Born in Luton in 1966, my first love was always listening to music, much to the annoyance of my father, who would tell me it would be of no use to me in the future. Over three decades later it has been the basis of my career, through retail, marketing and, for 20 years, public relations. I now work at talent management and media consultancy agency West One Pacific.
I was only six in 1972 when my uncle, Robert Whymant, became the Tokyo correspondent for the Guardian, and so the paper was a fixture at home. It’s fair to say his politics were liberal, and his feisty debates at Christmas with my father, a staunch Telegraph reader, are memorable to this day. Through his articles I developed a similar perspectives on social issues.
My mother Jane, Robert’s sister, particularly enjoys the Saturday edition, Family being her standout section. For me, Marina Hyde somehow manages to nail the point without fail, with a dry wit and humour beyond comparison. When in the US, I have always picked up the Guardian’s weekly international edition. Despite the internet, I can’t get out of the routine of picking up a paper and heading for the first cuppa to prepare for the activities ahead. It’s my initial daily briefing.
Christmas always reminds us of Robert’s visits home, and now Boxing Day will be forever poignant as it was 11 years ago, while on holiday in Sri Lanka with his wife Mineko, that he was swept away from a beach during the tsunami. He had been there researching a book on the Tamil struggle. Today, Robert will be remembered by his widow and sister, and, as I discovered when I attended a memorial at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo in 2005, his fellow journalists as well as a generation of Guardian readers.
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