Broadcaster
Born: August 8, 1958;
Died: February 20, 2017
STEVE Hewlett, who has died aged 58, was a popular broadcaster and editor who was in charge of the BBC's Panorama programme when it broadcast the famous interview with Princess Diana that was watched by 23million people in 1995. More recently, Hewlett had attracted a new audience with moving appearances on Radio 4's PM programme in which he candidly discussed his terminal cancer.
While he was best known to the public for his TV appearances and presence on the radio, he had a long career behind the scenes as an award-winning editor and respected producer. He worked as director of programmes at Carlton TV, now Channel 4, and produced high-profile programmes including Diverse Reports, Second World War in Colour and an award-winning 1991 BBC documentary from the Maze prison.
Born in Birmingham in 1958, he was adopted from a children's home as a baby by parents Larry and Vera and once said that he had "lucked out". He also listed a string of lucky events that shaped his career, starting with his first work in TV, when he was hired by Panorama as a freelancer in Manchester to track down two men involved with a crime.
His luck almost ran out in the mid-1980s though when his BBC contract was terminated after his radical politics as a student were detected.
In 1985, his evidence to Observer journalists David Leigh and Paul Lashmar helped reveal the processes by which MI5 once vetted corporation staff.
Afterwards he turned down a contract at the BBC and took a production role on The Friday Alternative and Brass Tacks, before joining Carlton and then returning to the BBC.
He became host of Radio 4's The Media Show in 2008, where he took a brisk approach to interviewing media executives, and later recorded a series of candid radio interviews with Eddie Mair, the presenter of Radio 4's PM, about his diagnosis with cancer of the oesophagus in March last year, and wrote a diary of his experiences for The Guardian.
He told Mair: "I'm a journalist and a storyteller and I regard my condition as a bit of a story."
He added: "I don't feel my life has been snatched away from me. I don't know if that is odd or unusual or just me.
"I feel I've had a pretty good run of it. I don't want less, I want more. I do want to see what happens with my kids. I do want to see the next stages in their lives and it's quite upsetting when you stop to think about it, but am I weighed down by the thought? I don't feel that I am."
Lord Hall, the BBC's director Ggneral, paid tribute, describing Hewlett as an exceptional journalist. He said: "His analysis of the media industry was always essential listening. Steve was a trusted voice that embodied everything positive in public service journalism. He was hugely popular not just with viewers and listeners, but with BBC staff.
"When I saw him last week, I told him how much I have admired his brave interviews with Eddie Mair about his treatment which he did with a candour and sense of inquiry that was typically Steve."
The BBC presenter and journalist recently revealed that he had married his partner Rachel in hospital after being told he only had weeks to live.
The wedding was organised in the space of an hour after learning the treatment he was receiving for cancer could not continue and was attended by his ex-partner Carol and his sons Freddie, Billie and Bertie.
Since his cancer diagnosis, Hewlett openly discussed his experience of coping with the disease and its treatment through his interviews with Mair and also in his cancer diaries for The Observer.
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