Zest for News

BBC current affairs TV producer and executive New Zealand-born Janine Thomason has died aged 63. She was born to Lesley and Jack, her father being director of marketing and technical support at the New Zealand Dairy Board. His work took him abroad, and Janine was schooled in Hong Kong as well as at Queen’s High School in Dunedin, Wellington High School and Victoria University. At 22 Thomason arrived in London hoping to make a career in television. Beginning by writing Autocues, a BBC producer soon noted her liveliness, ingenuity and zest for working late on breaking stories, and brought her into his programme team. She went on to work as producer and film-maker for a string of flagship programmes — 24 Hours, Nationwide, The Money Programme, Tonight, Panorama — in the vibrant, creative and cheerfully irreverent world of the Lime Grove studios in west London. Peter Horrocks, now head of the World Service, recalled that in working on election specials with her, “you learned the lesson that journalism (and politics) is all personal. Janine had better contacts, and better relationships, in politics than anyone I’d worked with.”