BBC NEWS DEEP SIXED
Well-respected BBC newsreader George Alagiah has died aged 67. Born in Sri Lanka, his family fled for Ghana then England to escape the persecution their Tamil minority was facing. He revisited his Ghanese upbringing as an Africa correspondent for South Magazine and later the Beeb, where he covered horrors of war, famine, and the Rwandan genocide and interviewed beloved luminaries like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Robert Mugabe. His empathy and warmth were key to his success; he had the charisma to win the trust of everyone from world leaders to humble refugees.
His coverage spanned beyond Africa – he was lucky to survive civil war in Afghanistan when almost entering a government official’s house that was destroyed by a rocket twenty seconds later, and he considered his proudest moment as a journalist securing some of the first photographs of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Into the new millennium, he segued to presenting, and became one of the classiest, most reassuring presences on BBC News. He anchored several news programmes, but gained the most repute from his twenty years at the helm of BBC News at Six. And Alagiah the person was every bit the gentleman that Alagiah the presenter was, with his colleagues having nary a bad word about him.
In 2014, Alagiah was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer, and though he knocked it into remission for a time, a 2018 recurrence couldn’t be shaken off and catapaulted him into a perma-Drop 40 fixture. Had England offered automatic cancer screenings starting the same age as Scotland (50 rather than 60), Alagiah noted, he may well had been diagnosed at a much earlier stage. He took pole position of the Drop 40 last year, and although James Whale pipped him to the top spot this time around, it was evident he’d be too risky to leave off your team. As a result, the title race is largely unimpacted, with The Living End and theme team Pazuzu Bad Boys the only teams in the top 40 to not have him.
George Alagiah
22 November 1955 – 24 July 2023, aged 67
160 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 40 = 11 POINTS, 🃏 (x13) 22 POINTS)