The passing of a good man

November 14, 2022, 4:22 pm , by Richard Lutz

Richard Lutz pays tribute to a guiding light

It’s a given that, as you enter an eighth decade, the people around you die.  This past fortnight, a friend and mentor John Mapplebeck passed away. He was 86.

His professional life was dedicated to reporting on the world around him. He began with The Guardian’s Manchester newsroom and then as a noted tv producer leading a BBC team centred in Newcastle. The job offered accolades, awards and, vitally, alot of politically charged respect. Latterly, he worked with friend and colleague Melvyn Bragg at both The South Bank Show and on other joint projects. 

Like any good journalist, John always had a kernel of an idea to nurture, a seed of a programme to husband. He always seemed to have a project at hand, to be researched, to be developed.

But above all, John, who leaves four grown children and seven grandchildren, was a kind man, who offered advice gently but firmly. He allowed younger staff to grow, experiment, sometimes falter but always given the leeway to learn. I was one of them- he guided me through early documentaries I made as I entered broadcast journalism. 

It happened like this: while on a newspaper, I simply came up with an idea and he agreed it, working on the premise that some people will take Yes for an answer, grab an opportunity and then let rip.

He helped me in this fledgling career. And later he proved a valuable friend over the decades as we both aged and raised families. 

The softer side of John was evident, I found, around children. He was good with them, a little bit of Yorkshire bluff but gentle and blessed with a deep guffawing laugh that would end with an old fashioned slap on the knee and the shaking of a head crowned with an aureole of curly hair.

I still remember him stepping in quickly to babysit a long time ago for one of our little sons when something suddenly arose. As we scurried home on Newcastle’s main streets, I saw my boy, a tiny speck of blond locks, across the busy road propped on John’s shoulders, merrily shlurping his way through a dripping ice cream cone. The little lad was blissfully happy as the executive producer of the BBC’s documentary team ferried him around. My wife and I left both of them to it. 

Interestingly, though he put his stamp on cultural and political tv films, John always felt radio was the purest of media. ‘It’s all about the human voice.’ he’d say in his own warm baritone. Tell a story, he believed, and let the listener come up with the rest. There were no visuals to tarnish or compromise the power of the spoken word. His time in radio was, John wrote, ‘… the happiest and most fulfilling years of my working life.’

A hesitating time, a needed time…

Contemporaries close to me, such as John, are now beginning to fall away. It is late autumn in many friends’ lives. A problem is how to handle such things in a digital age.

For instance, a death pre-online was daunting enough, replete with grief, loss and sadness. But final. Now there’s the footnote of social media. Group lists, whether for business or pleasure, are to be re edited taking into account those we have lost. Alterations can seem so perfunctory, such a small task. But important. To leave a name of a person who has died on an email chain seems…well, I’m not too sure what it seems or means.

But it is unsettling to send out a message to a friend or family member who has passed away. I think of K with her robust opinions; J with his unending volunteer work; E with an outrageous sense of humour; M with his love of medical research; A who despite a disability carried a happy heart; and, AR with that commitment to help the marginalised.

This roll out of those who have gone, who need to be regretfully taken off a platform, is growing. Sadly, we are learning there is a time, a hesitating but needed time, to say goodbye, to recognise a loss. And soon I will have to deal with the passing of John. But not yet. Not yet….