My friend and former colleague, Mina Panić, who has died aged 57 from breast cancer, became a BBC TV director after leaving the former Yugoslavia with nothing more than a sharp intellect and an iron will.
Arriving penniless in London in 1988, she initially slept rough at Hyde Park Corner but soon found lodgings with compatriots. She taught herself French from movies after pretending to her boss at a restaurant that she could speak it. Fortunately, she was a gifted linguist, who already spoke English, Russian, four Balkan languages and Italian, picked up Polish on shoots and, after two days in Alexandria, was communicating in Arabic. During her last days she brushed up her Russian with the help of a Ukrainian nurse.
