Administrator
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Geoff Sumner was given a fitting send-off. Former BBC colleagues and a contingent from Birkbeck College attended the funeral, conducted by the Reverend Barry Bluck. Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck, was engaging and masterful in a touching tribute to Geoff as a mature history student. She spoke particularly of the encouragement he had given to fellow students. Former BBC correspondent Nick Jones, who worked with Geoff in Radio News and at Westminster gave his own tribute:
Geoff could be good company. He always enjoyed an outing. He loved organising them. They were perhaps the family outings which he never had as a child. I knew from the way he would reminisce that his favourites were probably days out and long summer lunches with the teams of journalists he had worked with at the BBC in Westminster, on the parliamentary programmes which he edited with such distinction and in which he took such pride. Another favourite was a winter evening spent eating and gossiping with BBC colleagues.
The planning was always meticulous: there was never any doubt about the venue, the instruction as to which train to catch, a rundown of the menu options, wine, beer or whatever else was on offer.
In later years Geoff jumped at any chance for a day’s stiff walking in the countryside with a well-timed and well-proportioned lunch and perhaps another pint before catching the train back home.
The printed itineraries for these walks were always a joy: exact timings for trains and buses, colour reprints of ordnance survey maps showing the precise footpaths to be followed, historical references; often if we were walking around London a relevant quote from Charles Dickens.
Once I remember the print out for the day included a reproduction of Stanley Spencer’s painting The Resurrection on view at Cookham church; and of course that all-important list of hostelries along the route.
On our last outing in March we got lost in woods on the North Kent coast, not far from Rochester. Geoff said that wouldn’t happen again; he emailed me a couple of days later to say he’d bought a gps satellite device ready for use on our next outing in mid April, that was the walk on the South Downs that sadly he called off, complaining of a virus and a bad cough.
Geoff was never one to attend funerals but I think he would probably have smiled, perhaps even in wry amusement at the arrangements made for this afternoon’s outing, for our gathering here at Hither Green.
He wouldn’t have said so, but I know he’d have been chuffed to think that so many of his former colleagues rated him for what he was, a talented, terrific journalist, a fine judge of news values. What would have touched him most of all was that we had all come to pay our respects.
Geoff joined the BBC radio newsroom at Broadcasting House in 1973; I had been signed up a radio reporter the year before. Geoff rose rapidly to become a senior duty editor. Night after night he was taking the critical decisions, choosing the lead story for the 8am news bulletin at the top of the Today programme...the bulletin on which the BBC’s output would be judged.
Later he moved to BBC Westminster editing Today and Yesterday in Parliament and television programmes like Westminster Live. Geoff was always at the sharp end of the BBC’s coverage of Parliament, in the hot seat, never afraid to take a decision and then stick to it.
Geoff wasn’t always the easiest of colleagues to work with. He had high standards, he was a superb writer, a devil for syntax and spelling, but even so he respected journalistic drive and effort.
He preferred working behind the scenes, assessing and shaping the work of others, rather than the perceived glory of being out on the road in the cut and thrust of news gathering. But he was a generous editor, only too ready to give a reporter the chance to shine.
During the industrial disputes of the Thatcher years, on the wet Sunday afternoon in February 1985 when the mineworkers finally called off their year-long pit strike, Geoff was editing the six o’clock Radio 4 News. He knew precisely what he wanted: “Nick, we’ll run all the actuality first and then I am giving you four minutes to assess the strike and its outcome.” That was a big chunk of a fifteen minute bulletin. Geoff went through my script, word for word, reinforcing every point I was trying to make. I could not have been more grateful.
A decade later at BBC Westminster, when Geoff was editor of Scrutiny, a weekly BBC 2 television programme which examined the work of the House of Commons select committees, I was the presenter for a brief eight months. Geoff gave me free rein to beaver away, to go over to the Commons and the Lords to dig up whatever I could.
Then each Thursday evening, long after I’d gone home, Geoff would sit at BBC Westminster going through my scripts. Next morning I’d arrive to find them transformed – light and engaging, witty, but razor-sharp politically. Never before had I received that level of support from a programme editor. I owe Geoff a debt of gratitude.
Another former political presenter, Peter Hill, who is here today, had an equally high regard for Geoff both as an editor and producer, a sentiment which I know is shared by so many of those who worked with Geoff on the BBC’s parliamentary output.
Geoff took early retirement in the mid 1990s. He established his own company Sumner Media Services. He used his editorial and production skills to assist all manner of organisations with the publication of annual reports and the like.
To me Geoff was always a journalist’s journalist. He started as a reporter on the South London Press, along with Mike Vestey, later to become another Radio 4 reporter. After a stint on the Northern Echo, Geoff was off to Egypt as a freelance, writing for papers such as The Guardian.
Like so many of us who started out on local papers in the 1960s, Geoff missed out on university. I was so pleased when he told me he had become a mature student at the College of History at Birkbeck. He was soon engrossed in a PhD. He was researching aspects of Britishness, especially the symbolism – and myths – surrounding the eating of beef.
Only recently he’d told me he was busy writing up his literary review. I did try to keep him supplied with the odd newspaper cutting. One I remember which amused him was from the Sun which created a hullabaloo when British Airways dropped roast beef and Yorkshire pudding from its in flight menu.
Geoff was clearly getting immense pleasure from lectures and sessions with his fellow students, from his studies in the library. I sensed, judging by his enthusiasm, that there was a book in the making. Geoff was in his element, he was inspired in a way I had never seen before.
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