Peter Mosley saved my bacon (2)

Back in 1974 I was the decidedly young and only very recently appointed science and medicine correspondent on PA when I first met Peter at the annual representative meeting of the British Medical Association in Hull. It was the middle of the mighty dispute with Barbara Castle over pay and pay beds (private beds in NHS hospitals) which led - shades of times present - to the first ever strikes by junior hospital doctors.

The BMA’s “political” meeting, so to speak, was followed in those days by a “scientific” one but the political dispute was so intense that most of the national reporters headed back to London, skipping the scientific bit. On the first afternoon Douglas Bevis, known as “Tiger” Bevis from his rugby playing days, who was the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Leeds, was due to present. In the morning, to get a story filed early, Peter and I interviewed him. The only other person in the room was Tony Thistlethwaite, the BMA’s superb press chief.

In what can only have been a moment of utter madness that was never fully explained, “Tiger” Bevis told us that the first test tube babies had been born, although he refused to say where, or to whom, or by which medical team the work had been done, his or another’s. In fact, the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was not to be born for another four years, not until July 1978.

Peter had something else to finish, so it happened that I filed first, Peter shortly afterwards. What that produced was a stampede of national hacks back up to Hull. In the media storm that followed that afternoon, Bevis tried to say he had not said it, that he had been misquoted.

If it had been just me - and I was a mere kid, six months into the job - it would have been his word against mine and my shorthand note. I could have been in the deepest of mires. But Peter was there too. Bevis couldn’t take on the might of both Reuters and PA. Having the angry and adamantine rock that was Peter to stand by, and indeed almost to shelter behind, probably saved my bacon. How dare anyone challenge his shorthand note, leave aside mine! ■