In 2008 the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group was giving the premiere of Strange News by the composer Rolf Wallin and writer Josse de Pauw. It dramatised the harrowing story of child soldiers in Africa, showing how music was rehabilitating some of these young men. We needed a national newscaster to open the piece in the way they introduced the news each evening. To our amazement, when I called his PA out of the blue, George Alagiah said yes.
I crossed the BBC Television Centre newsroom. He took me into a tiny video room and said: “Tell me what to do.” Kind and interested, he immediately put me at my ease. I was in the surreal position of directing him for those few minutes. And then it was over, we shook hands and I left, clutching it all on DVD.
