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Brian Dunning
Sep 29^th, 2008, 11:43am

I'm sorry to have to report that I've just learned that Brian died last week .

He died at 4.35pm on Monday afternoon. He had lung cancer and had had a very difficult three months.

His funeral will be held on Wednesday 1st October, at Haycombe Crematorium in Bath- 1.30 for 2 pm.

The address of the crematorium is:-
Whiteway Road, Bath BA2 2RQ (Telephone 01225 396020).

Attendees are welcome to go back to the house afterwards-
Rowan Edge, Westfield Close BA2 2EA

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chris west Junior Member Offline Posts: 93 Spain	Re: Brian Dunning Reply #1 - Sep 29^th, 2008, 4:27pm What sad news, and what a lovely man. The night shift at BH was never dull with Brian in charge, he was an inspiring character.
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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #2 - Oct 4^th, 2008, 8:28pm

Heather & I attended Brian's funeral on the outskirts of Bath on Wednesday. It was a simple service on humanist lines in an impressive setting. The modern chapel had one long wall of floor to ceiling glass looking south for miles over the Somerset hills. At the house later, we saw a copy of an obituary for 'Brian Dunning of London' which appeared in the Kansas City newspaper for which he'd written a column over many years. The family also had messages from ex newsroom colleagues.
-Mike Matthews

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #3 - Oct 4^th, 2008, 10:15pm

This is taken from the Kansas City Star, Saturday October 4 2008:

Brian Dunning of London, longtime contributing writer to the Kansas City Star, dies at 76

Brian Dunning, who wrote for The Kansas City Star from London for 40 years, died Monday at his home in Bath, England, after a brief battle with cancer.

Dunning, 76, worked for BBC Radio in London for 35 years, retiring 15 years ago.

Dunning attended the University of Kansas School of Journalism from 1954 to 1955. Before returning to England, he sent The Star an article giving his impressions of living in America for a year. The Star published it, and Dunning began to send feature articles to The Star from London.

“He had a great sense of humor, a great wit and a charming way of writing,” said Laura Hockaday, a friend of Dunning’s and a reporter at The Star for 38 years. “That earned him an awful lot of fans in Kansas City.”

Dunning developed a devoted following among readers of The Star’s opinion pages, taking them to the castles and cottages of the English countryside, and to the pubs that he could find around any corner.

He created a popular series about the people and life of Little Ashton, an English village he concocted from his imagination and wit.

“He had a real love for Kansas City and the Midwest,” Hockaday said.

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webb

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #4 - Oct 24^th, 2008, 9:40am

As Chris West says, it's very sad. Brian was a one-off. I came across him first at Caversham, where he had been temporarily - and even maybe involuntarily - exiled from Bush House. He didn't seem to know why he was there, but that was also true of many of us who'd chosen to be there. The place was full of eccentrics, so he fitted in very well. I then met up with him in the BH Newsroom, where he was at one time a kind of Essayist in Residence, having been anointed by the then Editor as a "benchmark" writer for the rest of us to seek to emulate. "Benchie", as he was thereafter known, was capable of filling an entire one-minute summary with a single-subject peroration, declaimed in that RADA-like voice into the ear of a (probably partially deaf) typist. Having delivered his essay to the newsreader, Brian was then free to stretch his long arms, lean his head forward, fire up his Rolls-Royce engine and taxi to the Newsroom runway, eventually, after a bit of huffing and puffing, streaking off towards the loo in his unforgettable impersonation of a Concorde.

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chris west

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #5 - Oct 28^th, 2008, 2:54pm

My friendship with Brian was cemented after those late shifts at BH, as we trudged back to our respective homes in Twickenham, having quite inexplicably fallen asleep on the last train from Waterloo, and woken up at the end of the line in Strawberry Hill. He made a long walk a delight. And I remember braving the overnight canteen fare in BH, simply for the pleasure of listening to Brian give his critical appreciation of the food on offer.

Incidentally, my mum's funeral took place at the same crematorium: it is indeed a fitting and beautiful place.

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Joe_Paley

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #6 - Nov 5^th, 2008, 9:38am

I remember the tail end of a night shift in the newsroom, many many years ago. It was the time of the morning when tiredness conspires to make you light-headed. In came a disgruntled employee from the canteen, wheeling the tea trolley and plate of buns.

Brian raised his maned head and long nose high into the air and declared in his best stentorian voice: "Ah......fruits from Olympus".

He was great fun.

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alan_ashton

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #7 - Nov 6^th, 2008, 11:33am

Nights with Brian Dunning - around 6.45 on usually a dull Sunday morning, he would announce to the sleepy staff - "All over the country people are waking up and saying - ahh, good, it is time for the seven o'clock news from the BBC".
We once speculated on how to stimulate the listeners' interest and we devised a system where the newsreader would shout - "FACT" whenever he reached a crucial point in the story. The newsreader on that morning was Brian Marin and he rehearsed a dummy bulletin in this fashion. This was long before Birt and his fact checker by the way.
Years after, when I had moved to Today etc., we would greet each other in the corridor with "FACT". It confirmed to the non news staff that we were all mad anyway!

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alan_ashton Ex Member	Re: Brian Dunning Reply #8 - Nov 6^th, 2008, 11:34am That should read Brian Martin by the way - I must learn to check my copy.....
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johnallen Ex Member	Re: Brian Dunning Reply #9 - Nov 7^th, 2008, 10:22am Alan, it should actually read Bryan Martin, so check your facts as well as your copy. Whatever happened to Bryan? Anybody know?
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RSx

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Re: Brian Dunning
Reply #10 - Apr 30^th, 2011, 5:53pm

Just to complete the thread - the Daily Telegraph reported, on 22 March, 2009:

"Bryan Martin, who died on March 4 aged 73, was one of the voices of BBC Radio 4; he announced the death of Elvis Presley in 1977, news of the Iranian embassy siege in 1980, and became the network's senior newsreader... By 1990 Martin had begun to feel the strain, not so much of the hours, but of the irregularity of his shifts. Furthermore he was unhappy about the decline in BBC standards of his great love – the English language – especially the near-demise of the adverb. In 1992, he decided to take early retirement. "

RIP

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Trevor Butler

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Roger Fleming Ex Member	Re: Brian Dunning Reply #11 - May 2^nd, 2011, 10:18pm I remember one night shift in the BH Newsroom just before the 7 a.m. R4 News Bulletin a member of the tape room called out "The Pope's dead" "Yes we know" was the reply. "No this is the new Pope". Panic! Brian grabbed some paper and sat the typewriter on Sheila Hind's desk and immediately typed out an obit from the top of his head!
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