Former colleagues will be saddened to hear of the death of Jack Thompson, the former Cairo, and South East Asia correspondent.  This is from his son Barnaby:  “Dear friends of JJack Thompson- a message from his son, Barnaby:
Last Thursday, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. He was at the wheel of his car, just returning to his home in Dulwich after a shopping trip, when it seems that he felt unwell, put the handbrake on to make the car safe (typical), passed out and didn’t wake up despite efforts by passers-by and then paramedics to revive him.
He had been down in the dumps for a while, as you will have seen from some of his forlorn Facebook posts. He never got over Kathryn’s death in January 2024, and was rattling around in a large house containing 37+ years of memories, very much feeling his loneliness despite our efforts to visit as often as possible (there was someone here every day, but evenings and mealtimes became particular ordeals). But he still loved recalling ancient encounters with friends and foes, stories in which many of you featured prominently (and repeatedly). He had recently dug out and was leafing through his old notebooks and contacts books from Thailand, Singapore, Cairo and elsewhere, plus the lovely book of farewell messages from colleagues when he retired. He had a massive heart, even if it let him down on that last shopping trip, and it took only an hour or so in the pub or a good meal to revive some of the old Jack.
He rejoiced in the description of him as “curmudgeonly and subversive”, given to him after a particularly abrasive BBC annual appraisal, but he was always too close to laughter to be a curmudgeon and didn’t have anything like enough guile to be subversive. He loved red socks, red trousers and red wine. He still occasionally tickled the old ivories and would demonstrate a couple of tricks that Dudley Moore had taught him when they did the combined Oxford and Cambridge review together. He never threw a book away, so if anyone wants any books on southeast Asia in the 1980s, let me know, we have lots.
This isn't meant to be an obit and I am droning on... I will post details of the funeral and wake here once I have them; you are all very welcome to attend. I'd be grateful if someone could pass on the sad news to BBC and DW networks. We all miss him terribly but we have lots of great memories to comfort ourselves with. (Or, as he would have insisted, with which to comfort ourselves...)
Cheers all - raise a glass, stay in touch, and I will keep you posted. Lots of love from him and us!”