Let me tell you a story about Mark Colvin

ABC journalist Mark Colvin devoted his life to telling stories. After his death yesterday, these are the stories his workmates are telling about him.

Geoff Pauley:

I remember when I first started at the ABC in 2000. I was a runner and autocue operator.

When I first met Mark, he said hello and asked me my name. Ever since then, he never forgot my name. He always smiled and said hello.

He treated everyone with respect, no matter who you were or what job you did.

Tony Jones:

I was a lowly [ABC] trainee when one day in walks this romantic figure, out of a novel it seemed to me. He might have come straight from Brideshead Revisited or something.

He was this handsome, kind of movie star-looking guy with this beautifully ‘English with an Australian quality’ accent. Perhaps the most articulate, the most erudite person I’ve ever met …

Of course, I was in awe of him, and so delighted we became friends.

Barbara Miller:

It was probably the last on-air Q&A I did with Mark Colvin. I was on the Greek island of Lesbos about a year ago as the refugee crisis peaked.

Ed Roy, the executive producer, called me just beforehand. “You got your GPS coordinates mate?” he joked. “You know the routine — Colvin will remind you that he knows Europe far better than you and grill you about whatever he wants,” or words to that effect.

And so it was, as it always was. To do an interview with Mark Colvin was to enter the gladiatorial ring. You never knew what was coming, but you knew he firmly believed you should be sufficiently across the subject matter that he should be free to ask you anything at all. There was no point sending a list of suggested questions, he would have seen that only as a weakness. It was exhilarating, a breath-taking test of your knowledge and your ability to think on your feet.

Colvin would have said this far better than me, but in those moments you were glad to be alive.

Pip Courtney:

I never met Mark Colvin, but following the death of my husband John Bean in the ABC helicopter crash at Lake Eyre in 2011, he reached out to me several times over the next few years to see how I was faring.

He was always wise, caring and warm. I was touched such a busy man with challenging health problems would take the time with an ABC ‘stranger’.

Every now and then we chatted away via Twitter. I remember a lovely chat about his mum’s Hereford cattle — would she switch to black angus, I asked. No way!

What couldn’t he talk about with authority?

Mark was a lot more than a great journalist. He was an incredibly kind man.

Lisa McGregor:

I was lucky enough to attend a ‘writing for radio’ workshop when I worked at Radio Current Affairs back in 1999.

Mark was our teacher and gave us newbies a passionate summary of what made a good radio script. “You must always use short, sharp sentences. Keep them active, never passive. No sub-clauses. You need to keep the story moving so the listener doesn’t switch off. And always, always choose a single-syllable word — usually of Anglo-Saxon origin — over a three-syllable word derived from Latin origin.”

Mark drummed the table with his hand, tapping out the cadence of a pacey news story.

I marvelled (sorry Mark! Latin word!) at this man who had such a command of the English language that he knew the origin of every word and also that he would never be tempted to jeopardise his craft by showing off with a long word.

From the back of the room, veteran reporter Peter Cave was waiting to give his session.

“You mean we should say ‘f***’ instead of ‘fornicate’?”, he growled.

Mark didn’t blink. “That’s right. FOR – NI – CATE. Three syllables. Much too long. F***’s much better.”

I wonder if Mark would opt for a ‘goodbye’ over a ‘vale’.

MANY MORE HERE: Let me tell you a story about Mark Colvin – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)