The Kindness of Strangers - Kate Adie > Reviews (2)

When the book reviewing gods ~ okay, a bloke and a lass in an office ~ deigned that their servant theediscerning should have to condense 420pp of autobiography into 150 words, he was a little daunted. He was also quizzical about the subject of the said autobiog ~ Kate Adie. Yes he had grown up with her in the battlefield on the telly of a 6 o'clock news when he was younger, and presumed he admired her for doing so in a decent way, but he would have had other first choices for a weekend's company.

However there was a surprise waiting theediscerning, as he soon found the book to be fully interesting, and with a wry humour and sardonic use of anecdote (at least for the first third) that appealed.

It certainly is a life in the reporting industry that begs telling, and here it has been told well. We start with her first forays into exploring Europe, while doing a language degree. How many of us have managed to see the inside of a holding barracks, at the police's behest, on our first morning in Berlin? Not many of us ~ this lass just barged past everyone into a major student sit-in protest just before the polizei barged their own way in.

After that heady start you would think she would welcome her first reporting jobs ~ local radio had just started back home in Durham, so she started there. And she did welcome it ~ all the while never pretending to have any wish to be in that job. She also got a stint into local radio down Bristol way, before TV beckoned.

OK, the giddy heights of exploring the production of Songs of Praise for TV South, down in Southampton, is not a promotion prospect for many of us. But this lead to a stint as "their woman in Brighton". And look where she has gone from there ~ other, equally salubrious places, like Ulster, Iraq, Mostar, India, and so on.

It's a great narrative, peppered at the relevant points by a snide kink at the powers that be(eb), and the continuous repetition of her falling into jobs while never having any ambition in any direction. It caused the Independent to say it "at times bears comparison with Evelyn Waugh", to use the handy press release the reviewing gods also provided. That might or might not be the case, but the drollery is very endearing.

"On the numerous occasions when I've been hauled over the BBC carpet (green, frayed and wine-stained until the consultants arrives with tasteful grey), there was always the feeling that, whatever your sins, the BBC would vigorously fend off the critics ~ while pasting you to the floor. Only failing to possess a current TV licence or having sex during transmission of an Act of Worship would see you fed to the lions and dismissed. Not to mention committing a Royal to the hereafter before they'd officially dropped off the perch. Anything else ~ being drunk on air, crashing £45,000 worth of BBC armoured land rover, flying to the wrong country, embarrassing the government, enraging cabinet ministers, falling asleep while live on air to the Today programme ~ was treated as an internal matter, to be dealt with rigorously, while simultaneously mounting a stout public defence of the reasons for your behaviour.

I should know; I've done all of these things."

The danger in planning this review was to spend too much time saying just what isn't in this autobiography. There is very, very little about Kate as a private person. To be sure, the career path herein described does not exactly welcome finding a significant other, but there is no mention of a boyfriend after university. (And as the tabloids were insisting the maiden Adie must be a lesbian only a couple of years back, no girlfriends either.) We find out in the merest of references, and later a photo caption, that she was adopted. Only when she had to provide "next of kin" details before joining the troops in the Gulf War did something seem to twig, and, having recently lost her adopted parents, she went in search of her natural mother ~ to whom this book is dedicated. That skeletal re-telling is no less wordy than Adie's own.

There is a sense that she is very easy around blokes, as there was a lot of old boys' club business in the early years of her career ~ helped no doubt by her dare-we-say unconvential good looks and the miniskirt era. Certainly it comes across that all journalists and reporters like sinking the bar each night after the job is done (if not before), and we presume Adie has got a constitution to match the lads in that to some extent, and Adie appears to be a most amenable one-of-the-lads muckers. Fun, no less, if a little violent when needs must ~ and at times, the need was there, as you'll find out.

Also missing, for the most part, is any semblance of Adie saying what is right and wrong about what she covered in her job. Yes, there is a small reference to her Royal Correspondent days as being totally worthless, and she admits that all the news flooding out of NI during the troubles was one of the biggest turn-offs for the TV news viewer, but for the most part she sticks to what she knew of when working ~ a "just the facts, ma'am" style that encouraged no subjectivity.

We do, though, get a decent history of the changes of tele-journalism over the recent decades to a new, rolling news, nothing-to-say-so-say-what-you-think, style, plus, while in NI, a great internal debate summing up many years pondering what worth pointing a camera at rioters, murderers ~ and their victims ~ might be. Did the BBC's presence foment unlawful and terrorist activity, or just help to alert the world to what was going on anyway?

Also, in a short powerhouse of a chapter of quiet indignation, we get the unreported truth of Tiananmen Square. It really is a case of "they didn't!!", followed only slightly by "she didn't!!". Read it and find out what that means.

That behest applies to the whole book, really. It comes down to a brilliant summary of her career. Yes, there is no significant other, nor deep and meaningful look at her childhood, as neither here would be either significant or meaningful. For an exploration of a unique lady in a unique situation most of her life, this tome comes highly recommended.

Paperback ISBN : 0-7553-1073-X. RRP £7.99. Headline Publishing, June 2003.
Also available: hardback, audiobook.