During her talk in Sunderland, Adie mentioned that Geordie accents were well-liked across the country, but there was a strong dislike for accents from Birmingham.
Adie, an esteemed BBC journalist, shared her extensive career multi-faceted experiences, from her early days at BBC Radio Durham to covering significant global events such as wars and the Tiananmen Square protests.
Her voluminous personal archive, including numerous notebooks, tapes, letters, photographs, and videos, was donated to the University of Sunderland. However, the funding to properly catalog these items arrived only last year.
Despite growing up in Sunderland, Adie mentioned that her family, including her adopted parents and their parents, never had a strong accent.
She confirmed that years ago, the BBC had an unofficial ranking of the most liked and disliked accents. Geordie accents were generally liked, but the Birmingham accent topped the least liked list.
Michael Buerk, a news reporter from Birmingham, once refrained from using his accent to avoid threats, as Adie cited. Adie also mentioned that the accents on news programs could be the subject of numerous dissertations.
Her major career break came during the Iranian embassy siege in May 1980. Even so, it did not immediately make her a star journalist; the following day, she was sent to cover a pool winner.
The archive includes a bullet that grazed Adie during her reporting in Tiananmen Square. However, her worst moment occurred in Belfast when she thought she had been shot in the face but was actually hit by a potato.
The archive also offers a glimpse of Adie’s childhood, which was characterized by playing lots of tennis, and her time at the National Youth Theatre, where she met various individuals from different backgrounds. She fondly remembered an interesting girl named Helen Mirren.
The University of Sunderland stated that the cataloging of Adie’s collection essentially “unlocks” it, revealing images and stories from her first BBC job in Durham in 1968, her subsequent jobs in various locations around the UK, and a memorable incident in Brighton where she and her team covered a double murder, much to the chagrin of her news editor in Southampton who had assigned her to cover an embroidery exhibition.
Adie once faced dismissal for her reporting the double murder, but she soon got a call from a national news editor and eventually joined the London newsroom.
David Bell, the university’s vice-chancellor and chief executive, hailed Adie as one of the most talented broadcasters of her generation and expressed plans to digitize key parts of her collection.
Adie, now 79, can still be heard presenting “From Our Own Correspondent” on BBC Radio 4. Upon being asked about the state of news reporting today, Adie proposed that small radio stations should be established in every UK town to provide local information, a model she observed in New Zealand.
