BiteBack Publishing

Peter Sissons spent the afternoon entertaining Clive Anderson, Jon Culshaw, Roland Rivron and Arthur Smith on Saturday with his tales of derring-do in the Biafran bush on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Loose Ends.

The topics up for discussion come from Peter’s new book, When One Door Closes, which laments his time as an aspiring – and indeed accomplished – foreign reporter in the ’60s. Peter was ambushed and shot through both legs during the Nigerian Civil War and following a year long struggle back to health had that door of the glamorous life of war reportage firmly shut in his way:

“There I was sitting in the mud and the filth of a foxhole thousands of miles from home, bleeding to death.”

Ah, yes. You’re right, perhaps it wasn’t so glamorous after all. But still, when one door closes and all that…

“The British economy came to my rescue!”

So there is a happy ending after all!

Well, perhaps not quite: “it was a state of emergency for the rest of you…”. Ah.

Peter Sissons went on to be one of Britains foremost industrial correspondents and became a near-constant feature in your living room, made more so by his eventual appointment as a newscaster for ITN, Channel 4 and finally the BBC.

In Saturday’s interview Peter remembers the “flattering” introduction of the first “transfer fee” for a newscaster and the not-so-flattering lawsuit that followed. It’s a great interview and well-worth a listen. And of course Peter tells the story wonderfully wittily in the book itself, When One Door Closes, available now.