Bob Evans marks half a century with the Baron

Reuters’ Geneva bureau feted Bob Evans' 50th anniversary of toiling for the Baron with dinner at the city’s Café du Soleil, chief correspondent Tom Miles writes. A small party of past and present members of the bureau, including text, television and pictures, joined Bob (photo)​ and his wife Doodie for a low-key celebration that was much enjoyed by all who were present.

Bob had let slip that the big date was coming up at the start of September but made unambiguous signals that he didn’t want a big fuss, and certainly didn’t fancy an encomium from the “higher ups” splashed across the internal company website. So senior correspondent Stephanie Nebehay discreetly contacted dozens of Bob’s former colleagues and ex-trainees, now scattered around the world, to compile an album of tributes, well-wishing and yarns about shared exploits from decades past. Many of the contributions were from friends who worked with Bob during his Stakhanovite 18 years in Moscow, including a convincing mock-up of Pravda berating him for spreading capitalist propaganda, and a colleague who remembered how Bob had valiantly backed her by insisting to the desk that nobody could possibly have landed a light aircraft on Red Square. Stephanie had marked her message “confidential and embargoed”, and so the album remained a secret until the dinner finally got under way (and it took about a month to pin down the date).

As well as his three stints in Moscow, Bob has an even longer record of 21 years in Geneva, where he now specialises in particle physics news from CERN, the battle over religious (and atheist) rights at the UN, with a sideline in fine and offbeat feature stories. Bob started as a trainee in 1962, the year before CEO-to-be Peter Job, and has also worked in Mexico, Paris and London, a posting that included stints in Northern Ireland. Although Bob is only part-timing these days, since he and Doodie are much in demand from their five grandchildren, he shows no signs of slowing down.

Over dinner Bob was cajoled into telling some stories from his Moscow days, the highlight being the modestly-told revelation that he was responsible for Margaret Thatcher’s nickname “the Iron Lady”, having noticed it in the Red Army newspaper and thinking it might make a story for the Reuter wire. The rest is history!

PHOTO: Denis Balibouse ■