In television, everything is gone with the speed of light, literally. It is no field for anybody with intimations of immortality.

I did stories about unexpected encounters, back roads, small towns and ordinary folk, sometimes doing something a little extraordinary.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.

I didn't have the ambition to be a broadcaster. I was going to be a newspaper reporter the rest of my life, but that opportunity came along.