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Nick's Tribute to Manisha

Four weeks ago, as she was admitted to Trinity Hospice just down the road from here, Manisha, or Min as everyone called her, was interviewed by a psychiatrist who wanted to ascertain her state of mind.

She failed to tell him the day of the week, the month, or the ward that she was on. He tentatively moved onto general knowledge. "Who is the Prime Minister?" Min shot him a look, "Gordon Brown of course, I'm confused but not stupid".

That was Min to a tee. Psychiatrist, politician, businessman ...husband, it didn’t matter. Ask a daft question, you’ll get an answer, but always wrapped in a wonderful soft sense of humour. That was the Min I knew.

I remember when we first met in September 1990. She was editor of the House magazine and I was interviewing for a job as her deputy (nothing changes). The interview was going really well I thought, after all I’d passed the written test Manisha set me.... But then she asked me if I was familiar with some arcane aspect of the House of Commons Order paper. "Of course", I bluffed, confident she'd take me at my word. She didn't, preferring instead to smile and pursue her line of questioning until I conceded I didn't know what she was talking about.

Amazingly enough she offered me the job. But I should have known that with Manisha you couldn’t get away with a fudge or some elliptical whimsy. She had an acute nose for obfuscation, she could prick pomposity with a giggle and make it clear you were wrong with little more than a gentle, dancing smile.

We didn’t get together until early the following year. By that time I had left the House magazine. I always liked her, but working together seemed to make a friendship out of the office more difficult. So once I left I hatched a plan.

One evening I turned up at her office in Soho and said I was passing by on my way home. "How could that be when you work in Westminster and you live in Surrey. This isn’t on your way home," Min said. Unmasked again, but after that evening and a drink in the French House we were together from then on.

Much of that time was spent in the area that we’re in today – Clapham. Min had spent almost all of her life in and around the Common. Having been born in Kenya in 1965, she left a fairly privileged, warm, Africa to arrive in an English, snowy winter in January 1966.

Her father Biku opened a shoe shop in Abbeville Road, not far from here, that became a local landmark. Min's family are mochis and under the Indian caste system, mochis are typically shoemakers. Manisha was no exception and like dad she learnt how to make handmade shoes and sold them in his shop. Indeed, some of you in the church today may unknowingly be wearing a pair of her shoes. I remember like all proud fathers when he got chatting to customers who volunteered that they worked at the BBC Biku would bring up Manisha, assuming they must know her too. And some of them even did. I remember a rather startled Mark Mardell see Min behind the counter one day.

The shop was important to Min and was the centre of the family. After Min’s mother, Manjula, died in 1988 she helped Biku reopen the shop and spent many days there talking to customers and helping him get the business back on its feet.

It was as teenager that Min honed her culinary skills. Although an Anglicised Indian, Min and her mother never really understood why we didn’t put chilli on everything and why you had picnics outside, what with the wasps and the perfectly good dining table... Many of you will have sampled Min’s delicious cooking based on recipes written out in hand and passed down from her mum and various aunties. She thought nothing funnier than me having a go cooking and then half way through finding a crucial element written in Gujarati. She would take over and refused to explain saying, "it is always important to retain some mystery.".....

But while Min embraced many aspects of Indian culture she was never limited by it. She arranged our wedding in Las Vegas at the Little Chapel of The West and the Bellagio over the internet, and loved scooting around London on the back of our Vespa - even when heavily pregnant in the summer of 2000.

Many of you will have had a lift in Min’s favourite vehicle – her white 1988, five and a half litre, V12 Jaguar. Windows down playing Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder on the stereo she’d pick Jai up from school in it. A real South London girl.

So politics, journalism, cooking, tennis and a love of ridiculous cars was important to Min. But the most import thing to her in the world was Jai.

It’s a cliché to say that Min was a fantastic mum – but only because that doesn’t do justice to just how incredible she was. My mother Valerie recounts the story about when she came home from hospital with Jai. We’d moved to Iveley Road and had the builders in. There was only cold water, no kitchen, it was dire…but Min was happy. She was at home with her new son. She lodged up in one room and sent the builders out for sandwiches and cups of tea. A year later the builders were still there when Min went back to work. Despite a demanding job at the BBC she always took Jai to nursery here at Holy Trinity, where she and Jai made some great friends, and then later when he went to school at JAPS – always driven in that white Jag.

Ever stylish, the good things in life were important to Min – be it clothes, jewellery or holidays. Many of you will have heard about the holidays of a lifetime that we went on after Min was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. First the Maldives, where Jai learnt that if you raised a flag on the beach a coconut with a straw sticking out would appear on a tray, and then of course Klosters. It wasn’t usual for the Claydon’s to reside at Baron von Tyson’s alpine retreat but Min was very much to the manor born. I can’t put words to Min’s face seeing Jai ski for the first time. She adored hearing Jai talk about his day.

Through her life at work, and through Jai’s nursery and school, Min made many close friends. Lots of you have been so kind in writing to me and sharing your memories of Min – every word has been important to me and as he grows older will be to Jai too. It was a sign of how important friends were to her that last summer Min cooked for, and entertained, 60 people in the course of one month at our place in Sidlesham. She loved that summer and spending warm days gossiping with close friends.

If you had to pick an example of how Min dealt with cancer it would be that summer. Despite months of draining chemotherapy she put the cancer behind her. Even in the darkest moments of her illness she had an amazing ability to laugh. And she was always active – either emailing story ideas or comments to colleagues at the BBC, or typing up all her recipes in English. During the cancer she prepped Jai and helped him get a scholarship to the school that will eventually take him on to university. She even chose our new house.

Min showed such bravery and stoicism in the face of cancer. In a situation where many might have turned in on themselves, she had the strength of character to carry on and maintain her enthusiasm for life. But Min didn’t want to be remembered for the disease, and all of us in our minds should make that real for her. Looking around the church today we hold all of us so many happy memories, many of which you have shared with me.

A woman of bright spirits, always on the verge of laughter.

A woman with a strong sense of humanity.

A woman with a razor sharp mind, brimming with ideas.

A disarming woman whose joy was infectious.

Infinitely compassionate, ever supportive, ever caring about people and above all so wonderfully non-judgemental.

That is what we should remember when we think of Min.

I too will miss that laugh and huge, seraphic grin, that warmth and optimism. As a wife, a best friend, a confidant, an adviser, she was unbeatable. She will be forever in my heart. She will be forever in my mind. And as I look at Jai growing up, I see Manisha. An extraordinary woman – who gave us all so much.

Thank you.

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Eulogy  - by Fergal Keane

I would say that Min had the measure of me from the start.

 At the end of our first day working together in a battle scarred town at the remotest ends of County Tyrone, I suggested to Min that we might repair to a local pub to contemplate the day of whinging we had listened to from various different parties to the conflict.

Even by the standards of Northern Ireland it had been a spectacular extravaganza of complaining.

We were weary and in need of sustenance. This was in the days when I still enjoyed the odd drop.

By two o clock in the morning our spirits had been revived, so much so that we were standing on the tables singing YMCA to a group of alcoholically poisoned locals.

We staggered back to the hotel in the loyalist part of town which Min – blissfully oblivious to the potential sectarian difficulties – had thoughtfully booked us into.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

"The key to the main door," I slurred.

"No, you have it," she replied.

 "I don’t."

 "You do."

 "I don’t."

 I spotted an open window above the back door.

"Why don’t you try climbing in?" I suggested. "I’ll give you a lift up."

 "Me climb in!" she said, with a hint of indignation.

And then, gazing at my stately, Guinness filled frame, and imagining what it might be like to heave me through an open window, she said: "Fine. I’ll do it."

We never made it to the window. I remember staggering around and falling over a bin. This noise alerted the landlady and her husband, a man who looked like a depressed weasel, was despatched to investigate the commotion.

It was his first time meeting us.

Now bear in mind that this man lived in a remote place with a strong reputation for religious and racial bigotry.

And he opened the door to find a Fenian and an Indian, both transparently the worse for drink, bickering over a lost key.

His wife took her revenge the following morning with the greasiest Ulster Fry ever put on a plate.

I spent many months working with Manisha on a series about Ireland. It was some of the best fun I have ever had.

That was because along with intelligence and great flair Min brought a great sense of humour to the job and a remarkable talent for cutting through blather and bull:

As Simon Hoggart, another who was lucky to work with her, recalls:

"She could prick pomposity with a giggle, and make it clear you were wrong with little more than a gentle smile…And sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see that kind, gentle, dancing smile."

Min did not need to be told what the BBC’s values were: they were part of her DNA.

She was instinctively fair minded; intellectually curious; a determined enemy of received wisdom.

And she was – when the occasion demanded – quite tough.

Perhaps one of the best examples of her – let us say ‘firmness’ – was on a trip with Douglas Hurd to interview Henry Kissinger in New York. Matthew Barrett was producer.

"We got into the location (we had booked it for three hours, just in case anything  went wrong).  No Kissinger.  After half an hour we called his office.  They didn't know where he was.  Eventually he was tracked down and he turned up two hours late.  Needless to say, we didn't get anything like the material we needed.  Worse still, at the end of the interview Kissinger turned to us and said that if we hadn't got we needed then we only had ourselves to blame.  The arrangements had been a mess, he had no idea when the interview was scheduled for and we hadn't even told him where it was.  When I suggested we came back another time to finish the interview I was informed that he certainly wasn't going to waste anymore time with us  All this in front of Hurd.  It looked like a disaster for the production.

Manisha, with that lovely laugh in her voice, then  said: "I don't think so".  She quietly and firmly went on:   "I think you'll find that actually it was fixed up several weeks ago and your office was fully aware of both the time and the location and that if there has been an error, it wasn't us who made it." 

"I think you find that that is not the case." replied Kissinger. 

Manisha giggled again: "I think you'll find that it is the case…"  She then brandished a folder full of email correspondence with his office that she produced from her bag. 

Kissinger began to shuffle uneasily and stare at his feet, like a ten year old in front of the headmaster and said: "Obviously there has been a bit of misconnection somewhere."   He then agreed that we could come back another day to complete the filming.

Hurd, was actually chortling away, grinning widely.  "That was astonishing." he said.  "You didn't give an inch and you forced him to back down.  You can bet that hasn't happened very often."   

Anne Tyerman who was Manisha’s editor at Political Documentaries remembers Min as someone whom everyone loved and respected.

"People wanted her opinions and took her advice. She had that serenity, that modesty but at the same time a clear eyed and objective way of looking at things which made her view always worth hearing. And she never fussed around or panicked, whatever was going on underneath. She was an ideal colleague and much loved friend."

Correspondent Peter Gill reported the first documentary that Manisha made as a producer/director.   'Clare's New World' about Clare Short. Peter writes: "She had far too much intelligence, tact and charm to be seen to be taking it over, but frankly she could have accomplished the whole thing herself with distinction."  

Michael Cockerell recalls working with Manisha on the film about the Tory Whips – ‘Westminster’s Secret Service.’

"She and Alison Cahn went to the Tory party conference and played the role of political innocents.   At late night parties and at hotel bars,  top Tories began to talk began to talk confidentially to the bright-eyed pair – possibly with other intentions.   Manisha and Alison came back to Westminster with their  honour intact but with a fund of hair raising whips’ tales – but all off the record of course."

Manisha then came up with the idea of contacting all the Tory whips since the war who were still alive – and eventually persuaded a score or so to speak – with amazing results.

"And," says Michael, "We never had a cross word –  either on the road or in the cutting room -- which was not always the case with producers I worked with."  

Alison Cahn recalls how Manisha needed a minor operation in the final stages of making a film about Enoch Powell. She was in hospital, being visited by her father. He was looking at her get well cards and saw one wishing her a speedy recovery from "Enoch and Pamela". Manisha later told me how her father shook his head and said: "Who'd have thought." She loved the irony - it tickled her wonderful sense of humour - but also the fact that Enoch and Pamela really liked her (who could fail to do so)."

For Rebecca Hickey Min was someone who never changed in the 14 years she knew her.

Vicky Flind recalls the story of trying to film a grumpy Sir Peter Hall, sitting on a park bench. Hall said he would not move from the bench, had not learned his lines and would read from a scrappy piece of A4 paper in his hand…and said he would be done and gone in under a minute… " Still Manisha managed to turn this into watchable television. "

Her attention to detail and patience were undoubtedly helped by coming from a long line of shoemakers. Manisha was also a skilled shoemaker and she was very proud of that heritage.

Joanna Bartholomew wrote to me: "Right to the end, she would try (despite the pain she was in) to laugh and be interested in all our trivia."

This is some of what her good friend Sarah Harrison had to say of Min:

"She became one of my closest friends and my daughter’s godmother. She adored Jai and Nick – she called them her ‘beautiful boys’.

 In February of this year we went on a skiing trip together which was very special for us all. It was the Claydons’ first skiing holiday and the first time my children had been skiing. This time we did it in style, and although Manisha had just finished a gruelling session of radiotherapy she was as game as ever and managed to get up to the top of the mountain in a bubble lift to see Jai and Nick conquering the slopes. She looked like a film star sitting in the mountain café in her fur lined hat and scarlet lipstick.

Beautiful, gorgeous Min. I can’t imagine the world without her."

Min achieved much in her professional life but the true measure of any of us is our capacity for love: and in Min that was boundless.

If what Philip Larkin wrote – that "what endures of us is love" – is true, and I believe it is, then Min is not gone but is here now in every warm thought you have of her, in every echo of her laughter, in every smiling memory of her.

I will finish with some words of the American poet Raymond Carver, written a few weeks before he died from cancer. I think they are appropriate for Min.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved, on this earth.

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