Bickerton gave BBC clear Focus on Africa

Chris Bickerton, presenter of Focus on Africa on BBC for more than 30 years, died on Monday May 27 from cancer. He had been ill for a year.He began experiencing difficulties in swallowing in April last year, and cancer of the oesophagus was diagnosed later in the year.Bickerton, 60, had an operation in January, and he, and his doctors, at first believed that the operation had been a great success.He seemed on the road to recovery and he could, it seemed, settle back and enjoy company of his new son, Sam, born on September 6, 2001.But on April 16, he sent this letter to his colleagues at the BBC:“Not such good news, to put it mildly. Just over a month ago I fell ill with an infection.I could not shake it off, and a CT Scan has revealed the worst; that the cancer had flared up again. This time it is scattered around the peritoneum, which I take to mean a large area of my insides. It is inoperable. I am being offered chemo-therapy to manage or control it. But really we are just buying time. Without chemo, a few months. With chemo, no-one knows. Everybody, including the doctors, are shocked by the speed of the recurrence. At the moment, its a matter of pain control and living a day at a time for myself, my immensely courageous wife, Jay, and of course baby Sam.”For more than 30 years, Bickerton was the rock around which Focus on Africa was built. Some listeners even named their children after him. He was ‘Mr Reliable’ –– always there, always calm, always ready to go on air, always patient with producers and journalists, both old and new.He would lift his colleagues’ spirits when they felt low. His writing was impeccable.The number of mistakes he made in his career could be counted on the fingers of one hand.What made him loved by his colleagues and (we guess) by listeners was his refusal to play the star. He was naturally a rather shy and humble person. He was far more interested in the story of Africa, than in himself, and he never lost his love for the continent. This began after university when he went to Zambia as a school teacher.He worked through turbulent times in Africa: wars of independence, civil wars, coups and unimaginable natural disasters, but throughout it all, he remained cool, calm, but never, ever cynical.Chris never lost his passion and compassion for the people of Africa. One listener in Guinea wrote on the day of his death:“The ‘African white man’ never had problems pronouncing African names.“Through Focus he taught many of us the English language. “This is a sad day for us. We listeners will miss him.”So will we at the BBC. bbc.co.ukEnds