For someone viewed as a grande dame, Hella Pick had a good sense of fun. During our shared reporting on German unification in 1990, we were in a packed car driven by a UPI correspondent in East Berlin. Our destination was the hotel where ministerial negotiations were taking place.
Hella sat in the front-passenger seat with her legs hanging out of the car window, laughing and joking as a breeze ruffled her coiffed hair. Later, as she questioned Eduard Shevardnadze, the Russian foreign minister, I nipped out to the reception desk, corralled the only phone with an outside line to the west and filed the story to the Guardian copytakers.
