Before taking up my appointment on 1st September 1991 I took the opportunity to meet key BBC staff in Belfast. Those most important to me would be the Regional Controller Robin Walsh, his Head of Programmes Pat Loughrey, the Head of Public Affairs Rosemary Kelly and her indefatigable assistant Nan Magee.

Robin, like myself a son of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, had made his name in a range of important posts concerned with news and current affairs. Starting as a reporter with the Belfast Telegraph he had moved first to Ulster Television, the local commercial station, before joining the BBC in Belfast as News Editor in 1974. In the 1980s he had been a legendary Managing Editor for News and Current Affairs at BBC Television. He struck me as able but highly-strung; ‘wired up’ in the current fashionable expression. Given the image of newsmen as hard-bitten jacks of all trades, it was an odd fact that he had never learned to drive. Over time I had a growing sense that his promotion to Controller had not done him a favour. The highest ranks of many professions tend to involve turning one's back on one's true passions to concentrate on dreary issues of management; personnel problems, priorities and budgets. I myself had in many ways found the middle part of my career, with a hands-on responsibility for developing new policy and giving expression to it, far more enjoyable in many ways than serving as the professional head of the whole vast organisation.