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A former Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ reporter talks about the lost decade of his life and how a generous break from a Welsh MP saved him from alcoholism and sleeping rough. Email religion.wales@bbc.co.uk.

30 minutes

Last on

Thu 20 Feb 2014 05:30

A Lost Decade

A Lost Decade

On All Things Considered this week Roy Jenkins guest is a familiar figure from radio and television news programmes.

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As a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Wales political reporter, John Stevenson was regularly seen and heard analysing affairs at Westminster and interviewing the men and women who make laws there. ΜύΜύBut a few months ago he dropped his journalistic objectivity, and told his own personal and very painful story in a film for S4C.ΜύΜύ

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Gadael Y Gwter, Getting up from the Gutter, was more than a neat title, because John Stevenson climbed out of many all too real gutters during what he regards as his lost decade.Μύ He had already lost his marriage, and a couple of jobs; he had wrestled with his sexuality, and then spent much of the eighties in an alcoholic haze, homeless on the streets of Cardiff, Bristol and London.Μύ

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It was an experience he can hardly have imagined when he left home in Anglesey for university in Bangor in the 1970s, intending to become a Baptist minister.

But astonishingly, thanks partly to a generous break from the MP Ann Clwyd, he eventually returned to broadcasting, and has been dry now for twenty years.

Broadcasts

  • Sun 16 Feb 2014 09:00
  • Thu 20 Feb 2014 05:30

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