AN ATHEIST IN THE PEW

Ludovic Kennedy says Jill Dando's memorial service struck a false note

I WENT to Jill Dando's memorial service at All Souls, Langham Place, on Tuesday because years earlier, when she was reading the news on the BBC's breakfast-time pro- gramme, and I was there to be interviewed, I had fallen for her in the platonic way that old gents (in six weeks I shall be 80) often do towards young women. I had seen the same thing happen 50 years earlier between Sachie Sitwell and my fiancee, Moira Shear- er, then a rising star in the Royal Ballet.

Sometimes, when Jill was in this country (she spent a lot of time abroad on the Holiday programme), I took her out to lunch, the last time just a month before her death. She told me about her engage- ment to Alan Farthing, a gynaecologist, and their forthcoming marriage. She talked about the possibility of having chil- dren, and, as she was then in her late thir- ties, I suggested she give up telly for a few years and start to raise a family while there was still time. She seemed attracted by the idea, though I imagined it was something she must have discussed with Farthing.

In the church I was hemmed in by the BBC: Ron Neil and Martyn Lewis in my row, Alan Yentob and Nick Ross, Jill's co- presenter of Crimewatch UK, in the row ahead, Duke Hussey and Sue Cook in the one behind. Martyn, when he prayed, went right down on his knees and put his head in his hands; the rest of us leaned a little forwards. There was a mini orchestra near the altar and, while we waited, it played bits of two piano concertos (Shostakovich and Mozart) followed by an appallingly noisy organ prelude said to contain the signature tunes from Crimewatch and Holiday. Then we all rose (though I sat because of my wonky legs) to sing what was said to be Jill's favourite hymn, 'How great thou art', of which this was the repeated refrain:

Then sings, my soul, my Saviour God, to thee, How great thou art, how great thou art.

This really set the tone for the proceed- ings, which, for the most part, seemed to consist more of lashings of praise to the Almighty than remembrances of Jill. After Jennie Bond had read Christina Rossetti's 'When I am dead, my dearest', without much thought for the phrasing, we sang an anthem with the chorus:

Lord of all, to thee we raise This our joyful hymn of praise.

Next, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police read a slice of St Paul to the Philippians, ('Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!') and then we sang 'Amazing Grace':

The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures, He will my shield and portion be, so long as life endures.

Seeing where we were, I naturally expected some mention of the alleged Cre- 'Sorry to bother you again, P.D., but J.B. is still waiting outside to see you, and a G.R. has just arrived.' ator, but I found all this a bit much, dead thoughts expressed in a dead language, of which I had had my fill at prep and public school. As an old atheist to whom, as to Feuerbach, Bertrand Russell, Isaiah Berlin and many others, God is a chimera, a fan- tasy of the mind, all this was a long way from the dear girl I loved and remembered; nor was she brought any nearer by the next item, the sports commentator Bob Wilson reciting a chunk of Isaiah 40 ('Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God').

The penultimate performance came from Jill's long-time friend, Cliff Richard, an ardent Christian, who sang with the orches- tra a song called 'This Love'. What the words were I couldn't grasp, but I guessed that it was a celebration of heavenly, not earthly love, in tune with all that had gone before.

Had the service ended there, I would have found there had been little to say for it. But then came the star of the afternoon, the BBC's Director-General, John Birt. I had met Birt a few times but never enough to form a judgment; and I was not unaware of how poorly some of his reforms had been received among the BBC's foot sol- diers, nor of the desiccated language he was said to employ in his memos and which collectively had become known as Birt- speak.

But his address was a revelation. Lucidly, emphatically and succinctly, he talked to us about Jill's early life, television career, characteristics and character. He said all the things I had hoped, but initially doubt- ed, he would say: Jill was naturally friendly and approachable, not a prima donna; someone who enjoyed her fame but never let it change her; a woman not only happy in herself but the cause of happiness in oth- ers. Birt had an engaging way of speaking, his only concessionary gestures being a fre- quent opening and shutting of the hands; and, when he sat down, I felt I was not the only one wanting to break into applause.

There followed prayers by the BBC's head of religious broadcasting, the Revd Ernest Rea, and a final hymn lauding won- drous, bounteous God.

On the way out I asked Nick Ross if he had been asked to give a reading, and he said he had been glad not to have done so. I had glanced at his face at intervals during the service and sensed that, because of his long professional relationship with Jill, he was finding the occasion a great emotional strain.

We shook hands with the officiating cler- gy in the porch and Ernest Rea said to me, 'I read what you wrote about me in your last book.' I hadn't in fact so much written about him as reprinted a transcript of what he had said at a broadcast morning service. But that, as they say, is another story.

Ludovic Kennedy's most recent book, All in the Mind: A Farewell to God, has just been re-issued in paperback (Sceptre, £8.99).