Taking the flak

ON August 9, 1945 the USA dropped an atomic bomb - the second - on the Japanese city of Nagasaki sending an 18,000km mushroom cloud high into the atmosphere and effectively bringing an end to World War II.

Back in England John Simpson was celebrating his first birthday blissfully unaware that had events unfolding in the Pacific taken place some years later, he would almost certainly have been at the forefront of bringing the story to the global audience.

Call it a happy knack of being in the right place at the right time.

But in the 39 years since joining the BBC as a trainee sub-editor, Simpson has undoubtedly become the face most people in Britain would expect to see when tuning in to discover what is going on in some of the most far-flung and often war-ravaged corners of the world.

A veteran of a remarkable 35 conflicts - almost one for every year he has worked for the Beeb - Simpson, the corporation's world affairs editor since 1988, has been on the frontline for pretty much every major news story that has broken on foreign soil.

He was present in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and later that year in Romania for the fall of Nicolae Ceaucescu, even using the executed dictator's own fountain pen to write his obituary.

His exploits during the first Gulf War, where a cruise missile famously swept past his hotel window as he was filing a report to London, Kosovo, and Afghanistan only served to enhance his reputation as one of the world's most eminent journalists.

And when he was caught up in a 'friendly fire' attack in Iraq in April 2003, an incident that saw at least 16 people killed by a bomb launched from a US Navy jet, Simpson's first instinct was to start broadcasting live by satellite phone on BBC News 24.

Not that he can explain this knack.

"If you keep peddling all around there will be occasions when you're in the right place.

"And if you've been at this as long as I have you do get a bit of an indication of what and where.

"But people are kind enough not to remember all the times I've been in the wrong place. They haven't seen me when I'm sitting so far in the wrong place I'm just chewing the walls with irritation!"

It is a bit surreal interrogating one of the most revered people in your own profession.

Sat in a small seminar room at Southampton University, where Simpson - awarded an honorary degree from the university in 2003 and returning to give a lecture - is surrounded by an array of local hacks answering questions at breakneck speed before taking to the lectern.

He answers as concisely as you would hope. One journalist having empathy for what the other requires in such a short time space? Perhaps.

But at the same time you cannot help feeling as a reporter of almost 40 years' experience he is also probably well-versed in how to answer the question he wants to answer and not necessarily the one posed.

Fortunately, 60-year-old Simpson seems to have taken to using his age as an excuse for his apparent honesty and on more than one occasion jokes, "I'm too old to care!" after uttering something erring on the controversial.

When posing for photographs behind a standard issue university pine desk, Simpson automatically assumes the archetypal newsreader pose - leant slightly forward with hands clasped in front of him.

Cambridge educated, he is almost as statesmanlike in his appearance as many of the world leaders he has come face-to-face with over the years.

And as he stands lecturing to the gathered audience, full of charm, quick-wit and with well-informed opinions, it's difficult to imagine this is the same man who frequently dons fatigues and a flak jacket and puts his life on the line for the sake of a story. One question about the friendly fire incident however, and the image of Simpson, stood slightly bewildered in front of burning vehicles relaying the horrific events as they unravelled, quickly springs back into mind.

How did he remain composed enough in such a mindless situation to broadcast? He hesitates slightly; seemingly aware how he answers could make him sound insensitive.

"It's like with anything, if you keep in control of what you're doing, you can sort yourself out. If you give yourself up to the whole thing and start racing around, shrieking, weeping and proclaiming how dreadful everything is then you lose it.

"I was really determined not to lose it because something terrible had happened. I'd got off lightly (Simpson sustained shrapnel wounds and ruptured eardrums) and it wasn't about me it was about the people who had died.

"A man right in front of me burned to death and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The only thing somebody like me could do in that situation was to tell people about what had happened."

Not that Simpson, awarded a CBE in 1991, is so hard-nosed that nailing the story is everything.

He admits to occasions - such as in Tiananmen Square where, having seen two soldiers killed by an angry crowd, he stepped in to prevent a third from being murdered - when he has drawn the line at filming.

"Sometimes you have to cease to be a reporter and your duties as a human being take over."

And he quips he is becoming "quite boringly sentimental" in terms of how intrusive he is prepared to be into people's suffering.

"I'm not really into the business of trampling all over people's emotions for the sake of the audience. I don't think we need to know these things necessarily for the story to still have an impact.

"I now realise that far from being the story it's people's entire lives you're talking about. That's not to be treated with carelessness, it's to be treated with great care and sympathy."

It is also interesting for all his fame on the battlefields, one of the events Simpson most treasures covering was entirely peaceful - the handover of power in South Africa in 1994.

He talks frankly about his relationship with the BBC - "You've always got to have the sense that the marriage is in a fragile state and treat each other with mutual respect."

But he admits to being "depressed" about the corporation's recent job cuts announcement adding, "Quality doesn't necessarily relate to the number of people involved but everyone left is going to have to work very hard to make sure quality doesn't suffer." Whether a deathwish or suicidal curiosity, Simpson's happy knack has left him almost peerless in the world of foreign affairs.

But in a moment of apparently uncharacter-istic self-deprecation, he completely underplays his lifetime of achievement.

"I think journalists tend to be a bit maverick, so if that's what I am so be it. I'm just another journalist really."

John Simpson, just another journalist.

Heaven help the world if a really good journalist comes along.