Alan

I last spoke to Alan in February. I was studio producing World Briefing on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and he came up to do us live from a small village in the Gaza Strip. When I said thanks, I quickly wanted to ask him how he felt about coming back to London at the end of his three-year stint in.Gaza, having just read a log note about his replacement. I was really curious, but I changed my mind halfway through the sentence. One's often tempted to chat on a quiet weekend morning, but professionalism almost always takes over ... an open Traffic line is not the right place to do that. Instead, I just told him something along the lines of "I hear you're coming back to London in a few weeks ... so look forward to seeing you in the Newsroom then." "Yes, see you soon, E" he said, with a smile in his voice.

A few weeks later he vanished. He's a wonderful man. We want him back.