Janet Lee

Tim was everything great and good that others say about him here, and more. I remember also his wisdom and humour over the 13 years we both sat on the Sony Radio Awards Committee, first under the chairmanship of Gillian Reynolds, then John Whitney, then Tim himself. And with his authority and status in the industry, he commanded chairmanship effortlessly and ably: when John Bradford asked me to produce a session for the Radio Festival, and i staged it as a Hypotheticals, with an expert panel, Tim was my first choice as chairman, which he did elegantly and with gravitas, a very large part of its success. But my most abiding memory is of standing next to Tim on the deck of a Channel ferry coming into port on the south coast on a very stormy sea. A very large group of us were returning from a Programme Conference in Le Touquet, when the ship hit a rough patch and almost everyone was very sea-sick. Remembering something about looking at the horizon, I went on deck for some air and found Tim, alone. “It’s best if you keep looking at the horizon”, he said. So the two of us stood there side by side looking at the horizon, chatting slowly and carefully, for what seemed like ages while the ship tried to dock, after which we all felt much better. When the ship was on a rough sea, Tim Blackmore was always stable and reliable, and, as we all knew, exactly the person needed to lead the crew.