family to move back to England as Carrie was starting primary school and Rita needed to qualify as a solicitor in order to practice here.  “Hong Kong was never the same after Jim’s departure,” says old-time BBC colleague Gordon Martin.

This is taken from The Guardian,  Thursday May 08 2008:

Jim Biddulph
Correspondent for the BBC in Africa and south-east Asia
by Bob Chaundy

Jim Biddulph, who has died of cancer at the age of 77, was a distinguished BBC foreign correspondent for almost two decades from the mid-1960s. His authoritative and insightful reporting helped shape the way his audience viewed events such as the Vietnam war, the 1968 Paris protests, the opening up of China and the birth of Bangladesh.

Jim was born in Bilston, Staffordshire, and was educated at the town's junior school until he was evacuated to Canada, aged 10. Back in England after the war, he attended Tettenhall grammar school in Wolverhampton.

Having served his journalistic apprenticeship in the early 1950s with the Walsall Echo and the Surrey Comet, in 1957 he applied for a job on the Rhodesia Herald. He had to look the country up on a map when his application proved successful. Specialising in the African nationalist movement, he was soon on first name terms with Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, who told Biddulph's successor: "You are nothing like Jimmy. He really understood us."

He met and married a South African, Marie Wilson, in 1958. The couple had their first child, Susan, the following year. In 1960, he joined the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, later the Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation.

In the following year, while covering the war in Katanga, the province that had declared independence from the newly independent Congo, Jim was hit in the head when Swedish UN peacekeeping troops fired on the car in which he was travelling. He lost part of his skull, was dragged from the wreck by local people, and was eventually taken to a nearby field hospital. An Italian neurosurgeon removed several pieces of shrapnel. Later, he had pieces of his hip removed to replace the missing part of his skull, and joked that he kept his brains in his bum.

He then went to work at the African Daily News and later formed Afrinews, providing coverage for Time Magazine, the BBC, AFP, local broadcasting stations and British newspapers. At the time of white Rhodesian leader Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence, in November 1965, he kept the world informed despite severe censorship and, with his colleague Peter Niesewand, who filed for the Guardian, developed a musical code for imprisoned leaders and names of prison camps to evade the censors. Smith was not amused by this and Jim and his family - which by then included two sons, Ralph and Simon - was sent packing with seven days' notice.

He joined the BBC in 1966. The corporation was anxious to beef up its news coverage with seasoned reporters, and his all-round talents and analytical skills secured him the role as diplomatic editor, for which he visited many of the world's troublespots. At the end of one three-month stint in Vietnam, during which he witnessed his fair share of horrors, he reflected in a From Our Own Correspondent Radio 4 despatch: "One of the pitfalls in trying to sum up the changes in a place over any sort of period is deciding how far it's the observer who's changed, rather than the object observed."

In 1975, Jim was appointed the BBC's far-east correspondent, based in Hong Kong. Here, he turned his reporting skills to such issues as the Cambodian refugee crisis and the Vietnamese boat people. He stayed in Hong Kong as a freelancer after leaving the BBC in 1983, the same year that his marriage to Marie broke up. By then, their fourth child, Jemima, had been born.

Two years later, he married Rita Gomez, a Malaysian journalist working for Reuters. The couple had a daughter, Carrie, in 1987.

Jim was by then an institution at the foreign correspondents' club, and became its president in 1986 on condition he would gain control of the wine list. Drinking had long been a serious problem for him. Yet, remarkably, he got through it with the help of an iron constitution, and the support of Rita and his whole family, to whom he was devoted.

He continued to broadcast on radio and television till his return to Britain in 1994 and retained his good humour, despite increasing ill health. When he broke his hip, he bemoaned the end of his dreams of an ice-skating career.

He set about his hobbies of gardening and cooking with the same enthusiastic and applied manner that had been the hallmark of his journalism. He eschewed the modern TV chef in favour of Mrs Beeton. Indeed, after they had dropped him off at the hospital for the last time, his family returned home to one of Mrs Beeton's stews that Jim had lovingly prepared for them.

He is survived by Rita and his five children.

· Albert James Biddulph, journalist, born May 5 1930; died April 27 2008