I suspect a lot of people hadn't heard of Bill Deedes until earlier this week and I can hold my hand on my heart and say neither had I. But what an interesting life this man had.
For those of you who haven't heard of Bill, he was a fleet street journalist, MP, minister, editor and then back to journalist. At the time of his death last week, he was 94 and still writing his column for his paper, the Daily Telegraph.
He was there to report on King Edward's abdication, Chamberlain's "peace in our time" and was one of the ministers who failed to elicit the truth from John Profumo in 1963 - not to mention reporting on Bosnia, Zimbabwe and Iraq. So all in all, a pretty amazing life!
But what particularly interested me was his time as a minister under Harold Macmillan. As a minister without portfolio, he was given the job of educating the public about the EEC.
What a job!
A communications campaign on the biggest scale - but at a time when they didn't have any fancy social media, internet and mass consumer TV advertising
It would be fascinating to find out exactly how he did it and equally fascintating to see what lessons the present government (and come to that, the rest of us) could learn on back-to-basics communications.
It's also interesting to just stop for a moment and remember that communicators have been around for many, many years - and perhaps there is something we can all take from the older generations.
