Diary – 6 December 2003

Addis Ababa

The last time I was here was to cover the story of the mid-Eighties famine for the Mirror. The story was complicated by the fact that we had Robert ‘Mercy Mission’ Maxwell for company. I was summoned to the presence for a briefing by Captain Bob. ‘First, we are going to save the starving. Second, we must do it in a low-profile way. And third, I want you to organise the TV coverage.’ Once there, a photographer and I had to exhort him not to come with us to the famine-relief stations. The picture of big fat Bob with little dying babies was the kind of bad visual the non-Mirror media would have loved. We persuaded him to stay and annoy politicians in Addis instead. A few days later, we arrived back to a note from the Captain: ‘My work here is done. I must fly back to London to resolve the miners’ strike.