Sad news, Blair was a decent man.

Blair's son Gary Thomson has provided this account of his father's life:


Blair Thomson 1939-2011

Blair was born in Paisley, Scotland, and educated at the John Neilson Institue, Paisley; the Royal College of Music, Glasgow; and the British Isles Nazerene College, Manchester (Diploma in Theology & Philosophy).

He entered journalism as a trainee with D.C. Thomson Group (Dundee and Perth) and worked on newspapers as reporter, news editor and media correspondent in Scotland, Lancashire and Birmingham.

He first went into broadcasting when he joined ATV in Birmingham in 1969 as Assistant Editor of the regional news programme "ATV Today".

In 1971  he was invited to join the new team set up by BBC North Region (Leeds) to produce regional TV opt-out programmes.

He left the BBC in 1973 to work in East Africa for an international radio station, Radio Voice of the Gospel,  as a freelance writer and broadcaster, based in Ethiopia.  Blair covered the protracted Ethiopian revolution, which ousted Emperor Haile Selassie, for "The Times", "The Observer", "Time" magazine, BBC Radio News and ABC Radio (New York).

For his own safety he had to work under a variety of noms-de-plume.  For the BBC, he broadcast under the name Alastair Morrell.

After his wife and three children had to be evacuated from Ethiopia because of death threats, he spent three months in and out of Ethiopian jails for his reporting of the so-called "bloodless revolution".

He returned to the UK in 1975 and wrote an account of the Ethiopian revolution - "Ethiopia - the country that cut off its head" (published by Robinson Books, London and long out of print).

Later in 1975 he rejoined the BBC in the Radio Newsroom in London. He was appointed Deputy Foreign Editor in 1978 and a year later was appointed Home News Editor. In this role he was in charge of planning and organising coverage of special events such as the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana, and visits by the Pope to Ireland and the UK.

During this period he also planned and acted as location producer for Radio News & Current Affairs coverage of General Elections in the UK and Europe and for the commonwealth, NATO and other conferences in Europe, Africa, Australia, Canada, the United States and the Far East.

In 1983 he became the editor of "The World Tonight" on Radio 4 with a brief to increase the audience.  Over the next five years the programme's audience more than trebled. In 1990 it won the Sony Award for Best Daily Current Affairs Programme on Radio. (Although by that time he had moved on, the citation was kind enough to point out that the award was for a consistently high quality of coverage of world affairs over the past few years)

As a "hobby" he punctuated his organisational and management roles in Radio with periods producing several major Radio documentaries including the 90-minute programme "Target UK" in which the Ministry of Defence gave the first ever access to the "Protect & Survive" nuclear war emergency broadcast tapes, and allowed him to record operational activities aboard a nuclear submarine - including the missile launching sequence.  

Other programmes included "E.T. Comes Home" - about emergent technology in the conventional defence of Europe - and a series of 45 minute documentaries under the generic title "NATO - a time for change?"

In 1988 the BBC News and Current Affairs Directorate took over the teletext services - Ceefax and Subtitling - inviting Blair Thomson to take on a temporary role as Head of Ceefax, and see what he could do with the service. The result was a complete reorganisation of the staffing, the content and the transmission system, and a re-launch of the service in autumn 1989.

When the BBC decided to create a department to embrace all its teletext services, including Subtitling, he took on the new post of Head of Teletext Services in June 1989 and went on to  introduce the first live TV news subtitling in Europe.

In March 1990 was elected as European Teletext Co-ordinator of the European Broadcasting Union Teletext and Data Services Group, and in November of 1990 became Vice Chairman of the EBU Group. He compiled the first-ever "Guide to European Teletext Services", published under the auspices of the EBU in November 1990.

In 1992 he took early retirement from the BBC, but within a week he was asked to fill in as Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism at Falmouth College. Declining a full time post he "retired" again.

A month later he was in Copenhagen agreeing to set up a multimedia company as a subsidiary of a Danish technology company to negotiate with CNN and Reuters to run a data broadcasting service to computers via satellite across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

He left to set up a new company with some of his former directors, his sons and the venture capital company 3i. After a merger with another company he decided commuting to London and Hertfordshire was taking its toll and "retired" again.

His concern for the local community brought him out of retirement to work with local charity and government organisations to support the people of Cornwall, which he continued up to his death.

He was for four years South West Regional Manager of the national volunteering charity CSV Media, during which time he was a trustee of South West Forum, and a member of the Executive of the South West Regional Assembly and a director of Cornwall Film Ltd. He was one of the founding Trustees of the incorporated Cornwall Voluntary Sector Forum and was elected its first Chair.

Among his other voluntary roles,he was chair of the Cornwall Strategic Partnership; a director of Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Learning Partnership Company; a member of the national England & Gibraltar European Social Fund Convergence, Competitiveness and Employment Programme Monitoring Committee; a member of the Joint ESF/ERDF Convergence Programme Monitoring Committee for Cornwall; and serve on the DOTT Cornwall (Design Council) Advisory Board and GOSW Sub National Review Committee.

He also served as a member of several boards and committees including the Cornwall Economic Forum, the University of Exeter Advisory Board for Cornwall and the Combined Universities in Cornwall Advisory Board. He was recently appointed Chancellor of Cornwall Children's University.

At the time of his death he  was still busy with directorships, membership of advisory boards and other voluntary posts.

He leaves behind his Fay his wife of 49 years, his children Gary, Scott and Fiona and his 8 grandchildren.

This is from Bill Rogers via:-

http://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2011/01/blair-thomson.html


Blair Thomson

Blair Thomson, a former Editor of The World Tonight on Radio 4, has died at the age of 71.  I first met him when he had been thrown out of Ethiopia in 1975, and was learning the ropes in the Broadcasting House Newsroom in London - him already a grizzly Indiana-Jones-figure with a gruff, largely unplaceable accent, myself a callow news trainee; both of us at the end of the subs' desk hoping to be tossed the weather story for the 1800 bulletin.

Blair was in Addis Ababa for the successive coups of 1974 that eventually led to the end of Haile Selassie's regime. He was a stringer (a reporter paid by the piece) for the BBC, and also worked for the respected Radio Voice of the Gospel.  He wrote the story of the revolution up in his 1975 book, "Ethiopia: The Country That Cut Off Its Head" - reviewed as "vivid".   Blair was soon part of the "Intake" operation at BH, working as a Foreign Duty Editor on shift, dealing with stringers in the field himself.  At nights, he would occasionally scare the pants off other shift workers by finding his way into the Concert Hall (now the Radio Theatre) to play the organ, whose low throb echoed eerily around empty corridors in the early hours.  He rose to be a respected international fixer, and eventually Home News Editor, before a move to run The World Tonight in the 1980s.

There we met again - with my home base, Newsbeat oddly-placed across the corridor from the R4 deep-thinkers.  Blair particularly enjoyed the reporting of the European Parliament ( The World Tonight was given special funds) and found time for regular supervisory trips to Strasbourg, where his knowledge of budget hotels and pricier restaurants was unsurpassed. He also moved his home to Cornwall, which added to his time on the road.

He then moved on to Television Centre, as Editor of CEEFAX, which gave him a lead for his post-BBC career - running text services for CNN and others.  In recent years, he'd become one of the great and good in Cornwall, serving on many a voluntary group and quango with relish and vigour from his home in Truro.  He was always convivial company on visits back to London, and I'll remember with pleasure bashing out the blues with him on an elderly upright at one of Jenny Abramsky's parties.

Blair was a very good journalist and a kind man.

Floral tributes or if preferred donations for Cornish charities in which Blair was so passionately involved, may be sent to the funeral director:

Morley Penrose
Homewood
Greenbank Road,
Devoran,
Truro, Cornwall
TR3 6PQ
Tel: 01872 863596

I will, for ever be grateful to this man who didn't mind taking on board a young french woman as his PA and did change her life forever by giving her such an opportunity. Thank you Blair.

I contacted the funeral director this morning about the charities we will be contributing to in Blair's memory. They will be Cornish charities and will be agreed with the family in the next couple of weeks, Several ex-newsroom and intake guys have agreed that we should send our donations in one cheque and then write to Fay and the family telling them the amount etc. I have agreed to take on this task.
If you want to join in with this scheme, please make your cheques payable to me - my address is 186, Stansted Road, Bishop's Stortford, CM23 2AR.
I will post the final amount on this site.
Alan Ashton.
You can, of course, send them direct to the funeral directors (address elsewhere in this link) if you prefer.