#royhattersley — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

quangobaud @[email protected] · 2026-06-21 · 20:18 UTC

Last Word (BBCRadio4 Obit Show)

Roy Hattersley
Daphne Hamilton-Fairley
Roger Cook
Sterling Betancourt

Last Word

Lord Roy Hattersley, the former Deputy Leader of the Labour party. He was born and brought up in Sheffield. In his book A Yorkshire Boyhood, he confessed to being passionate about three things: Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, Yorkshire County Cricket and socialist politics. His friend and colleague, Lord Kinnock, pays tribute.

Daphne Hamilton-Fairley, spoke out for tolerance after her husband was killed by an IRA bomb. He had inspired her to become a speech therapist and after his death she set up one of the first specialist schools for dyslexia and other special educational needs. She named it Fairley House, after her husband. Her daughter Diana Hamilton-Fairley shares her memories.

Roger Cook was the intrepid investigative journalist who pioneered the technique known as “doorstepping” - challenging those he suspected of wrongdoing face to face with the camera or tape recorder running. First on Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme Checkpoint and then on ITV’s The Cook Report he took on criminals and fraudsters on behalf of listeners and viewers. Matthew talks to his colleague Tim Tate.

Sterling Betancourt was a pioneer of steel pan music from Trinidad and Tobago. He was one of the first to bring the instrument to Britain in the 1950s and went on to play a big role in the early days of the Notting Hill Carnival. Sterling’s wife Beatrice Elokbi tells his story.

Presenter: Matthew Bannister
Producer: Ribika Moktan
Assistant Producer: Catherine Powell
Researcher: Jesse Edwards
Editor: Andrea Kennedy

downloadable to keep in mp3 format

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#DaphneHamiltonFairley
#RogerCook
#SterlingBetancourt

(Steelpan is West Indian #Gamelan 👍)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xpcb

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Claire McNab @[email protected] · 2026-06-15 · 04:29 UTC

It would be an exaggeration to say that I ever "met" the late #RoyHattersley, the #LabourParty Deputy Leader 1983–92, who died on Saturday. We never shook hands or exchanged any words.

But as a young lobbyist in the late 1980s, I did a few times find myself in the same room or corridor as him. Each time I noticed that when agitated, he did frequently emit spit. Nowhere the spray hose quantities depicted by #SpittingImage, but it was definitely there. It was not an invented attribute.

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Claire McNab @[email protected] · 2026-06-14 · 22:42 UTC

@ChrisMayLA6 i thought of this quote as soon as I heard of #RoyHattersley's death.

"One night I shall put myself to sleep by counting how many enthusiasts for Labour's 1980s' madness have become disciples of the 1990s' super- sanity. We are governed by the ideologically footloose" — Lord #Hattersley, September 1997.

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