Tony Grant, the producer of BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent programme, explains how a piece he commissioned from correspondent Fergal Keane in 1996 became a radio classic. You can read it, and hear it, here on News Online from Christmas Day by clicking on Letter to Daniel in Relevant Stories on this page.

I phoned him in Hong Kong a few days before the birth. He was as anxious - or was it terrified - as any father expecting his first. Having just had a child myself I, of course, considered myself an established expert on all aspects of fatherhood. As we talked of how the birth would affect him and Anne, and how it might alter his attitudes to journalism and being a foreign correspondent, I asked him to do a piece for From Our Own Correspondent after the baby was born. He was not enthusiastic.

But when I phoned again, after the birth, to offer my congratulations and again asked him to tell us how he felt, he was so overtaken by fatherhood, so surprised and overjoyed ... and with so much to say about it, that he agreed. His despatch was played down the line from our bureau in Hong Kong during the early hours of February the 15th, 1996.

It was an early start for me that day. The programme had to be ready to go by ten o'clock and there was a frightening amount still to do. It was still dark when I put the tape from Hong Kong on to the machine, put the headphones on and started it up. It was an extraordinary listen - moving and elemental.

Immediately after the programme had gone out, I left the office to attend a meeting and returned about an hour later. The programme assistant, Judith Hart, had been besieged. The telephone hadn't stopped ... the fax machine was jammed ... the BBC Information Office was trying to get more details from us ... and there were calls from several national newspapers.

During the course of that afternoon, I spoke to perhaps a hundred people who'd heard Fergal's despatch and wanted to talk about it. Many of them had broken down and wept listening to his words. I lost count of the number of callers who said they'd had to pull their cars off the road as they'd become so emotional, they could no longer drive.

It was hard to do any other business that week. Within seven days we'd taken close on a thousand calls and each incoming postbag was full of letters about the item, many wanting transcripts or copies of the tape. No other piece of radio I've been involved with has had a similar response. In fact no other broadcast I've ever heard of has had a response like that to Letter to Daniel.

In the months which followed, the text was published in various newspapers and magazines, and later still BBC Books, with Penguin, published a book, called Letter to Daniel - Despatches From The Heart, which spent half a year in the bestsellers' list. Fergal was invited to receive awards, make programmes, give speeches, write articles and book reviews. The Letter was even set to music and choreographed.

When Daniel was about six months old, Fergal called in at the FOOC office and accidentally left behind a carrier bag containing some of Daniel's clothes. I told him if he didn't come and get them I'd flog them from a barrow in the local market - I'd probably have made a fortune!

He brought the boy in to the office to see us the other day.

For someone less than two years old, he's had quite an impact on the world ... and it was a little surprising to discover that he's just another toddler, with no halo or anything. We gave him some felt pens to play with and, within seconds, he'd made some very interesting designs on our walls ...
 

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