Michael Dean obituary
He was not on the list.
Michael Dean, who has died aged 82, was an outstanding BBC broadcaster in the 1960s and 70s. On Late Night Line-Up, a nightly discussion programme on BBC2, he shared presenting duties with Denis Tuohy, Tony Bilbow and myself, two of us for each transmission. With 364 programmes a year over eight years, the pressure was never off: we were forever writing scripts, interviewing and filming, as well as contributing to a steady stream of ideas.
Michael took ideas seriously, and admired talent without sycophancy. He made friends of both Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, who agreed to come back to appear on the programme again if Michael would interview them. His interviews with Tony Hancock, Morecambe and Wise, Gore Vidal and Peter Sellers were no showbiz soundbites but thoughtful conversations, in which Michael used his modesty and intelligence to steer guests to often revealing insights.
But he was no pushover: indeed he developed a bold technique that we came to call “the silent poisoner”. He would ask a straightforward question and, on receiving an evasive answer, he would deploy not the Paxman tactic, but the exact opposite. With sublime self-control he would simply remain silent and wait. It takes nerves of steel to do that on live television. But it was then that the interviewee, in a panic at the awkwardness of the pause, would blurt out anxiously whatever came into their heads. It was often the most revealing remark of all.
Michael’s quiet skills underpinned all that we were doing;
he was widely read and knowledgable about a range of subjects from jazz to
sport and poetry. He wrote elegant and witty scripts – and in consequence went
on in the 70s to make documentaries about, among others, Noël Coward, George
Formby, and Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.
Michael was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand. His
mother, Mavis Holt, came from the family behind the successful Carter Holt
Harvey timber company. His father, Kendrick Dean, was a remarkable GP who
travelled abroad to seek out treatments for the ailments of his local
community. When he was eight, Michael went with this three sisters, Dorothy,
Viv and Julie, to a Quaker prep school in Whanganui, where he began to absorb
the values of tolerance and hatred of injustice about which he would later
become eloquent. He went on to Palmerston North boys’ high school and became a
journalist cadet on the local newspaper.
At the age of 20 he contracted TB and went to a sanatorium.
It was there that he began to read intensively, discovering the joy of books
and ideas that was to last him all his life. Poetry was a particular love.
Shakespeare was his god, and TS Eliot a particular favourite – he called him
“big Tom”.
After a year as a sports reporter for a Cape Town newspaper
in South Africa, he returned to New Zealand and joined National Radio. He
married his first wife, Shirley, and moved to Sydney, Australia. After three years,
with his marriage at an end, he came to Britain, and by the mid-60s was a
recognised face on Late Night Line-Up.
In 1968 he married the actor Christine Collins and they had
two daughters, Rachael and Emily. When Line-Up was cancelled in 1972, he returned
to New Zealand, where he had his own television chat show, Dean on Saturday. He
then moved to Australia to work for Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine, where he
anchored the coverage of the 1976 Montreal Olympics. By the 80s he was back in
Britain and working for the BBC, reporting for such programmes as Man Alive and
40 Minutes.
His was a career of impressive range and integrity. But his
personal life was more casual: he never bought a home, he had accidents with
cars and his disorganisation often left those he loved in despair. Nonetheless
he took his daughters to Shakespeare’s tomb and shed tears for his hero. He
made and kept friends, and was a regular at Late Night Line-Up reunions.
Towards the end of his life he had dementia; in his final
months he was seriously affected. He often lost his way when he went out on his
own, but to a friend who offered sympathy, his reply was upbeat: “Oh, getting
lost means I see lots of places I didn’t know about before.” And to sympathetic
comments about his condition he replied: “You know, this Alzheimer’s is really
something of an adventure.”
Christine, from whom he was separated, died in February this year. His younger daughter, Rachael, died of cancer in 2012. He is survived by Emily, by two grandchildren, Rachael’s daughters Mimi and Alberta, and by his sister Viv.
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