Neil George, producer of BBC Radio 4’s obituary programme Last Word
Neil had kindly accepted our invitation to come and speak to us and he proved to be a fascinating and engaging speaker on the subject of his life in documentary feature production (he has made more than 500 in over 46 years with the BBC from 1975 to 2023). He is a local lad, born in Townlands Hospital in Henley and now living in a village near Sonning Common. He has travelled widely in his career and is now semi-retired.
He began by clarifying what a documentary feature is, which is a recorded and edited piece over 15 minutes long, as opposed to a package, which is shorter. A good feature will include music, narration, interviews and sounds (cars on a busy road, seagulls if near the sea, the clatter of horses’ hooves or machinery) all designed to create a balanced and interesting background and root the story in the landscape in which it is set.
He started his career on Radio 2 with Gloria Hunniford and John Donne and has interviewed many well-known names such as Gregory Peck (a proper gentleman), Kirk Douglas, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as well as Barbara Cartland (she helped set up a gypsy village in Hertfordshire!). But Neil insists that the best interview subjects are often the complete unknowns, such as the ‘other Dennis’, driver to Margaret Thatcher. One snippet from this interview was that Maggie so hated being late that they would park up in a layby outside Windsor for an hour before the scheduled weekly audience with Her Majesty – a nightmare for the security cohort!
Neil’s long stint with Radio 4’s Last Word has involved him in all aspects of documentary feature production, including research, interviewing and editing. An obituary is a record of someone’s life and he often has to make the difficult decision as to how much time to allocate to each of the 4/5 subjects each week.
We were able to listen to extracts from some of the features he has produced and our final treat was a snippet from Neil’s favourite feature – a piece about Mick Murphy aka ‘The Ironman’, the cyclist from Co. Kerry who won the Ras Tailteann, the Irish equivalent to the Tour de France, in 1958. Murphy died in 2015 aged 81 but the loquatious interviewer knew him well and he regaled us in Irish brogue about the mile-a-minute Murphy, who trained by eating raw meat, drinking cow’s blood and lifting concrete weights which he had made himself!
We thoroughly enjoyed Neil’s many anecdotes, delivered with humour and discretion. Our thanks to him for a wonderful evening and to our colleague Kate for arranging and hosting the event.