Peter Rhodes on a newspaper legend, horror in the icebergs and an unfair swipe at newsreaders

Now, at last, the system gets tough. From this week, anyone wanting to leave England must fill in a Government form stating the reason for their trip. Sounds Stalinist, doesn't it? Until you get to the permitted reasons for travel which include “ work, education or medical grounds.” Work is the get-out. Work can mean pretty much anything. During the post-Christmas lockdown, envious, shivering Brits were taunted online by celebrities and “influencers” employed to show off bikinis in Dubai. Nice work if you can get it.

It is difficult to overpraise the Beeb's iceberg-and-madness epic, The Terror (BBC2). In every regard, from acting to camerawork, sets and special effects, it is simply superb, and bone-chillingly scary. In fact, it's so good you'd think it was Netflix.

Bob Satchwell has died with Covid-19 aged 73. You may not know the name but he was a legend in my trade, as founder and head of the Society of Editors. I knew Satchwell long before he was famous when we were on a journalism training course in Preston in the 1970s. He was a few years older than most of us students and seemed, even in his mid-20s, to have a serious old head on young shoulders. He didn't socialise much but he went on to become an editor, a campaigner, a hero. Whenever press freedom was threatened Bob Satchwell was at the heart of the fight, making the most important thing that anyone can make. He made a difference.

I came across an online debate which began with someone posing the question, “Could we exist without smartphones, like people did back in the 1970s?” There were just two replies. One said “Yes” and the other “Nope, nope, nope, nope.” Take away the smartphones and we'd certainly miss this level of debate, wouldn't we?

In a tirade against the BBC, the former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman says there is “no grandeur” to reading the news and “any fool can do it.” That's unfair. Newsreaders do more than read the news. They may, at a moment's notice, be pitched into a conversation with correspondents or politicians on such arcane subjects as borders in the Irish Sea or the Pope visiting Iraq, without making a fool of themselves. When Jane Hill or Simon McCoy make the job look easy it's not because the job is easy, it's because they are masters of it.

And even when it's only a reading segment, imagine the rising panic as you glimpse down your autocue to see that the next item concerns the presidents of Burma, Mexico and Zimbabwe and you are expected to pronounce perfectly, and in quick succession, Htin Kyaw, Enrique Peña Nieto and Emmerson Mnangagwa. Over to you, Paxo.