John Simpson Fern Britton Meets...

Just over 40 years ago, a young BBC reporter came here to Dublin.

It was 1972 and much of the job involved reporting

on the conflict in the north of Ireland, known as the Troubles.

The correspondent was in his mid-20s when he arrived here.

But it was to mark the start of a career that took him

to the front lines of conflicts and revolutions around the globe.

As the brothers left the dock, after receiving the heaviest

sentences imposed for armed robbery in Ireland since the war...

For the next four decades, John Simpson became the trusted

face of BBC reports on events that shaped our world.

What seems to be happening is that there's a sniper

just above our heads.

If he wants to do something, he will do it

and there's not much, especially not BBC bosses, who will stop him.

John Simpson was there when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square,

when the wall fell in Berlin,

when apartheid ended in South Africa,

and when war broke out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's amazing the company you keep on trips like this, you know?

From controversial politicians to dictators,

he's interviewed countless world leaders.

I've been physically assaulted by the Prime Minister of the country

and I was going to lose my job.

All of this has brought a clutch of awards.

There's an International Emmy, two BAFTAs, Journalist of the Year -

twice, and for his coverage of the First Gulf War, a CBE.

But working on the front line has inevitably brought its risks.

EXPLOSION

In Iraq, in 2003, John's television crew were caught up

in a so-called friendly fire attack.

EXPLOSION

They dropped a thousand-pound bomb right bang slap

in the middle of our position.

'This is just a scene from hell here, all the vehicles on fire...'

He was left deaf in one ear.

His translator lost his life.

Losing that young man was a dreadful thing for John.

I don't think he's ever got over it and I don't think he ever will.

John has witnessed the extremes of human existence.

From moments of intense joy...

to terrible suffering.

He has spent his journalistic career trying to find out

what is happening around the world.

At the age of 69, he's still working and has a new young family.

I don't want him growing up not knowing about religion.

Despite all he's seen, John has hung on to his faith in God.

I want to find out how he squares his faith with some of the terrible

suffering he's witnessed and whether that faith has helped when, for the

sake of a story, he finds himself in very frightening situations.

And how a front row seat at some of the biggest global events

over the past half a century has shaped his personal belief in God.

John Cody Fidler-Simpson was born near Blackpool in 1944.

His family had moved away from their London home to avoid

the bombing of World War II.

Returning south after the war, John's father, Roy, had many jobs,

but he couldn't settle.

His father had, very much, an up and down life.

Selling property, buying property, making money, losing money.

And John was used to, I think,

moving from one part of the world literally to another.

John's mother, Joyce, was a widow who already had two older children.

She was a very pleasant woman,

but she was very sort of... She was older than John's father.

I met his mother, who seemed a quiet,

perhaps - this is in retrospect -

perhaps slightly sad, I am not sure.

But certainly a quiet, rather dignified person, I remember that.

His parents had a troubled relationship

and Joyce sometimes left to live with her older children.

So tell me about your parents cos they were an interesting pair.

Your mother was widowed quite young with her first husband.

That's right.

My mother had two quite a lot older children by her first marriage.

My father didn't like her kids. My father was a very difficult man,

no doubt about it. My mother was a very gentle lady.

Very, very gentle and sweet natured.

My father was always quick-tempered, bright and sharp.

The kind of man, when he came into the room...

I mean, I envy that so much, I wish I had that quality.

..that everybody stops talking they all turn round, "Oh, it's Roy.

"Roy has arrived." You know, he was the absolute heart

and soul of every group that he was in.

And I think my mother found him quite difficult.

In what sense?

Short tempered, absolutely dead set in his ways,

and couldn't, you know...

He had to have the windows open every day of the year,

and if you so much as suggested it was, you know,

getting slightly down below freezing in the room,

he'd go crazy.

Let us open our service by singing hymn number 81.

John's father became interested in Christian Science,

a movement popular with the middle classes in 1950s London.

It was founded in the 19th century by the American Mary Baker Eddy.

Based on her reading of the Bible, Mary wrote about spiritual,

prayer-based healing.

Both the Bible and her writings are studied by followers.

They were heard by John each Sunday

when he was taken to church by his father.

He was the person who brought faith into your life,

but as most parents would perhaps be Protestant or Baptist or

Catholic, or whatever it is, he was Christian Science.

Well, he was, he couldn't bear the Establishment,

he loathed the Church of England and the Catholic Church.

He thought they were both abominations.

Also, he hated other aspects of the Establishment.

He couldn't bear doctors - loathed doctors.

So when he came across an American religion

which taught you that you didn't need to go to doctors

and take medicine

and which allowed you to think for yourself -

where it was up to you to change your life, he adored it.

So Christian Science at that time meant that you did believe

in God but that you didn't like the doctor, didn't need the doctor...

Didn't need the doctor, I think you could say, yes.

You could cure yourself with faith.

-By thinking, yes, by thought.

-Thinking yourself better.

-Yes.

No drink, no cigarettes, what else?

It really played to the intellect.

It encouraged you to think.

I mean, every Sunday we would go to church and they'd read

from the Christian Science text book and the Bible and for a kid of my

age to sit there and listen to these long, long words

and concepts, it of course enriched my vocabulary

and my ideas of the world, hugely.

But that's where your faith grew and God became important to you.

Well, I think I never, after that...

had any doubt that...

there was a God,

I mean, I have seen a lot of things in my life that might incline me

to my mother's view that there couldn't possibly be a God

which created a world as hellish as this one,

but weirdly, the Christian Science God is a God of kind of

principle, of love, of spirit,

sort of immaterial qualities, not a physical God

that sits there and thinks "that John Simpson needs a bit of lesson."

Bingo, and then you have a car crash or something like that.

Not that kind of thing at all.

John's world was turned upside down at a young age.

When he was just seven, his parents' marriage ended.

In the middle of one last row, they made John choose between them.

My mother was sitting on the stairs with her bags packed and said,

"I'm leaving, I have thought about it, and I am leaving",

and my father said

"Well, don't you think we ought to ask the boy what he thinks?"

And I was a serious-minded kid, I didn't take things lightly,

and so when they both turned round at me and said,

"What do you want to do? Do you want to stay or do you want to go?"

Erm, I thought, you know, I've got to really work this one out,

and I remember standing there for a bit and then saying "Well, I...

"I think I'd better stay with Daddy because he hasn't got any kids."

To his great credit he didn't say, "No, no, no, you must go with Mum."

He said "OK," and he did take you on.

Yes, but I don't know whether he really...

I think... I don't know.

He did adore me. I now realise, you know, through all

the sort of irritation - "Come on, for God's sake, we're late"

and all this kind of stuff, I realise how much he loved me so...

-Your mother must have adored you...

-Oh, yes.

..and heartbreak for you to choose your father over her.

Awful, and that...

I've also always thought that the

kind of mutual guilt on her part for walking away

from her child, and on my part for choosing against her, as it were,

that it just made the possibility of a close relationship

almost null and void.

John was now the only son of a single parent father.

It was a highly unusual setup for 1950s Britain.

Together with Brian Brooks, his dad's business partner,

they found an old house in Dunwich, in Suffolk.

It had originally been an enormous country house on the coast,

sort of looking straight out to sea.

It was one very big house

made into three houses and we had one part of it.

But the whole venture was totally impractical from start to finish.

What on earth they were doing?!

It was five hours' drive from London,

where both of them had their business activities.

I think it was just that we all fell in love with this gorgeous,

mad, gorgeous house.

Having seen a photograph, I can understand why.

John was a hard-working boy who would often retreat to his books.

He really needed to get away from his father's personality.

So what he used to do was sort of go into another room,

without saying anything, and sort of sit and read a book.

And I've often thought, you know, as life's gone by, what a sensible

way that was of dealing with somebody that was very close

to you and yet was a character as well.

John's studies paid dividends.

He won a place at the prestigious St Paul's School in London.

And then, in 1963, to Cambridge University to read English.

We went to a rather snobby college at that time -

Magdalene College, Cambridge.

We had one very large rectangular room

which was called A1, First Court, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

So we used to call it the classiest address in Western civilisation.

Separate bedrooms, obviously, but this one long room

in which we arranged to play cricket using the table

as a place to bounce the ball.

Crazy student pranks and things.

But in many ways John wasn't a typical student.

The '60s were about to swing but this wasn't really his scene.

I remember, I think it was in my room,

surrounded by our new friends at that point, that John started

talking about being a Christian Scientist.

I just remember making the obvious point, as did my friends,

"Well, if you fall off a tree, and you break your leg,

"don't you call a doctor?"

And we couldn't understand that, and John was very patient

about it, and from that moment on I think it was just understood.

My landlord said to me... I hurt myself and for some reason I went

to see him and he was a doctor and he was messing around with my wrist.

And I went "Ow!", like that,

and he said "Oh, you feel pain easily, do you?"

Didn't you say, actually, "I don't believe in doctors"

because you still had that Christian Science belief, didn't you?

Oh, yes, I did, yes, yes. Erm, I didn't actually.

Possibly because I thought he might tweak it again, you know.

So, occasionally, you did see a doctor, but on the other hand...

Well, in that case.

Yes, but as a student, and they were all drinking and smoking

-and carousing, you didn't do any of that?

-I didn't. No, I didn't.

Erm...

The thing is about being a Christian Scientist,

about being the son of, essentially, a one-parent family,

of having this funny sort of background,

I always felt a real outsider, and the business of not smoking,

not drinking, not going to doctors, all that kind of stuff, really

reinforced that in a way -

that sense of being outside

and kind of looking in at everybody else through a window

and not wanting to join the group.

I don't want to go along with the... with the crowd.

The summer before he had gone to Cambridge, John spent in America.

He met a young artist there, Diane, at a Christian Science conference.

My dad was a very good-looking bloke and because he had a British accent

and my mother was from California so I think everyone was kind of...

"I love your accent", and so this was when the Beatles were really

big as well, so I think there was a lot of excitement about my dad.

For two years, John and Diane conducted

a long-distance relationship.

But by John's third year at Cambridge, they had decided to marry.

The other sense of you being maybe, feeling on the outside at Cambridge

was because you had already met the woman you wanted to marry.

And you married her while you were still a student.

Why did I get married? Well, partly - oh, dear - because the master

of my college said to me "Now, I really feel, and the college

"also believes that you would make a great mistake to get married".

So I thought, "Right, that's it. I am going!"

Very stupid! Because here am I

saying I don't like taking my views from other people

but then, in a sense, that is what you are doing,

you are taking the reverse

of their views simply because they express it.

So very silly, but on the other hand, it was a lovely time

-and we were very happy.

-You had fallen in love.

And I had fallen very deeply in love and we had a lovely, lovely time.

After Cambridge, John joined the BBC.

On the 1st of September 1966, he began his career in journalism

as a sub-editor in the radio newsroom.

But it wasn't a particularly welcoming place

for inexperienced graduates.

Oh, he hated working in the radio newsroom, yeah.

I don't think he was very good at it because it meant

he was a sub, a sub-editor,

and it meant sort of...

It was like marking exam papers almost, you know.

You'd make corrections to copy that had come in.

It was tough in those days

because lots of people were from Fleet Street,

and they were determined to prove that these fancy graduates,

people like John and people like me, would not be able to succeed.

Can you remember your first day in the BBC newsroom?

Yeah. It was awful!

-I remember my first day and it was awful.

-Was it awful?

-Absolutely horrible.

-Were they nasty to you?

-Yes.

I have been in the BBC for 46 years.

I think it still makes me angry and when I spot the kind

of people that tormented me when I was a very, very young sub-editor.

I loathe them, and I don't want to have anything to do with them.

But in those days as well, I mean, I look back quite fondly

to those moments when the clack of typewriters is going constantly,

when suddenly there'd be a literal physical fight.

The testosterone in the newsroom was huge.

And reporters would be bashing each other

and if you stood up, it was to stand up into a fog of cigarette smoke

-so you'd have to duck down to see anybody.

-Absolutely!

And in a way, I look back, although I was terrified at the time,

with some kind of badge of honour to think we did that.

I think it's a badge of honour to have survived it.

The system was kind of intentionally out to beat us,

I feel, beat us down and to be able to stand up against that is...

I am quite proud of it.

Undeterred by the old attitudes, John found his own way of forging

a career at the BBC.

He was an extraordinary character cos he gave the impression,

the false impression, that he shouldn't really be

employed at all by the BBC, let alone as a BBC reporter.

And this was John's self-deprecating way of just being charming

and not giving the impression how hard he worked

and how ambitious he was.

But John hid his competitiveness

by pretending that he really shouldn't be there at all.

So by 1970, John, you have graduated from sub-editor to

reporter and your first assignment is to go and see Harold Wilson.

I was sent down to platform seven at Euston Station.

I can take you to the precise place where it happened.

Harold Wilson comes down the platform

and it had been allowed to be known that there was going to be

an election called but nobody had said anything.

And so I went up to him

and I said, "Excuse me, Prime Minister, I just wondered,

"there's been a lot of stuff in the papers about the possibility of you

"calling an election. Are you going to do it?"

Except that I didn't get that far.

In fact, I only got as far as saying, "Excuse me, Prime..."

Harold Wilson exploded with rage, grabbed the microphone, tried

to break it out of my hand, and with his right, punched me

really quite hard in the stomach.

He said this was an outrage

and he was going to put in a personal complaint

to the director general when he got to Liverpool.

And...that was it.

I was left sort of standing there, breathless of course,

still hunched over.

He's on the train, people are saying to me,

"You can't ask the Prime Minister a question, sonny!"

I looked at my watch - it was 9.50,

it was my first day out as a reporter.

I had been physically assaulted by the Prime Minister of the country

and I was going to lose my job by about 1.30 when he got to a phone.

Actually, I went back and waited very, very nervously

and nothing happened!

That was my first day. All I can say is it's gone downhill ever since!

In fact, John's career was just getting under way.

In 1972 he got his first posting as a correspondent -

reporting on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

At first sight, the story that came out today in court was

a bizarre one involving as it did the IRA,

the British Secret Service and a secret meeting with a British

government minister.

But it was a steep learning curve.

He and fellow reporter John Sergeant were travelling in the same car

when they were kidnapped by a member of the IRA.

I was terrified and the guy drove the car at about 80mph

into the Bogside.

We were dumped - all they wanted was the car.

They wanted our car, a hired car. It had done 400 miles, that's all.

And so we were told to get out. We then got out

and John, cool as could be, really cool, said, "Erm, do you think

"we could get our tape recorders out of the back of the car?"

Just like that.

On another occasion, John was sent to report on an IRA funeral.

But he was mistaken for a British Army spy.

I have always been a bit dopey about some things.

In particular, I am never good, I suppose because I don't like it,

at carrying identification.

I never remember to bring my passport anywhere

and never remember to have my BBC identification

or anything and it's still true all these decades later,

and it was true then, and this group gathered round afterwards.

IRA men?

It was obvious they weren't quite certain what to do with me

until a girl, rather nice-looking girl of about 25,

said "Give him a bullet up the nostril",

which was how they killed people - sort of stuck a gun up the nose.

What goes through your mind when someone says that to you?

I know it sounds stupid, I just got this utter...

I am not quite sure what went through my mind then

but I have known it since.

That kind of thing has happened to me various times.

Erm... I got this tremendous faith in my ability

to talk my way out of things.

And I didn't then, it wasn't...

I was saved and rescued by a wonderful older reporter

from the Sunday Times who came over to me in a very sort of grand

and calm way and said, "Oh, is there some problem, John?

I mean, yeah, there was, I was just about to be murdered.

And he said, "Oh, no, Mr Simpson comes from the BBC.

"Of course, we all know that," and they

knew him, and they let me go and that was fine.

With security along the border now one of the republic's main considerations,

there's a constant search for better ways of patrolling it.

After three years building up experience in Ireland,

John's skill and confidence grew.

He began to be sent to report on other parts of the world.

The political initiative now lies totally with the Ayatollah.

Now that he's back, he'll very soon announce

the establishment of a government of his own.

In 1979 he boarded a plane with the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini,

returning to lead the Iranian revolution.

There had been several threats that Khomeini's plane would be destroyed

and when it reached Tehran, it had to circle overhead for 20 minutes.

BBC bosses had told John not to board the plane.

If he wants to do something, he will do it

and there's not much, especially not BBC bosses, who will stop him.

I mean, if a BBC boss says to John

"Under no account must you do that or go there",

then it's like ordering him to do it.

The great reporter is the person who,

when everyone is going one way, particularly if they are put

onto a bus, if a reporter is put onto a bus, just watch the reporter

who tricks the organisers and leaves on a motorbike

or goes the other way. That's the great reporter.

So there is an element with John,

a rather sort of individualistic, "I do it my way, I want to get

"this done, I want to tell the story

"in the way I want to tell the story".

That makes a great reporter and that's why he is such a good one.

I've actually always been of the opinion that

things are never as dangerous as they seem on the outside and often

erm, that is...

Well, I mean, it pretty much always is the case.

There's not very many things I wouldn't do.

I mean, there are some things

that are obviously just kind of an elaborate way of committing suicide.

And I wouldn't do that. I don't feel at all suicidal.

I have got a lot to live for, even now at my age,

but I always feel and so far, just about, I have been proven right,

that you can get away with much more than you think.

Here in the streets, the demonstrators are having

everything their own way.

This was once one of the two or three biggest police

stations in Tehran.

Last September I, myself, was held here for some time after

being arrested for filming in the streets.

As John reported from some of the most dangerous

places in the world, back at home, his wife Diane

and their two young daughters could only watch on TV.

I always used to admire her for being so balanced about it

because she had certain times when he was there all the time,

and then sort of five minutes later he'd departed.

And she always seemed to be tremendously philosophical about it.

I think it was just quite hard for my mother, who was at home

with us and doing the school run and all that kind of malarkey.

It's just hard if you are not in the same building for a significant

part of each year, I would say. It has a profound effect.

The stress of knowing that your husband is walking

out of the door and he may not come back is fearful,

it doesn't lead to a happy home life.

Then, in 1980, John received devastating news.

His father had died, suddenly, of a massive heart attack.

I think his death had a totally seismic effect on my father.

I think he rang me up to tell me that his father had died and...

Well, I suppose it was very much the end of an era, really.

At the same time, John's career took an unexpected turn.

Good evening.

The effort to avoid a shooting war in the Falklands is

now in its crucial phase.

During a brief, unhappy spell as political editor,

he'd heard that the BBC wanted trained journalists rather than

presenters to read the Nine O'Clock News.

He successfully lobbied for the job alongside John Humphrys.

The audience hated us and the critics hated us even more

because we were taking over from much-loved figures

like Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall and so on,

people who'd been reading the news for donkey's years.

They were part of the nation's consciousness

and it wasn't an entirely happy experience,

let's put it like that.

John Simpson lasted as a newsreader for about a year

before he was sent back out on the road as a correspondent.

These were difficult times. In 1983, his mother died.

He had seen her only a handful of times since the day she left.

And then, in 1984, he walked out of his marriage to Diane.

It was awful but I can't say it's a massive surprise.

I think it's hard for anybody. Even with Skype and all these kind of

things, I still think long-distance relationships are difficult.

John threw himself into work.

In 1988, he was appointed BBC World Affairs Editor.

It was a time of significant change.

The Soviet Union was collapsing

and John spent the next year reporting on landmark events

around the globe.

We know there are trucks

and perhaps tanks in that direction down there, away from the square.

We know that there are trucks

and probably tanks that direction also.

What we don't know is when

they are going to come but everybody here assumes it's going to be soon.

From Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall...

and he again defied his bosses.

GUNFIRE

In 1991, he chose to stay in Baghdad during the First Gulf War.

At the moment, we're waiting for the American bombers to come.

All the firing that's going on, and there's a great deal of it,

is just pretty wildly up in the air,

it doesn't seem to be aimed at anything.

GUNFIRE

Mr John Simpson, Foreign Affairs Editor,

British Broadcasting Corporation.

He was awarded a CBE for his reporting

and named Journalist of the Year.

A BAFTA followed in 1992.

John had built a reputation that opened doors.

He gained access to leading controversial figures.

Do you believe that Britain has intended to assassinate you?

Of course, it is true.

Then you get to the point where you're sitting in front of somebody

who is one of these mad dictators, creating untold violence

and heartache in the world, evil. How do you approach them?

Do you go in thinking "I will charm them"

or "I am so angry I am going to get aggressive"?

Or do you get the cool professionalism?

You just have to bear in mind all the time, that there is a

sense that a proper moral judgment has to be made.

You have to bring them face-to-face with what they have done

and that is not always very nice and easy to do.

When you are in the presence of people who you know are evil,

do you feel that evil in the room? Can you see it in them?

My experience is that people who have done these terrible things

are mostly boringly banal.

There are very, very few who you feel are evil

in the sense that everything they do is wicked,

is planned out to be vicious and cruel.

It's actually, I would say, most people find themselves

in these positions.

Their background, the history, the country, everything

else puts them in a position where they start to do really bad things.

Early this morning, up on the Serbian positions overlooking

Sarajevo, the ceasefire was already in operation.

If the past is anything to go by, this ceasefire, assuming

that it is agreed in the first place,

is by no means certain to succeed.

By now, many of John's colleagues were hanging up their flak jackets.

But after two decades as a foreign correspondent,

John showed no signs of retreating from the front line.

Why do people, like me, after ten years, think "That is it"?

"I want to run and run, I don't want to hear another bang.

"I do not want to hear shouts of 'incoming'.

"I would like to be at Westminster

"where you get these amazing stories but nobody dies.

"I don't want to have people in the Middle East dying around me

"or being shot at".

So, the key question for John is why did he go on?

He was due to go off again to one of those Iraq moments,

and I did say to him, "Do you really feel it's wise to go back there?"

And he made light of it.

He just said, "The story continues."

Nothing that the BBC does, in its huge news division, matters

unless it's based on good, solid, accurate reporting.

I know that what John believes is you find out

what's happening, you interpret it of course, you use

your experience and your authority to put it into context,

but you can't do any of that unless you have found out

what is happening.

That can often be a very dangerous business.

And why we owe a debt of gratitude to John is that he has

spent his journalistic career trying to find out what is

happening around the world.

Christmas Eve at the Catholic cathedral here.

The newly appointed cardinal told the congregation that people

could only rely on God for peace - there was no-one else to turn to.

John Simpson, BBC News, Sarajevo.

John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, columnist,

author and household name.

But somewhere down the years, as John built his reputation

as a trusted journalist, the faith that had helped define him

since childhood started to take a back seat.

In most people's lives they perhaps grow up in a faith

because that is the way their family have shown them.

You start to sort of...

It fades a little, like a radio station, it starts to fade away.

It certainly did fade away, yes.

Certainly, I felt I wasn't erm... I wasn't up to the kind of moral...

level that I ought to be at, and so, therefore, what do you do

if you are in an outfit where you are not sort of following

the rules any more?

Well, the best thing to do is to sort of quietly,

you know, head for the exit.

In 1994, John travelled to South Africa.

He was there to cover the election that would decide the future

of a country on the edge of chaos because of its history of apartheid.

The atmosphere in South Africa in 1994 was one of great uncertainty.

We didn't know if law and order as we'd known it would break down

entirely, if there'd be mob rule, how things were going to go.

It was an unforgettable, fantastic, frenzied,

difficult and emotional time.

The election was won by Nelson Mandela.

Apartheid was at an end.

There can't be many people up there on the balcony or down here

in the crowds who could've expected that all this would happen peacefully.

We know that you will lead us out of oppression and injustice.

A key player in the victory had been

a man who not only stood for equality and reform

but was also a leading advocate for the Christian faith.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu left a deep impression on John.

We are the rainbow people of God.

John has seen the Anglican Church at its very best.

We are free!

He thinks the light shines from Desmond Tutu.

He loves him...

..as somebody who isn't just religious

but also practical and also, funny

and also human, warm...

In fact, rather like John in so many ways.

The miracle of South Africa was just...

Well, it's generation-changing, world-changing, everything-changing.

How did that effect your faith? Was your faith on the wane then

and started to wax?

Well, it had been on the wane for a long time but maybe it did

as a result of that.

I used to regard it as a sort of Anglican miracle

what had happened there.

So much, erm, was based in the Christian faith

and particularly because, you know, of Tutu and the others,

a particularly sort of Anglican miracle.

Gatsha Buthelezi, the head of the Inkatha movement,

which was having, effectively, a civil war with the ANC,

stormed out of a meeting before the election happened

to go back and say to his people,

"That's it, I have failed to secure peace, you've got to arm yourself."

Halfway there in the plane, he had a conversion.

He turned the plane around, ordered the pilot to turn

the plane around, and went back, had to go in. Can you imagine how

awkward that would be? Don't think I'd like to do it.

He had to go into the room where these people were still meeting,

the people he had stormed out from, and said "I have changed my mind."

I mean, when you've seen that, you don't forget it.

I started going to the old Church of England after that

cos it... I just thought if it can change people to that extent,

it's worth supporting.

And, you know, I have kind of stayed there ever since.

South Africa was also to produce another turning point for John.

It was here that he met his future wife.

Dee Kruger was a freelance TV producer, hired by the BBC

to work alongside John.

He came across to me

and he said to me "would you like a cup of tea?"

So I was a little bit taken aback by that because, you know,

in South Africa, in those days, blokes didn't make tea!

And it was only later that I realised, you know, this is

actually quite a big guy.

The best moment of my entire long and weird life

was when I met my wife who was given to me by the BBC!

I always feel it's a bit like...

The BBC have done a lot for you!

It's a little bit like, you know, a Japanese company

giving me my job, my title, they give me my this,

and they give me my wife.

It was lovely and that is where it all started.

John and Dee married and they continued to work together.

In 1999, John covered the Kosovo Crisis, opting to

stay on in the Serbian capital Belgrade after

journalists from NATO countries had been ordered to leave.

We've come from one of the countries which, only a few feet

above our head, is busy bombing Belgrade right at the moment.

It won him more awards but his reports haven't always

been so well received.

It was smugglers who took us into Afghanistan and it was the

smugglers who decreed that we should wear burkas, the all-enveloping

garment which the Taliban force every woman in Afghanistan to wear.

In 2001, his decision to secretly enter Afghanistan

dressed in a woman's burka earned him the scorn of the British press.

And they get the worst seats in the vehicle.

Later he was one of the first reporters to enter Kabul

after the fall of the Taliban.

This is it. We're walking into Kabul city.

We don't seem to have any problems around us, there's only people

who are friendly, and are saying, chanting, "Kill the Taliban."

But his decision to make a joke live on national radio

about liberating the city fell flat.

Now on the line from Kabul itself

is our World Affairs Editor, John Simpson.

John, if you can hear me, what's it like in Kabul this morning?

Well, Sue, I have to say I was the first or amongst the first

group of people and it was only BBC people who liberated the city.

John had done a job - a very, very, good job in Kabul.

He'd got in where lots of people didn't get in.

He was, as so often in the past, he was first with the story,

or one of the first with the story, and he told it well.

You've got to remember that for a lot of reporters,

lot of journalists, some of the things that John has done

have been so good and so impressive that people are bound to be annoyed.

That's inevitable. You get someone as good as John

and you are going to get an awful lot of people who will think up

little smart remarks as to why he's not quite as good as he seems.

He is good, he's a very good reporter,

and that just annoys a lot of people.

John's skill as a reporter was put to the test in 2003.

He was in Northern Iraq at the start of the push to topple

Saddam Hussein.

His crew joined a convoy of American and Kurdish special forces.

But they were mistaken for enemy troops

and became the target of so-called American friendly fire.

They dropped a thousand-pound bomb right bang

slap in the middle of our position, where we all were.

An amazing series of escapes.

I mean, my own, apart from anything else, because we paced it out -

there were only 12 yards from where the bomb actually dropped

but because of the angle it dropped at, most of the shrapnel

and the explosive went in a different direction from me.

I got quite a big bit of shrapnel in my side,

which, you know, was neither here nor there, really.

Bits all over my face but none in the eyes

and most of my colleagues had the same.

All around, men had been killed and wounded.

Yet within minutes of the attack and despite his injuries,

John filed a news story.

'This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles on fire.

'There's bodies burning around me, there's bodies lying around.'

I wasn't surprised to find that John was able to file at that moment.

I've seen John in some remarkable situations, do some pretty

amazing things, and react to camera and address the camera

in some pretty extraordinary situations.

One of the things I think that even I was surprised was

was just how fair he managed to be.

This is just one of those things that happens in war, I suppose.

These men have been going around saying I can't tell you what

I feel about this, but it has to be said if it hadn't been

for the medical aid that they gave us and our colleague who has been

badly injured, then we'd be in an even worse state

than we are already.

The moment it's gone off, the moment you've been blown off your feet,

the moment you realise that something is hurting,

you are on the satellite phone sending a report home to the BBC.

I suppose it sounds a bit nutty really, doesn't it?

Or a bit sort of... maybe just cold.

-Did you think, "I must make a phone call."

-Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely.

-So bam, straight there.

-Just as quick as I could get it.

Well, that's been the training.

By that stage, with the training of 30-odd years...

You know, I mean, something happens, you tell people about it...

And...that was that was my...

That was the only reason I was there.

I mean, I wasn't having a holiday. I mean, I was there to work.

And something happened that meant that I had some urgent work to do.

John's crew had hired a young Kurdish translator

called Kamaran to work with them.

He was a graduate keen to gain first-hand experience

with a reporting team.

But in the air strike, Kamaran was fatally wounded.

The hardest thing was that afternoon, John and myself

and one or two other people with us had to go and tell his family.

Losing that young man was a dreadful thing to John.

I don't think he's ever got over it and I don't think he ever will.

It really, that was something that,

that was just, you know, for me to sit here and say it moved him

deeply is... It just doesn't kind of describe properly, I don't think.

19 people were killed, including my lovely young translator.

I try as a kind of matter of duty to think about him every day,

so that we don't just lose him, you know,

"Oh, dear, he was just part of the collateral damage."

I try to remember him and his... And he was a sweet boy.

Did you see his parents?

Oh, I had to, I had to go round and tell his mother.

You told her.

The producer and I went round and he still had the...

Her son's blood on him, but he obviously didn't tell her that.

And the family, I went back again some months later to see them

and was welcomed as a sort of, you know, as a welcome guest,

I wasn't treated as though

I was the person that had lured him into his death

although I do feel I was, actually.

Well, you could say that about all the people who were there.

Yeah.

But he was there specifically because of me.

He was there because he had seen my reporting

and he wanted to help me and be with me.

It brings me to tears, you telling this story,

because I can see there's people around you dying,

and to watch somebody that you've been working with,

their life blood literally ebb from them.

But I've got the photograph of this dear kid that joined us.

And I just keep it where I can look at it every day if I can.

Because there's got to be a purpose behind going to these places.

If you just do it because it's flattering to the ego or something,

then that is worthless, it's worse than worthless.

It's contemptible.

But I feel I go to these places because there's

a purpose, and the purpose is to tell people back home what's happened.

I don't... I didn't in that case certainly,

I didn't want to be involved in the fighting and the bombing.

I would have done anything to keep us out of it if I'd known.

But once you're in there, you've got to do it right

and you've got to do it straight, and it's no good saying.

"I'm scared, I'm going home."

You've got to stick with it, I feel.

But when he got home, John found he couldn't shake the sense of guilt

over Kamaran's death.

When I heard that Kamaran had died,

I knew that John would take that very badly, which he did.

And for quite a long time after that, after he got back here,

we used to go to the pub

and have long talks about it. He was very upset about it.

But you did go and talk with a vicar?

I did.

Can I tell you what the problem was?

The problem was that each one of the people I was with

had had the most extraordinary escapes.

That you would say probably were...

Well, you could if you wanted to make a case up for it,

divine intervention.

Not my translator.

I had that whole sense of survival guilt.

Why should I be so lucky and he should be so unlucky?

Peter Elvy, just kind of talking it over with him,

made that sense of guilt go away.

He doesn't come to me in the night watches, you know,

and say, "You did this to me,"

which I think might have happened a bit if I hadn't got rid of that

sense of personal involvement, you know.

So we're heading out of Baghdad to the north now,

toward the Iraqi army base at Taji.

In the ten years since Iraq,

John has continued to report on world affairs.

He's a respected writer

and has published a number of books about his life.

And he became a father for the third time in 2006

when Dee gave birth to their son, Rafe.

He was just besotted with Rafe from the word go.

The bond between them is quite something.

You know, he's got his...

it's sort of a real little chip off the old block, I'm afraid,

and they have this fantastic relationship.

John has always been a bit soppy, to be honest.

There is that bit of him, he tries to present this image

of the hard, tough man but actually he's always been a bit soppy.

And he was nuts about his daughters.

But it was wonderful. He really, well, still is soppy about him.

John wants his son to learn about his faith,

and when he's not away working he takes Rafe to church.

They go to church as much as they can.

John loves history, and I think that's one of the key things

that he'd like Rafe to know, is to understand Britain's place

and where it all comes from,

and where the Anglican church comes from,

which I think would be his gift to Rafe.

And he'd love Rafe to have an affinity for it.

I don't want him growing up not knowing about religion.

I don't want him to think, "Oh, it's just a load of silly old people

"and they wear hats and they go into those buildings

"and something happens there that I don't care about, that doesn't

"have any relationship to me." I don't want that.

He can reject it, fine, that's his business,

but he must reject it from the basis of knowing about it,

not of ignorance.

And so many people now, it seems to me, don't understand

what it's all about.

It's just something they have not been exposed to,

so they don't understand what it is that they're not interested in.

John's faith is not just reserved for his time at home with Rafe.

REPORT: 'This is how we had to come into Iraq this time,

'hitching a lift on an RAF Hercules

'with the crew always on the alert for a missile attack.'

It's also a source of strength, as his work continues to take him

to some of the world's most challenging locations.

So when you are in the hotel room, knowing that you are about to

go out with the crew to do something very dangerous

and you have no idea what the outcome is going to be,

do you have a word with yourself, with God, with what,

before you go?

There's a psalm, I think it's Psalm 139.

I say it to myself more times than I can number.

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit

"And whither shall I flee from thy presence

"If I ascend up in heaven, thou art there

"If I make my bed in hell, thou art there

"If I take the wings of the morning

"And fly into the uttermost parts of the sea, even there

"Shall thy hand lead me and they right hand shall guide me."

I probably got the words slightly wrong.

And that's what I tell myself.

It comforts me, it makes me feel better.

I'm not just on my own, with the forces of chance

all sort of bashing me around

and then, of course, you go downstairs and you meet up

with the camera crew and you all start the usual business

of sort of jokey kind of banter

that takes you right through all of these things.

That's one of the great pleasures of television.

After a lifetime reporting from around the world,

John could now retire, but he has no plans to stop.

I actually did think that perhaps when Rafe arrived,

he would stop travelling a little bit,

but I was wrong about that.

Nothing is going to stop John travelling.

When you ask him, "Are you considering retiring?"

he gets really cross.

It so much defines who he is.

I can't imagine seeing him sort of saying,

"Well, now I'm going to Suffolk,"

his favourite place on the planet,

you know, "Hang up my boots and my flak jackets,

"and I'll just be watching the events on television."

I can't imagine him ever retiring and pottering about in the garden.

I just can't. That is never going to happen.

He's too...he just loves what he does, and that's good.

You want that in a parent.

Well, John, here we are, approaching Christmas.

You've spent many Christmases away from home and working

in unpleasant circumstances.

This Christmas, what are you up to?

I used to rather specialise

in spending Christmas in horrible places.

Once, I saw in a newspaper it said,

"We spent the traditional British Christmas - turkey, something else,

"Christmas pudding and watching John Simpson in some dreadful place!"

Now with a seven-year-old kid, I don't want to be ringing him up

and saying, "Have you opened all your presents?"

I want to be there.

And I, er...I haven't changed,

I am not mellowed.

Somebody said, "You've mellowed."

I HAVEN'T mellowed, I'm still...

I still feel better for going to nasty places,

but I don't want to do it on Christmas Day.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-Thank you.

-Really lovely.

-Thank you.

John Simpson, what an extraordinary man.

I was expecting a hard-nosed, news-bitten journalist,

but he's not like that at all.

He has witnessed some of the worst human atrocities in the world,

man's inhumanity to man, and yet, he's retained his humanity,

and I think that's to do with his faith.

A faith which has sustained him and grown through the years,

so that now, he looks to a world where he wants peace

and hopes for peace.

And if he can do that, perhaps we can too.

But I wish him and his family this year a very peaceful Christmas.

Next week, I meet a comedy legend.

What a beautiful day, folks,

for releasing a rocket in the vicar's vestments!

Lighting a touchpaper and saying, "How's that for a rev-up?!"

Ken Dodd celebrates 60 years in showbiz next year,

and at the age of 86, still performs up to three shows a week.

He has also helped raise millions for charity and has

a faith that has been a constant support throughout his long career.

Tatty-bye, everybody! Tatty-bye!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd