Stuart Forsyth, who will be remembered as a newsreader, then sub-editor, at Bush House, and as a familiar voice on domestic radio and television, died in December.  He was 77.  The following tributes were written by his partner of 18 years, Sue Maunsell, and a long-time friend and former colleague, Alan Wellings, and delivered at his humanist funeral service at Beckenham Crematorium, London, on December 29, 2008:

Part 1: Childhood and youth

Stuart was an only child.  His mother qualified as a nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital. His father was a considerable athlete who qualified for Wimbledon in 1915 but missed competing because of World War 1. Some time in the 20s Stuart’s father went to India to run the telegraph office in Srinagar, Kashmir. Stuart’s mother sailed to join him.

Stuart was born on 12 August 1931, just over 77 years ago. He had an idyllic early childhood. The family lived in a wooden house with a veranda overlooking the lake. A nanny, Patricia, and other servants looked after the little boy. His mother drove their old car to see friends, especially to a convent of nuns in the mountains, and dogs and cats were much loved house pets. There were ponies and picnics and one photograph “Wosun 1940” shows a wild mountain setting where lunch is being served by an impeccably dressed servant round a solid dining table with solid chairs. There were dog shows and at one the young Stuart captured the megaphone – maybe that was the portent of microphones to come.

Things changed later when Stuart’s father took posts as Bursar at Hallett War School in Naini Tal and later at a school in Lahore and Stuart became a pupil. At the end of the war Stuart was 14, it was clear that India was going to achieve independence, and so the family, like so many others, came home.

Stuart went to Highgate School in North London where he turned out to have a flair for modern languages and spent many hours listening to jazz with friends. When he was 17 a tragedy hit the family. His mother suffered a serious stroke and was thereafter confined to a wheelchair.  That sad event kick-started Stuart’s culinary skills which most of his friends have since benefited from.

Part 2: Working Life

Stuart had reached university entrance standard at 18. Probably because of his mother’s health, he did not go to university but took a job in an insurance office. It was not a happy choice. Who could see Stuart working in insurance? National Service rescued him.  He joined The Royal Dragoons (the Blues and Royals) as a private in 1951 and left as a sergeant two years later, having spent 18 months in the Suez Canal Zone.  While in the Canal Zone he had a piece of luck which changed his life. He joined the British Forces Broadcasting Service under the auspices of another broadcaster, David Wilmott. Stuart had now found his metier.  Indeed he stayed on in the Canal Zone for some months after being demobbed and then went to Graz in Austria and worked for a year for the British Broadcasting Service as producer and presenter.

In 1954 he joined the BBC proper as a studio manager. In the years that followed Stuart worked as a staff producer, and an announcer, and met his lifelong friend, Alan Wellings. He spent three years in the New Delhi Office responsible for public relations for the BBC and took a leading role in The Importance of being Earnest. He was accompanied by his first wife, Doreen, but that marriage did not last.
On return to the UK in 1968, Stuart settled with his second wife, Jane, whom he had met in India, in Woodford. He turned freelance (Stuart never shrank from taking risks), and worked variously as journalist, interviewer, presenter and announcer  mainly for Radio 1,2,3 and 4 and BBC1and 2 but also for BBC  TV programmes on Kent Opera and a Mozart Concert with ECO. He was particularly interested in current affairs, science, music, agriculture (perhaps surprisingly) and education. He wrote and presented radio features as diverse as The Law of the Sea and Cornish Tin Mining.

Tribute from Alan Wellings

I’ve known Stuart for about 45 years. I joined the BBC as a trainee studio manager early in ’62 and would first have met and worked with him, probably in Broadcasting House rather than Bush House, sometime in ‘63. I can summon a clear picture of him at a control panel – I would have been playing discs or tapes into the programme – and still recall how reassuring he was to work with: He knew his stuff; established clear, high standards; and communicated precisely and straightforwardly how things should or shouldn’t be done. Of all the senior and established studio managers, he became my primary mentor, not only in studio operations but also in the ways of the wider BBC.

The 40 or so years which have followed my leaving the BBC have been those in which we have been “just friends;” each of us able to assume that contact or a visit would be welcome and which have left me with rich memories of conversations and meals together and activities and projects shared.

Stuart combined great critical intelligence with great practical intelligence; he had the confidence and skills to craft things with his hands; and he was able to work effectively solo or with others. These qualities, together with his ear for voice and music, made him the good studio manager he was when I met him and also a broadcaster and journalist in many other radio and television roles. I came to see him as a journeyman communicator, able to work behind or in front of the microphone or camera, or to produce words for distribution in print, unfazed by differences in tools, operating procedures and conditions because of his feel for the values and processes of communication.

My memories of Stuart-as-broadcaster after I left the BBC are few, they are based on occasionally hearing a programme he’d produced; seeing him on television or, mainly, hearing accounts from him about his activities. I do, however, have many and clear memories of Stuart as a serial restorer of flats and houses: it was an activity which had nothing to do with his professional life but seems to me to have drawn on those same qualities that he brought to his professional work. My first experience of this was when he asked me – this must’ve been towards the end of my time in the BBC – to help him lay a path down the garden of the house he and Jane were renovating in Woodford. We laboured hard that weekend, levelling the ground, mixing concrete and hauling and placing paving slabs: If there was a starting point for our friendship, as distinct from being BBC colleagues, that was probably it.

After Woodford, came Prospect Cottage in Hampstead Village: I only saw photographs of how it was before he got to work but the transformation was impressive; the only problem was that when finished it was a bit small for Stuart plus Jane plus Eric the Doberman, even without any guests.

After Prospect Cottage and the break-up with Jane there was Judd Street, a one-bedroom flat in a Peabody Building. Again, extensive work to produce a flat which my wife and I remember with great affection: It was small but ingeniously and comfortably laid out with some beautiful bits of furniture; and it had what my wife described as the best-designed kitchen she’d ever seen. Judd Street was also a wonderfully convenient for us users of St Pancras and was within easy reach of Indian restaurants – Stuart introduced me to several – and of the The Northern Fish Restaurant in which I still eat when I can and where I remember many good meals in Stuart’s company.

Judd Street was followed by Gladstone Street which I see as the pinnacle of Stuart’s restoration achievements. It was essentially an original Victorian property in which the sole existing “improvement” before he moved in had been electricity. Thinking back, Stuart’s achievement in Gladstone Street was remarkable by any standards: He did a high proportion of the work himself and what he didn’t do he specified in consultation with local tradesmen; he ended up with a convenient, well-equipped and most comfortable house which retained the period style and character of the property. My only contribution – if any – was to be available for extended discussions about whether, and then how, to install solar heating. Stuart was highly alert to science and technology issues, as some of his broadcast productions reflect, and thought that domestic solar heating technology had reached the threshold of practicality and that it would be a satisfying task to design and install it. He was right, it worked well and I recall the first time I took a bath in Gladstone Street in water entirely heated by the sun.

I don’t know why Stuart was so ready to restore properties; I wish I’d asked him. I also wish I could hear his views on the value of the programmes on buying and “doing-up” property to which so many television hours are currently devoted.

One evening in the ground floor front room at Gladstone Street, over a glass of whisky, Stuart said to me “I’ve met somebody …” I knew about the work he was doing with Charlie Worrall at the CoI and the “somebody,” of course, was Sue [Maunsell]. I came to perceive Stuart’s move to Longton Avenue to join Sue as the start of the longest and most settled period in his life since I had first met him and have felt privileged to enjoy their joint hospitality on many occasions.

I want to move back to the latter half of the ‘80s, a time when Stuart and I saw a lot of each other and, apart from the sheer pleasure of his company, he made major contributions, including being a stern critic, to some of my activities. At the start of this period he went off to Pitlochry where he spent a holiday as a volunteer on a forestry project; I remember him reporting utter exhaustion while seeming immensely satisfied by the experience, and, together with cats Ronnie and Reggie, he visited us – my wife, children and, of course, our cat - in Sheffield after his return. Next he went to Lancaster University’s Summer Study Holiday Programme and, among other activities, took flying lessons, reporting with delight a tight circuit around Blackpool Tower. His experience of the Lancaster Programme made a great contribution to the similar programme I helped organise and run over 3 years at Sheffield University - as ever, he was generous with ideas, time and practical help and left me with one particularly vivid memory of him taking part in an “event” in which he abseiled down the side of a building. His readiness to have a go was never lacking.

In ‘89 Stuart and I decided to spend a three weeks touring the NE Coast of the USA. I was going to attend a couple of academic conferences which were six weeks apart and also to sail a friend’s yacht down the coast of Nova Scotia. We arranged that after my sailing I should meet him in Portland, Maine and, thereafter, determine our route according to the availability of accommodation in a guide Stuart had acquired called, as near as I can recall, “Great Little Inns of N America.” It was a wonderfully successful strategy: We wandered in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire and for every night, by ‘phoning ahead, we found a comfortable, usually Georgian or Victorian property serving excellent food. That whole trip remains a wonderful memory of conversations, meals, friendly people, sights seen and, I must mention, a few insect-tormented hours on horseback in the foothills of the Green Mountains Presidential Range in New Hampshire.

I am profoundly grateful to have known Stuart. He has been an “unconditional friend;” always ready to be a clear, sharp critic – as he had many occasions to do - when I wasn’t thinking and/or expressing myself clearly but always in the context of a solid, supportive and enduring mutual affection and regard. He will remain with me through memories and images, those I’ve briefly reported and many times more but this is the time when I publicly say “thank you.”

Part 2: Working Life continued

In 1975, Stuart made another brave move, from the BBC to public relations this time, as senior account executive for Burson Marsteller. His biggest client was Flora margarine, but he also had a finger in medical products. This had its reward: he gleefully recounted a story of how, during a midwifery conference in Aberdeen, he led 15 attractive midwives into the bar for drinks to the amazement and envy of some oil-rig workers standing by.

After two years in PR it was  back to the BBC in Bush House in 1977,  this time  to what is now called the World Service as news sub-editor while still doing some freelancing as music presenter. By this time Stuart’s second marriage had ended and Jane had moved with their beloved big black Doberman, Eric, to Poole in Dorset. It was a great regret to Stuart that he and the big affectionate dog he had regularly walked on Hampstead Heath never met again.

During the Judd Street and Gladstone Street periods about which you have heard, Stuart spent 11 years in the BBC World Service News Room. It was around now that he met Hilda Bamber, an ex BBC colleague who had worked in radio in New Zealand and was briefly manager of an old people’s home. Stuart had fond memories of taking his Burmese cats, Ronnie and Reggie to Christmas dinner there and of Hilda giving the cats salmon and cream. Hilda then joined the WRVS and went back to travelling, but has remained a close friend.

Stuart retired in 1988 after the first of his strokes, from which he made a good recovery. A contact from the newsroom was Christine Wiener who wrote scholarly guide books about Scotland. Stuart was her publisher and they had merry excursions to printers to discuss layout and pricing and Stuart made a couple of trips to Scotland to do some PR for her.

Stuart had his own fans; it was quite touching when French friends introduced us to two friends of theirs.  All four were staying with us for the Monet Exhibition. One of them, Jean, was a university lecturer in English. He spoke perfect English and recognised Stuart’s voice and name immediately from the long hours Jean had spent listening to the BBC World Service.

Part 3: The last 20 years

A new role for Stuart emerged working freelance at the Central Office of Information. Charlie Worrall  and Stuart ran training  sessions for government  Ministers, most Permanent Secretaries, Prison Governors  and senior civil servants appearing before Select Committees. Their objective was to improve their trainees’ presentation skills now that most Select Committees were televised. Their training days were both instructive and fun. I am sure that Stuart really enjoyed telling Permanent Secretaries in Whitehall how to deal with the media, very tactfully, of course. He worked with Charlie Worrall as a finely honed team and it was on just such a training day that Stuart and I met in 1990.

In September 1990 there was a typical Stuart incident, He arrived with his car, his cat, his cases and his computer and without any previous discussion moved in with me at Longton Avenue. The result was that the lodgers shortly moved out and one of my British Blue cats and her last kitten left home to live with Louise aged 90 two houses away. My other cat stayed, but Stuart’s brown Burmese had the upper paw from day 1.

I am going on to talk about living with Stuart in the days when he enjoyed good or at least reasonable health. I am not going to talk about his slow slide into stroke related dementia, because that is not how any of you or I want to remember him. I do however think that maybe some of his irrationality and quirkiness derived from the first unrecognised signs of the dementia which clouded his last three years.

I want to say just a word about the best friend Stuart has had in the last few years, our dear friend Sue Hall. She looked after him at home and gave him lunch before he became really ill, put up with his quirky ways, visited him and fed him in the nursing homes and gave him naughty treats when he was still allowed them. I can never thank her enough, on behalf of us both.

Living with Stuart was fun. He could be tart and he could be unreasonable but on the whole he was life enhancing. He had a wicked sense of humour. He was always thinking up new things to do. He liked good food and, up to a point, wine, and did more than his share of cooking - though he could never repeat a dish as he never used a cook book.

He loved cats, and we had a procession of Burmese -- cream, lilac, blue, brown, tortie and red -- over the next fifteen years. He improved the house and oversaw some fundamental work to combat dry and wet rot, which he had discovered by stepping through the floor in the downstairs lavatory. He got some Irish builders to widen the driveway. He improved the garden vastly with the help of our then gardener, John, and planted rare trees in the garden: gingko, liquidambar, Californian redwood and mulberry. He liked books and read widely and avidly. He loved antiques and the antique furniture that eventually followed him from. Gladstone Street enhanced the house.  He cleaned the silver and replenished the table linen. He was good company and liked nothing better for relaxation than to smoke and chat, perhaps with a modest glass of whisky.

In celebration

We are here to celebrate Stuart’s life and what a rich and varied life it was. Childhood in India, a good school in Highgate, sailing as a national serviceman to the Suez Canal, finding his career in broadcasting there, travelling in post-war Europe, India again. Then the BBC in many roles as, newsreader, programme presenter, researcher and interviewer, punctuated by a move to a new world of public relations.  All this was against a background of finding and renovating houses and making and keeping good friends.

“Retirement” saw him training Ministers and senior civil servants for the Central Office of Information, renovating his house and garden, with his cats for company, entertaining, and travelling.  Stuart made the most of life. So let us all remember him as the sharp, witty, generous and affectionate person he really was, and let us be very glad and proud that we knew him.