John Woodward, a long-serving journalist at Bush House, has died.  He was a Chief Sub in the Newsroom in the seventies.  He later worked for the Russian Service and became Bulgarian Programme Organiser.  He died at his home on Wednesday, July 31st, of pancreatic and liver cancer.  Funeral details to follow.

John's friend and successor as Bulgarian programme organiser, Vallery Tchukov, gave the address at the funeral:

I carry with me a sense of guilt, remembering that John always regretted not having quite managed to get me to appreciate cricket.  Even his unsurpassable passion for the game foundered against my stubborn Balkan resistance to understand 254 for 6, with 2 wickets in hand, declaring at 530 with 235 all out, giving an overall win of one innings and 140 runs.     I used to tell him that even the shipping forecast made more sense to me.

Nevertheless, John did support my application for British citizenship and even   agreed to be my primary referee.  Evidently, he must have accepted that having got me in the habit of eating stodgy hot English puddings with custard at the BBC canteen qualified me sufficiently.

It was at the BBC that our paths first crossed.  And I had barely been 18 months into my job as a member of the Bulgarian Section, when John appointed me to be his deputy.  It caused quite a stir, upsetting some, surprising many –including myself.  He must have seen something in me.  I, over the years, certainly saw a great deal in John that I admired and tried to emulate:  his unwavering, unimpeachable sense of fairness;  his supportiveness and fierce loyalty;   his sharply honed news nous;  his refusal to worship corporate sacred cows and ability not to take anything too seriously;  his plain speaking and aversion to fuss and pompousness.  When time came for John to retire and hand the heavy crown of Section Head over to me, he slipped a small object into my hand and said: “Here are the Section scissors.  The rest you know or will get to know.  Now, let’s go down to the club and have a drink, sunshine.”

No doubt, there must have been a fair amount of tongue in cheek in that favourite of John’s appellations for me.  But when I raised my suspicions with him, pointing out that no-one else had ever called me that, he simply answered: “Well, I don’t call anybody else that, either”.   And that’s another thing I learnt from John – you don’t have to gush to express kindness and camaraderie, and affection.

There wasn’t much I could teach John.  Perhaps one thing.  It was a tradition at the World Service to broadcast the Queen’s Christmas address in all the tongues in which the BBC spoke to the world, including Bulgarian.  So a few days before Christmas, under strictest embargo a copy of the speech would arrive, which I would proceed to translate in utmost secrecy and then we’d go into a studio where John would voice-over the speech, ready to be broadcast on the day.  The trouble was, that John’s grasp of Slavic languages had come via Russian and he had also done a stint at the Russian service.  It thus fell on me to break it to him that most Bulgarians, particularly BBC listeners, wouldn’t like it very much if Her Britannic Majesty spoke to them in Bulgarian with a Russian accent.  I hope my coaching helped to rectify that situation a little.

After his retirement, John and I became even closer friends, free from the constraints of prescribed corporate conduct.  Our families became friends.  Having shared an office with John for years, I’d been left in no doubt that for him Patsy and James came first.  I have never seen him as happy as when we met for lunch only a few weeks after the birth of his grandson.  For a man not easily given to emotionality, he was melting with the joy and pride of being a granddad.  The very last time I saw John, he was very frail and weakened by his illness.  Yet, he found the energy and the will to do one thing, which he obviously considered important.   He asked for his mobile phone and on it showed us a picture taken by his daughter-in-law.   And there they were:  three generations of Woodard, John, James and little Artie, riveted to the television screen – watching a test match.   Nothing quite like cricket.

Good bye, John.