Diary – 21 August 2010

I am organising a memorial service at All Souls Church next to Broadcasting House for my oldest and greatest friend: Allan Robb, the BBC journalist and broadcaster, who died last month. He was 49 and, from the day we met as five-year-olds on our first morning at the Edinburgh Academy, we were like brothers. Allan worked for Radio 1’s Newsbeat and then Radio 5 Live for a number of years. You would have liked him. Like many of my colleagues, he didn’t fit the right-wing stereotype of a BBC journalist: he was not a bien-pensant leftie. Every morning he would march into the newsroom brandishing his Telegraph and railing against the decline of Western civilisation. On air, though, you would never have known his political preferences.

Allan was sparkling company. He told stories with great comic precision. One of his best was about how, when interviewing John Major during the 1992 general election campaign, his mind went blank.