PEOPLE
PEOPLE
returns tt;:i the manor born F-*
Lawrence of A-radio LONG-TIME FCC member and journalist Anthony Lawrence sits under a tree while holidaying in Ischia, Italy, in 1972, and looking remarkably just as he does today. Not bad for someone who has been through most of the world's troublespots since World War II as a BBC correspondent.
These days, Anthony is a freelance writer and occasional broadcaster, who can frequently be heard intervening in Hong Kong talkback radio programmes, giving freely his views on current events and invariably intelligently and some of the more pompous contributors.
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Earlier this year he helped produce a BBC documentary on Hong Kong
Carried away by emotion during a return to his childhood rural homeland in the Harz Mountains of Central Germany.
(Ilandelsbktt correspondent in the Far East) went back to his homeland recently, there was much talk by barkers, economists and planners about how to fit together the newly-unified parts of Germary.
TWO FCC teams took part in the gruelling 100kilometre Maclæhose Trail
charity trek organised earlier this month by the Hong Kong Bank, Queen's Gurkha Signals and ùdam. Between them, they raised HK$40,000 in sponsorship for flteir marathon slog across sgme pf the colony's most rugged terrain. FCC members Rob Grinter and Nicholas Fell (Ric-
hards Butler) teamed with Linda Winsper (Newbridge
Networks Ltd) and Steve Rogers (Sassoon Securities
Ltd) to form one group.
The other cornprised FCC member Barbara Waters (InfoAsia) with Ong
Hock-chuan (Hong Kong Foundation Ltd), Phil Naybour (Unysis) and Anthony Espina.
Grinter's squad was on target to complete the
Íek
within 24 hours until, after 30 kilometres, Rogers silent-
ly
disappeared
into
the
night and Grinter separated
from the other two to go in search of him.
Fell and Winsper press-
ed on to romp over the finishing line in the highly creditable time of 23.5 hours, beating last year's
26-hour FCC record. Grinter
finally made it in 32 hours, having reported Rogers as missing in action. The absent walker was, apparently, tucked up in a warm bed by that time. Waters' team also split up after 30 kilometres because of the members'
different walking
speeds.
Waters and Ong succumbed to the rigours of the trail, intensified by a deluge of rain, and jointly threw in the towel at the threequarters mark.
Naybour and Espina trudged on and finished
in something over 30 hours. I separately
10 THE CORRESPONDENT NOVEMBER 1990
One major problem stemming development, visiting Asian reporters were told, was the thorny knot of land ownership. Because communist rulers confiscated much private land and property in 1949 and original owners had now turned up to claim it back, there was a huge legal
jumble over who owned what. Seidlitz didn't have too much of a challenge grasping the intricacies of the dilemma; one of the stops en route through the devastated former East Germany went through the scenic Harz Mountains. And it was just a couple of miles from the barbed wire barricades that divided Germany for 40 years that the Seidlitz family farm was located. In 1945, the area was occupied by American troops. But when the Potsdam agreement drew the lines of the occupation zones, the Seidlitz family found themselves a couple of kilometres within the Russian zone. "Just my luck, " Seidlitz said over a dish of roast venison and a bottle or so of Mosel wine in the tourist centre of Harzhttrg, which was fortunate enough to end up on the west side of the wire. Now, Seidlitz and his relatives have lodged claims to get back the family textile plant which has been used as a centre for semi-official trade unions ald government bureaux. The week-long familiarisation tour of Germany took in I-eipzig, Dresden and Magdeburg, all ancient cultural and industrial centres that over the long decades of communist rule have turned into appalling polluted slums.
Organised by Singapore Airlines to mark their icebreaking inaugural flight from Singapore to the newlyunified Berlin, the press part-v included senior journalists from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. Among the group was the highly-respected deputyforeþ editor of
Mainichi Shurnbun, Kenji
Suzuki.
just keeping his hand in.
Anthony was featured on the front page of Britain's best-
hen FCC Board member Peter Seidlitz
Trailbl azers raise HK$+0,000
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r
selling publication, T'ke Radio Tinces, in October 1972 when the BBC produced a special issue on some of its most successfui correspondents. He was a regular star of the one of a few immediately identiairwaves in those days fiable voices of radio, sending immaculately-researched
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and delightfully-scripted items for the respected "Our Own Correspondent" programme.
IntheRadio Times articlehe was quoted
as
confessing that
he hated the "hard news assignments and much preferred
the challenge of radio features distilled from the chance conversation, an affanged chat over dinner, obser-ving loca1 people, absorbing local colour and analysing events.
(un)Identified Drinking Object IT WAS "chocks away" at the Wycombe Air Centre in Britain's Buckinghamshire recentþ when the genial
after^noon in the best tradi-
tions of the FCC.
Among those present was former club steward Liz Eckersley, whose
host of the Red Baron'hostelry presided over an trCC
yices from 1970
reunlon.
earned her honourary life
A mellow Udo Nesch, fomer CBS cameraman and enfant tet'rible
of
the
14th and 15th floors of Sutherland House, has been drawing the ale at his Red
Baron pub for four years.
No
casualties have been repoited so far. Organised by Chris Minter, recently appointed asso-
ciate dirctor
of media re-
search for Readers Digest, several members and Í:iends enjoyed a ltrnch and a boozy
to
ser-
7978
membership.
Udo is fighting fit and welcomes visits from past and presents members of the FCC.
He was recentþ offered a cameraman's job with the
74th American Airborne Division serving in the Golf. Drinkers throughout the UK heaved a sig-h of relief and ordered another round
when they heard he had declined the offer.
THE CORRESPONDENT NOVEN'TBER 1990
1T