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Ben de Pear

Ben de Pear
Ben de Pear is the Editor of Channel 4 News in the UK. Ben has won numerous Royal Television Society awards, FPA awards, BAFTAs and Emmy awards. He was also part of the 'For Sama' team that was nominated for an Acadamy Award.
‎Media Tribe: Ben de Pear | Escaping Iran, Sri Lanka’s killing fields & a mysterious midnight nurse op Apple Podcasts
This episode features Ben de Pear, the Editor of Channel 4 News in the UK. Ben started his career in local journalism and then joined Sky News in 1994. From 2000-2005 he was based in Johannesburg as Africa editor for Sky and in 2005 he joined Channel 4 News as a foreign producer. He became foreign e…
Listen to Ben de Pear on Apple Podcasts
Media Tribe - Ben de Pear | Escaping Iran, Sri Lanka’s killing fields & a mysterious midnight nurse
This episode features Ben de Pear, the Editor of Channel 4 News in the UK. Ben started his career in local journalism and then joined Sky News in 1994. From 2000-2005 he was based in Johannesburg as Africa editor for Sky and in 2005 he joined Channel 4 News as a foreign producer. He became foreign e…
Listen to Ben de Pear on Google Podcasts

Listen to Ben de Pear on Spotify.

Shaunagh talks to Ben de Pear

This episode features Ben de Pear, the Editor of Channel 4 News in the UK. Ben started his career in local journalism and then joined Sky News in 1994. From 2000-2005 he was based in Johannesburg as Africa editor for Sky and in 2005 he joined Channel 4 News as a foreign producer. He became foreign editor in 2008 and was appointed editor in August 2012.

Ben has won numerous Royal Television Society awards, FPA awards, BAFTAs and Emmy awards. He was also part of the 'For Sama' team that was nominated for an Acadamy award.

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Credits

Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.

Episode transcript

Shaunagh Connaire

This episode is sponsored by Noa, an audio journalism app obsessed with helping you know more about news that matters. The first 100 people to visit newsoveraudio.com/mediatribe will get a week free to listen to articles from foreign affairs, Bloomberg and the Irish Times. 50% off.

Welcome to Media Tribe. The podcast that's on a mission to restore faith in journalism. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years of experience working for some of the biggest news outlets in the industry.

Every week I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most respected journalists, film makers and media executives. And you're going to hear the story behind the storyteller. You'll get a sense of the integrity and hard graft that's involved in journalism, and hopefully you'll go away feeling that this craft is worth valuing.

Ben de Pear

I vividly remember leaving Iran a few days after what became known as the Shahyad Massacre, where they killed hundreds of people in the square in Tehran.

I remember going to the taxi in the airport and we had to be sort of evacuated by my dad and stray dogs attacking the car for some reason as we were going down back alleys as you couldn't go on the main roads. And, of course, that all sounds really frightening, but I found it incredibly exciting. (Silence)

Shaunagh Connaire

Ben, you're so welcome to the Media Tribe.

Ben de Pear

Thank you very much. Very nice to be here.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yes, it's been awhile.

Ben de Pear

Yes, it has. It has.

Shaunagh Connaire

Actually, I think the last time I saw you, Ben, was at the Irish Embassy in London.

Ben de Pear

Yes.

Shaunagh Connaire

I thought it was an event for Irish journalists, but it looked like they were letting in the riff raff that night when we met you.

Ben de Pear

There are only 10 de Pear's in the whole of the United Kingdom, but there's about 150 in Ireland. I felt kind of at home. De Pear and [inaudible 00:02:08]. From my memory, we were treated to a speech from Gavin Williamson.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yes. Very good memory.

Ben de Pear

He had just famously in parliament told the Russians to shut up and go away. Magnificent oratory.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah. I think it was 2017, wasn't it?

Ben de Pear

Yes.

Shaunagh Connaire

I think we just made a film about abortion in Ireland. Yeah. Myself and my dear friend, Kate Hardie-Buckley were working the room trying to get coverage for that film.

But listen, it's great to catch up with you, Ben. And I know our audience would be really, really keen to learn about how you ended up in the Channel Four News room and you are the editor there. And do you want to tell us all about your journey?

Ben de Pear

Yeah, I had to quite an interesting childhood. I was born in Staines. Staines-upon-Thames, which is where Ali G is from. There was a reason for that. My father worked for British Airways. From the age of eight, nine, thereabouts. We lived abroad and we lived in Iran during the first few months of the revolution.

One of my earliest memories and one of my earliest journalistic recordings is me and my sister sheltering on the balcony of our flat there in Tehran as a big demonstration went past because we lived in an area where there were a few Westerners and they had these huge chains, which they were swinging against our metal fence shouting lots of anti Shah and lots of anti Western slogans.

And I vividly remember leaving Iran few days after what became known as a Shahyad Massacre where they killed hundreds of people in the square in Tehran. I didn't see that or didn't even hear it, but I remember going to the taxi in the airport and we had to be sort of evacuated by my dad and stray dogs attacking the car for some reason because we were going down back alleys because you couldn't go on main roads and the army everywhere. And, of course, that all sounds really frightening, but I found it incredibly exciting.

Shaunagh Connaire

Is there a sense that that's how you ended up as a journalist? I mean kind of having that exposure when you're younger?

Ben de Pear

We went from Iran to few other countries. Yeah. And then we ended up in Barbados where literally nothing happens except really nice stuff. But the thing that really caught my imagination was that there wasn't much media in Barbados. There was actually quite a good TV service. They had like the local news and there's only 200,000 people living in Barbados at the time. And TV news was so intimate that the newsreader at the end would always say, "That's it for the news, get my dinner on." And then he'd finished the broadcast and go home to his wife.

Ben de Pear

But my father was the guy who used to open and close the plane door for British Airways. The crew would always give him all the newspapers on the plane. I would always wake up in Barbados or if I stayed up late, with all of the national newspapers so 13, 14, I think from The Star to The Sun, The Times, The Guardian and my mother and father would read the news obsessively because there's loads of stuff to do in Barbados but at night, there was only one TV channel and quite often it was just showing Sesame Street.

We used to read the papers a lot. And I suppose I, from the age of 10, 11, I was at school by this for three years, which was amazing and fantastic. But I used to weirdly get up and wait and read all of the day’s newspapers.

Shaunagh Connaire

Wow. A great grounding. That makes a lot of sense now, I didn't know that background. That makes a lot of sense. And so when and how did you... You went to Sky News, isn't that right, Ben?

Ben de Pear

Yeah. I was doing an internship at the Staines and Ashford News, which is, I know you'll know, and I know you'll read all the time and I was doing stories about local news, minor crime, doing the court circuit and I was taught by some fantastic journalists there.

Barry Dix, who was the local editor and sadly that newspapers closed now, I think like many local papers. But whilst I was there, a friend of mine was a runner at Sky News and at Sky, if you're a runner or if you're in any junior job and I'm sure it's the case now, you do half your time day shift and half your time night shifts and he wanted me to do a row of night shifts as a runner. My first few forays into broadcast news, it was just after Sky News had accidentally killed off the Queen Mother. It was an incredibly tense time to come in.

Shaunagh Connaire

That's a great time to come in.

Ben de Pear

It was. And basically my first year and a half in a newsroom was making Kay Burley's breakfast, making tea and coffee for anyone who shouted at you. And in those days, Sky News was run by a series of brilliant, but extremely aggressive and rude Australians who would shout all sorts of things at you all day long, throw things, ask where the effing cappuccino was all the time, but I did learn a lot because they were prepared for anyone to try anything.

Within about a year and a half, I was running the overnight [inaudible 00:07:14] so did [inaudible 00:07:16] for about four years at Sky. At the time there were people like Andrew Walls, Alex Crawford was a reporter. They used to record the 11 o'clock news and the midnight, they used to put the 11 o'clock news on, and it would roll over all night unless something big happened.

And we used to order curries and have beers and stuff and for a couple of hours try and relax, cause it's quite tiring 12 hour shifts. And then of course something would happen in the middle night and no one knew or had a clue what to do, but it was fun, but it was quite grueling doing night shifts for that amount of time.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah. Well, I can relate. That's how I started at the BBC actually doing night shifts, 12 hours as well. Ben, when did you go to Channel Four then, when did you make that leap?

Ben de Pear

I was at Sky in Osterley for five years, but then I did the Kosovo War. Sky did very well on the Kosovo War. I was one of the producers and they offered me a job to open a bureau in South Africa so I was in South Africa for five years, but from South Africa I did all of 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the second Intifada in Israel and I did Zimbabwe, Congo, loads of other things.

And towards the end of my time in Johannesburg, we were nominated for an Emmy. And at the Emmy's, I met Jim Gray, who was the editor of Channel Four News then. And they won. We thought we'd won. They won, but they took us out. We all got pissed and he offered me a job a few months later. And I became his foreign producer. I was foreign producer for three years, foreign editor and then editor.

Shaunagh Connaire

Well, you were even, I'm just thinking back, during your days at Sky, Ben, you were even there for the fall of Baghdad, I'm guessing, is that 2003 if memory serves me correctly?

Ben de Pear

Yes.

Shaunagh Connaire

You would have covered all that. The thing is your beat has always been rather foreign, hasn't it? You definitely have a real passion for foreign news, which obviously comes through in Channel Four News.

Moving on to the larger part of the interview, is there a story or project that you've worked on over the course of your career that you're particularly proud of and maybe it's something that's had impact?

Ben de Pear

The For Sama thing was extraordinary because Waad was a freelancer who sent in a film, which we thought was good. And then we trained her and then we all became intimate friends with her.

Because of the nature of modern technology, even when she was in the hospital, as it was being bombed and everything around was being bombed and the Assad's Army was closing in on her part of Aleppo. She could FaceTime us and it was extremely intimate and frightening for us to be with her and Hamza, her husband, that was just a massive experience because we I didn't think she'd make it out alive and it was very upsetting. She did get out alive and you see all that in the film, that was an extraordinary film to make.

And I am very proud of our involvement in it and my involvement in it. But there were others who were more intimately involved in the making of the film.

But the projects really that I had, I was more intimately involved was Sri Lanka because I got all of the source material for that. I had to meet people in different places and I think what was different about that was the material that we first got, which was of a row of men with their hands tied behind their backs being shot in the back of the head in a extrajudicial execution, on a stretch of muddy land between two bits of water had been sent to every other news organization. But it was just when cameras were being put on mobile phones and the footage was pretty fuzzy.

We decided we should run it because I didn't think you could fake that. And as soon as we ran it, we started getting Ofcom by the Sri Lankan government. And then the more we stood by it, the more this stuff came out of Sri Lanka and we had us as a network of sources there. There were a network of sources in Europe that I went to meet and we ended up with about 20 to 25 clips of just horrific stuff. Women's bodies being mutilated. And there was a huge mass killing of everybody who was with Tamil Tigers, whether they were civilian or army. And I'm sure just by saying this, the Sri Lankans will Ofcom call me again, but it's true.

And I think what was the end of the war and they thought, "Right, that's it, we've done the Tamil Tigers, there's peace in Sri Lanka." We revealed to be as grizzly and as bloody a massacre as the Tamils and others had said, and it was a real changing point.

Ben de Pear

I sound like I'm blowing smoke up my own arse here, and I am in a sense, but I think it was such a common sense thing to do now. Syria was covered by mobile phone footage, but at the time you didn't use footage that you couldn't verify came from an agency or someone else. And we thought, well, why can't you? This is prima facie.

And of course the Sri Lankan's went and read books, they made their own film about it, about how he'd faked everything. But really, no, I don't think anyone believed it. I know that they didn't believe it themselves because some of the people who wrote the book have written to me or have spoken to me since saying, "We knew it was all bullshit but we had to say it."

Shaunagh Connaire

Unbelievable. That was 2011, Ben?

Ben de Pear

2009. 2009, we were running it on the show. 2010 and 2011, we made the film.

Shaunagh Connaire

It broadcast. Yeah. And so that was Jon so obviously and Callum Mcarae?

Ben de Pear

Callum Macrae was the filmmaker, yeah.

Shaunagh Connaire

Fantastic director. And so, essentially you documented war crimes and as you say, you provided that prima facie evidence that was needed. And yeah, I guess for context, back in 2009, as you say, we weren't really using citizen footage to do any of that. It was extraordinary at the time. And I don't think we actually talk about that in Jon's interview's so this is good. You were on the ground in Sri Lanka or did you ever get there?

Ben de Pear

No, I never got there. We had a team who was in Sri Lanka who managed to sneak undercover footage of one of the internment camps, where they put the Tamils, which they described as the holiday camps that the Tamils were very happy to go to, but they were actually run as prison camps where they were taking off the young men and interrogating them and many of the young men weren't coming back.

Ben de Pear

And so our team in Sri Lanka got thrown out and I was quite surprised at it really at the time, and this is so long, it's 10 years ago, but that no one else is really covering Sri Lanka. I think Al Jazeera did quite well. The BBC I don't think did very well. We got thrown out and then we became a sort of cool celebrity for people in Sri Lanka because if you get thrown out somewhere, everyone loves you, especially from that country.

Ben de Pear

And so it kind of came from that, but then it was really about, because I took the decision to run the footage of the people being executed on the beach, the people who had the footage wanted to meet me and more and more would give me more and more footage.

And then it became this sort of bizarre battle between Channel Four News stroke Channel Four and the Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan government insisting that we had somehow created huge studios where this footage was filmed. And then they had these fake experts who were saying the video was manipulated and it was created in North Korea or something. And then we were saying, "Well, no, it's not."

And we have the UN involved verifying the footage and all sorts of tests were done that I didn't understand. And then it was verified by the UN and then the UN took it to Ban Ki-moon. And I suppose it became an early battle just for the truth. I don't think the Sri Lankans use the phrase fake news, but they certainly said, I've got the book somewhere, they made a book, Corrupted Journalism, they call it, sorry, Corrupted Journalism.

Shaunagh Connaire

Corrupt. They were kind of tapping into this idea of disinformation and fake news, as you say, obviously we all are very aware of now.

Ben de Pear

Yes. It's caught on everywhere.

Shaunagh Connaire

It's very catchy. That's true. Ben, as the editor though, what kind of pressure are you under? Like where are you feeling the pressure coming from? Is it your own lawyers? Is it Ofcom? What kind of keeps you awake at night in that sense?

Ben de Pear

Making a mistake. We've made mistakes on Channel Four News. Made a big one about three years ago. I think in this country, we're fortunate to have Ofcom's, it's a really boring thing to say, but the news is regulated.

If you fail on accuracy or you fail on balance, then you're going to get slammed for it and you're probably going to get sacked as well as your channel fined so it keeps you honest.

The last year has been one of the most difficult of my career because of certain people in Number 10, who shall remain unnamed. It might sound a bit like Cummings, who were very anti broadcast news, and they're anti Ofcom. They want to dismantle broadcasting rules such as they are. We had done investigations into Vote Leave where Cummings and some of the main characters in that were investigated by authorities here so they never liked us.

They really didn't like the scrutiny of the press, but particularly ourselves, Newsnight, today the sort of longer, more investigative programs and Sky a bit as well, the BBC, BBC, and ITV seem to stay in with them.

That was difficult, but I kind of always thought, especially after the Barnard Castle, I thought, "Well, he's not going to be around for that long." That's been difficult. And the government not giving you access to lots of ministers during a pandemic, that's a bit strange but they are now.

Shaunagh Connaire

I wanted to ask you about that. I've read a lot about that. It's certainly since my time at Channel Four, but a lot of the ministers do you refuse to come on the news now, they refuse to be interrogated by the likes of Chris or Jon, why is that? It's an obvious answer, right?

Ben de Pear

Actually privately a lot of those ministers say they want to come on, but they're stopped by Number 10. They have been coming on since November, December when Dominic Cummings left Number 10 and we love them very much, and we want them on as much as possible. And it's important to have them on, especially in a pandemic.

I have actually been talking to them about this a bit. And one of the problems is that over time, especially in Britain, last year, there was a great documentary series about Margaret Thatcher and it was really the offcuts of the beginnings of her interviews and the sort of background stuff. What was she thinking? How is she feeling? And she used to do hour long or hour and a half long interviews with broadcast journalists. And they would talk about policy and there'd be times to ask her opinion and there'd be discussion and argument. And it was fantastic to listen to but over time in my time as editor of the Prime Minister's have been David Cameron, who, when I started would give you maybe 10 or 12 minutes. And by the time he left and Brexit was a disaster all around him. You were lucky if you got eight minutes for an interview.

Shaunagh Connaire

And I know you guys have also covered the Trump era really, really well, I would say. And I think the great thing, what I've always loved about Channel Four, you're always willing to go there and take the risks.

And, not for example, say colorful language, when you want to say, "No, actually he's a racist." Or, "He's using racist terms." And I think that's what Channel Four for me really has stood the test of time for that reason. And I'm sure you agree, Ben.

Ben de Pear

We had a lot of discussions and I said to people in the newsroom when Trump was elected, I was surprised. And the moment that got me with Trump was you read all the signs and you can see what he's saying if he's not saying explicitly. But the thing that really got me was when he imitated that New York Times journalists, who had a sight disability.

And I thought, "Christ, this is like going back to the 1970s at school when people were really horrible and people didn't know how things could hurt." And I thought, "Well, there's no way he can be elected President now, because that's just an appalling thing to do and anyone who's watching it will think, well, I can't ever vote for him." I was surprised when he was voted in.

I did say repeatedly, the first few months we can't normalize him. But then over time he becomes the President and he says the same thing over and over again. And you hear him say something which a year before may have just been distasteful or precordial, made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. And then you think, "Well, that's just Trump." So you're used to him.

And the media over time did normalize him. But if he did say something racist, we would call it racist. Not he has said something that some people have said is racist. It is an objective decision yourself. And I think sometimes people were actually becoming almost not racist themselves, but by not calling it out, you were enabling him. I think we were better than others, but I still think we failed in many ways.

And of course we're besieged and I am besieged as editor by claims of impartiality, of breaking impartiality and being pro this and pro that. When Corbyn was leader of the opposition, we were told, "You're Tories. You hate Corbyn." He wouldn't talk to us two and a half years.

Ben de Pear

And then course Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings says, "Well, we know where you're coming from." I think the more criticism you get from all sides, the more you're doing a good job, because if everyone's calling your bias, you're probably not.

But I think Trump has been an object lesson in normalizing bad behavior and I think just watching our program yesterday, where he wasn't in it, and it was Joe Biden, there was a sense of just peace and quiet in the newsroom. And what's he saying now, he's tweeted the predictability, I would say decency. And it felt like a much calmer time and an easier job to do.

I'm sure Biden will have weaknesses. I don't think he's the orator that Obama was and all the rest of it. He's not as exciting as Trump, but, but thank goodness for that.

Shaunagh Connaire

I think before we press record then as well, Ben, we were talking about perhaps there's a quieter four years ahead, but on the flip side, 75 million people did vote for Trump so how do we reach those people? And the onus is on the likes of you and on your channel and the rest of us to try and somehow reach those people and get them good journalism.

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I want to take you back to your point about Ofcom. That's how a British broadcaster's are regulated in case anybody doesn't know, but you've also spoken Ben about kind of trying to regulate big tech and kind of kitemarking news that they put on their platforms.

Ben de Pear

Yeah. We've been very successful on the digital platforms, which is great because we reach young people who aren't necessarily watching TV news although in the last two years they've come back to TV news in large numbers.

But we knew we had to go on the platforms, but I've been having the same argument with them for seven or eight years. Why don't you pay us more? Why can't your differentiate our stuff from bullshit and fake news? Why do you not give us massive prominence? When you watch something, why can a 16 year old kid in Macedonia, which is a report we did following Buzzfeed's reporting four or five years ago, why can a 16 year old kid make more money in the weekend by peddling lies? Why won't you do interviews with us?

We did the Cambridge Analytica undercover investigation, which really pissed them off. I must say that some of the platforms, Facebook have done deals with us where they're paying us for quality journalism. That doesn't mean we still won't investigate them. I still don't think they give us the credit we're due.

They like to say they're not publishers when actually they are. When kids watch stuff on Facebook, they say, "Oh, I saw it on Facebook." They don't say, "I saw it on Channel Four on Facebook." Or, "I saw it on Channel Four."

I've been arguing this till I'm blue in the bloody face. It's just the same arguments with the same people. The other day, I had an argument with someone from a digital platform who I was trying to get us to pay more money because they currently pay us less than 0.5% of what it costs for us to meet the news. And we get millions, hundreds of millions of hits with these guys and they said to me, "Well, we're an egalitarian platform."

And I said, "Egalitarian just means you give a level playing field to those who tell lies as well as those who tell the truth and you don't differentiate. You're egalitarian just means, you don't discern between those who would do good and those who would do evil so stop saying egalitarian. You've got to make some bloody choices as to who you think you want to help and support and fund." I can't remember their answers. They've always got an answer.

Shaunagh Connaire

That's really disturbing even now, like there's just such a willful blindness on their behalf not to regulate their sites. Even now it does blow my mind.

Ben de Pear

I think they have tried to regulate the sites, but the whole business model is the opposite. It's not in their interest, none of them. And this is the other thing. All of them are kind of got the language of [inaudible 00:25:55] and woke people and they're all quite young and they're all quite nice and they all seem okay.

And then you argue with them and you can see in their eyes that they know that they're doing wrong, but I think they're probably earning too much money to do anything differently. Or they think, "I'm going to be the person that really changes this platform."

But then they never are because the same thing goes on over and over again, every year, every year we have the same discussion. Every year we try and squeeze more cash out of them. Every year they might increase what they give us by 10 and 20 and every year we think, "Should we be on this platform? Because they stink. They enable racists. They enable abused. They enable all of the shot that we have to avoid."

We go to such great lengths as professional journalists to avoid. And yet we still need to be on them to reach the massive people that we want to reach. Yeah.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah. It's a real dichotomy. Okay. Well, Ben, moving on to the last question, always a little bit lighter and I know you're going to provide the goods.

Shaunagh Connaire

Think long and hard before you answer this one, but is there a crazy moment, which I know there is, in your career that has never been heard before that you'd like to delve into?

Ben de Pear

The craziest experience I had as a journalist was that was before, during and after the Iraq War in 2003. And before the Iraq War, and I'm looking up a map here, I was given the task by Sky News to find a route into Northern Iraq, through Turkey because everyone thought the Americans would go through that way.

It sends 60,000 troops that way and they'd send half a million up from Kuwait so I was sent to Turkey with this former soldier, special forces guy and me, a bit of a coward. I've only ever gone to wars because I thought they were quite frightening and I wanted to prove something to myself and all the rest of it. But I went to Southern Turkey to this place called Silopi and we were taken into a tunnel which led into Northern Iraq.

And then there was a minefield and the guy was like, "Yeah, it's fine. I can spot mines. It's absolutely fine." And it was snowy. It was January. And I absolutely shat myself said, "We are not going through this tunnel. I'm not taking camping stuff for four days to walk over the mountains and through a minefield, forget it."

We flew back to Istanbul, and this guy, and we went out and we got really pissed and he kept taking the mickey, "Oh, you're such a wimp. You wouldn't go through it."

And I got massive pain in my stomach, huge pain, crippling pain. I went back to the hotel and then after about half an hour, I called the hotel desk and I said, "I'm in pain." And they said, "Right. Across the road is this hospital." The receptionist walked me across the road and it was, I can't remember what the hospital's called, but it's not a very good one in Istanbul.

And after about an hour of 15, 20 different people leaning on my gut, they started saying, "Appendix, appendix, appendix." And they put me in this room, now it's about two or three o'clock in the morning. And they put me in this big room full of loads of people who all had felt tip arrows pointing to where they'd be operated on and I was stripped down to my waist and the big arrow pointing towards my appendix and no one spoke English and then finally a doctor came in and leant over me. And he was saying, "You have appendicitis." I said, "Yeah, I thought that must be it." And he said, "We're going to have to take your appendix out." That's okay, fine.

And he said, "Who are you? Where are you from and why are you here?" And I said, "I'm a journalist." He said, "Oh, are you here because of the war?" And I said, "Well, perhaps." And he was like, "There shouldn't be a war. We don't like the war in Turkey. And the more journalists come, the more the war will happen."

I said, "Well, I don't actually believe in that and I am not pro-war myself, but let's talk about my appendix shall we?" And he's like, "No, no, no, you shouldn't be here. It's bad you're here." And I was like, "No, no, honestly I disagree."

And they gave me the pre-med and I kind of blacked out and I woke up whenever 12 hours later. And I had a huge scar because they didn't do what's that thing called? Telescopic surgery they basically cut you open like they would in 1955 and took out the appendix, and I had this massive, like sort of Cornish pasties scar. And I thought, "Oh, fucking hell."

Istanbul's a beautiful place, but anyway, and then this male nurse came in and he kind of checked the drip and da da da. And then he lifted up my blanket and felt between my legs and then was staring at me and he walked out again and then no one came for three or four hours. And I managed to call the Sky News desk in London, I was working for Sky and they said, "Oh right, okay. We wondered where you were, right okay. Yeah." And then it's like, "You okay?" I was like, "Yeah, I think so."

And then the guy came in again, the male nurse and he kind of checked everything and then he lifted up the blanket and rummaged through my legs. And then he went off again and then this happened every three or four hours. And then finally a doctor came in the evening and he said, "We had to take your appendix out and we're sorry about the scar."

And we talked, he was nice. He was the same doctor as the night before. And he said, "Is everything okay and are you being looked after?" I said, "Yes, there's a gentleman that comes in every three to four hours, looks at my drip and takes my temperature but he also lifts the blanket up."

And he went, "Is there?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "That shouldn't be happening. It'll stop immediately." And I said, "Oh, okay, thank you very much."

Shaunagh Connaire

Who was he?

Ben de Pear

I don't know. I still don't know to this, to this day. I still don't know who that guy was.

Shaunagh Connaire

Oh my God.

Ben de Pear

No, we were very close for a while there. And I'd still like to know who he was, I've got absolutely no idea.

Shaunagh Connaire

Oh my God, that's hilarious. That's absolutely bonkers.

Ben de Pear

I had to wear special surgical support underpants for about six weeks afterwards because of the surgery, and so I'll always remember, I've got them somewhere still. I'll always remember that place and that gentlemen with great fondness, but I still don't know who he is. And neither does that hospital in Istanbul. They had no idea who he was.

Shaunagh Connaire

That is so funny. Some type of spy. Well, listen, Ben, thanks a million for being so candid about that story in particular, but in all seriousness, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your amazing career. Our audience are really going to enjoy that.

Ben de Pear

Thank you.

Shaunagh Connaire

If you like what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, that's very good news because I'm going to be dropping new shows every week and every month on my new Media Tribes Spotlight Series.

Also, if you haven't already make sure to take a listen to previous shows with some legendary folk in the industry and as ever, please, please, please do leave me a rating and review as it really does help other people find this podcast.

Finally, if you do have any guest suggestions, drop me a note on Twitter. I'm @Shaunagh with a G H or @ShaunaughConnaire on Instagram. And again, that's with the G H.

Right. That's it. See you soon. This episode was edited by Ryan Ferguson.