John Stapleton was a fearless reporter as well as a silver-tongued studio presenter. We worked together in the mid-1980s on three full-length documentaries for BBC Two.
Two of them concerned Paul Cleeland, one of the UK’s then longest serving prisoners. He maintained that his conviction for a murder committed in 1972 was a miscarriage of justice.
The third, The Perfect Diet?, was an investigation into controversial very low calorie diets – VLCDs – that ended in a high court battle to beat off an injunction. We interviewed the inventor of one of the diets, and John agreed to take a softy softly approach at the start of the interview. The camera rolled, and John asked his first question: “Now tell me, is it true your diet is killing some people?”
