This is taken from the Times, October 8, 2008:

Bob Friend: Sky News presenter

Bob Friend was one of the BBC’s most distinctive and affable correspondents, covering Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Australia, Japan and the US, before moving to become a memorable presenter with Sky News.

Robert Francis Friend was born in 1938. He spent his early years in Tunbridge Wells. Although he passed his 11-plus and won a scholarship to The Skinners’ School, he did not live up to his initial academic promise and he left school at 15 to work as a junior reporter on the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser (now the Kent and Sussex Courier), where his first assignments were Coronation street parties.

Around this time Friend became a devout Christian and served as a “boy preacher” at the independent mission chapel in Rusthall, near Tunbridge Wells. He was a fine orator — perhaps honing his resonant and warm broadcasting voice at those youth meetings — and it was expected that he would go to theological college and become a Baptist minister. However, National Service came in l956, and Friend later confessed that he lost his faith in the sleazy Hong Kong district of Wanchai while serving as a corporal clerk with the 48th Gurkha Infantry Brigade.

On his return to the UK Friend helped to set up the West Kent News Agency. When pickings were thin he and his fellow reporters enjoyed selling stories about local notables to the Fleet Street gossip columns, but eventually the agency got into financial difficulty, and in the late 1960s Friend moved to the BBC. He joined the Home Service South-East Regional News, but with the re-organisation of radio in the 1970s he became a reporter in an expanded pool at Radio Four.

It was Friend’s good fortune that his producer and mentor on the regional news, Marshall Stewart, became the editor of the Today programme. For five years from 1969 Friend rotated between working as a reporter for Today and covering Northern Ireland. He also made a lengthy trip to Vietnam towards the end of the war.

In 1974 BBC News decided to appoint its first staff correspondent in Australia. Friend, given his experience and his open, genial personality, was a natural for the job. His tenure coincided with the re-emergence of the former Labour Minister John Stonehouse, who had disappeared from Miami Beach leaving his clothes behind, Cyclone Tracy, which killed 71 people and demolished 70 per cent of Darwin, and the sacking of Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister, by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.

Friend also set a new standard in Royal coverage with his humorous and non-deferential news documentary of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee tour across the Pacific. In Darwin he persuaded her to place a radio microphone in her handbag so that viewers could hear her talking to the survivors of Cyclone Tracy. The Queen recalled that journey when she appointed Friend MBE in June 2003.

Christmastide l974, when Stonehouse and Cyclone Tracy hit the headlines, was the peak of Friend’s career as a BBC correspondent. Friend, in London for a year’s-end international review for BBC2, flew to Sydney, arriving on Christmas Day to find a pack of Fleet Street reporters scouring Melbourne for Stonehouse and the only communication with Darwin was an emergency Morse code signal.

Eventually he outwitted his Fleet Street rivals to gain exclusive access to Stonehouse. One interview was filmed in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, with Stonehouse’s underwear drying on a washing line in the background.

Friend loved Australia, and when Al Grassby, the Immigration Minister in the Whitlam Government, suggested it, he, his wife Marion and their two daughters were sworn in as Australian citizens at a special ceremony.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation offered him the presenter’s position on its morning radio show, AM, but Friend suggested Red Harrison (obituary, August 1, 2008) instead and moved to be the BBC’s correspondent in Tokyo. That posting, during which he followed closely Nissan’s moves to set up a plant in Sunderland and was often consulted for advice about the UK, ended in l983.

Friend then became BBC Breakfast Time’s reporter at large in North America. He always had a deep appreciation of eccentricity, and some of his reports came from the fringes of American life. For part of his posting his producer was Mark Thompson, the current Director-General. Thompson said it was one of the most enjoyable and formative experiences of his life.

The US assignment also confirmed Friend as a giggler. He corpsed during an interview about A Passage to India with the director, Sir David Lean. Lean, notoriously short-tempered, threatened to phone the Director-General in London which only prolonged the giggling.

When the Birt revolution got under way at the BBC the old news and current affairs departments were uncertain where, in a changing structure, to put Friend. The founding head of news at Sky News, John O’Loan, hearing that Friend was temporarily stateless, promptly signed him for the launch of what was to be Europe’s first 24-hour news channel in early 1989.

Friend’s time in Australia enabled him to work effectively with the Australians whom O’Loan brought over to launch the channel. According to a later head of news, Nick Pollard, his “warmth of presentation” had a big impact on Sky’s growing audience.

In the studio Friend had an unpredictable quality which kept co-presenters and the production teams on their mettle. In one episode celebrated by TV news insiders, he was asked to do a newsflash on the death of two African leaders in an air crash. There was no time to consult a pronunciation adviser. The names swirled before Friend’s eyes on the prompter and without a blink he said: “We are withholding the names until the relatives have been informed.”

For all his occasional tendencies to giggle and to cause his co-presenters to corpse, Friend was never less than professional when the occasion demanded during his 14 years of authoritative broadcasting at Sky News. His long hours of live coverage of the Hong Kong handover in 1997, when he recalled his National Service, and a long period presenting from Washington during Desert Storm in l991 were among the highlights. During the general election campaign in 2001 he did 13 live political interviews in a single on-air shift, demonstrating how thorough his research was day-by-day. Many leading personalities, including Tony Blair, agreed to appear on his farewell video five years ago.

Among the regular viewers of Sky News were Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, during their long stay in London. Cruise gave him a cameo role as a news presenter in Mission Impossible. Twentieth Century Fox (a News Corporation company) riposted by casting him in a similar role in Independence Day. Friend also had some TV roles, most notably in Jonathan Creek.

Friend is survived by his wife, Marion, and their two daughters.

Bob Friend, MBE, journalist and broadcaster, was born on January 20, 1938. He died of cancer on October 8, 2008, aged 70

This is taken from The Guardian:

Bob Friend - an appreciation
Former head of Sky News Nick Pollard pays tribute to his friend and colleague Bob Friend, the news presenter who died on Wednesday

After Bob's death on Wednesday, it was said that Mark Thompson, the BBC director general and a great personal friend of Bob, had referred to him as "the best journalist the BBC ever had".

Whatever Mark's actual words were, it was a lovely tribute to an old pal and richly deserved. But my own reaction was: "No, he was much better than that." Let me explain. Without doubt Bob was a master of his trade but "the BBC's best ever" would have to be a lot of things that Bob never was – utterly single minded, focused on work to the exclusion of all else and rather dull company.

Bob was so much more than that – more interesting, more fun, more aware of the absurdities of life and more willing to embrace them to the full.

Bob's passing marks the breaking of another link to a different age of journalism. It's hard for many of today's young thrusters to imagine it, but Bob came of journalistic age at a time when having fun was at least as important as getting the job done – though if you didn't do that as well you'd be shunted into some obscure BBC department, never allowed near a microphone again.

There was never any danger of that happening to Bob. He made his mark as a globe-trotting correspondent for BBC radio and television through the 70s and 80s. He was an outstanding reporter who loved his work and, in tune with the times, was happy to discuss it after hours in bars from Sydney to New York via Tokyo and Manila.

Bob's charm, outrageous sense of humour and relish of mischief made him the easiest man in the world to get on with. It's all too simple to say: "Oh, and he was a great journalist too," but he really was and that made him an outstanding figure.

He had this remarkable knack of caring a lot and knowing a lot. The infectious smile, inevitably exploding into that trademark guffaw, was never far away but even after 50 years in the trade he hated sloppy journalism and wouldn't put up with it.

I wasn't at Sky when it started back in 1989 but it was clear to everyone that the choice of Bob as senior anchor was an inspired one. With precious few resources at the channel's disposal, he dominated the screen with that winning combination of authority and charm that set Sky on its way to becoming something special, something that would eventually change the way TV news was made – and watched – in Britain. He set the tone for that.

But even as news became a 24-hour, all consuming business, Bob remained stupendously enjoyable company. Before the heart problems that forced his retirement from Sky (and, let's admit it, even afterwards) he loved long lunches, particularly at Langan's in Piccadilly.

"Long" usually meant running all the way through to dinner and beyond. Bob, of course, always had more anecdotes and more preposterous theories than the rest of us put together. He was a top-class performer, on screen or with a glass in his hand.

Bob's final weeks passed too quickly for him to say a proper goodbye to all his friends. I like to think that if he'd had the strength he'd have penned a final message to say, in the words of that Fleet Street titan Hugh Cudlipp: "This note is to say 'thanks for the memories' with no reply of any sort needed."

· Nick Pollard is a former head of Sky News between 1996 and 2006

This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Bob Friend
BBC reporter who charmed the Australians and later became one of the best-known faces on Sky News.

BOB FRIEND, who died of cancer on October 8 aged 70, became one of the most familiar faces on television as an anchor-man on Sky News.

Having enjoyed a successful 20-year career with the BBC, Friend joined Sky in February 1989 when the broadcasting station was in its infancy – he would later claim that, in the very early days, he had had to crawl across a muddy building site to get to the newsroom.

By the time he retired two decades later he was known as "the face of Sky News", having been a popular presenter of Live at Five and then Sky News at Ten.

Friend was not only a gifted journalist with a sharp instinct for a story. He was also quick to appreciate the power of non-stop programming; and viewers warmed to his humour, easy manner and the authority which he brought to his role.

Tom Cruise was so impressed by Friend's professionalism and engaging skills as a presenter on Sky News that he invited him to take a cameo role in Mission Impossible; he later had a similar part in Independence Day, at one point delivering the line "God help us all".

Robert Francis Friend was born on January 20 1938, the son of Jack Mitchell, a banjo player, and Dorothy Friend. Bob never met his father, and was brought up by his mother – who worked for the GPO – and her parents at their home at Rusthall, near Tunbridge Wells. Having showed early promise by winning a scholarship to The Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells, he abandoned his education aged 15 to become a cub reporter on the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser; his first job was covering street parties being held to celebrate the Coronation. At one stage during his teenage years he considered attending theological college with a view to becoming a Baptist minister, but rejected the idea.

After National Service with the Gurkhas in Hong Kong, he returned home to start the West Kent News Agency. This proved highly successful – unlike his next venture, a travel agency which he hoped would take off on the back of the package holiday boom of the late 1960s; that business went bust, yet Friend refused to declare himself bankrupt, repaying all his creditors within only a few years.

In his quest for stories at the news agency Friend encouraged his team of reporters, when times were thin, to knock on the doors of big houses in the area in the hope of finding snippets to sell. In this way he discovered that Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, who had led RAF Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain, had been given for Christmas a Parisian aftershave which he flatly refused to wear.

In 1969 Friend joined BBC radio's south-east regional news programme as a scriptwriter. His mentor there was Marshall Stewart, who later became editor of the Today programme and brought Friend into its reporting pool. For four years he proved himself as a skilled and industrious reporter, spending much of his time covering the growing sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

In 1974 Friend was appointed BBC television's first Australia correspondent. His affability made him popular there, and the affection was returned: Friend took Australian citizenship, and subsequently, as a dual national, held two passports – which proved useful during the Falklands war, when the Argentines refused to allow BBC journalists with British passports to enter their country.

In Australia Friend secured an exclusive interview with John Stonehouse, the former Labour minister who in 1974 faked his own death, only to be unearthed later that year in Melbourne. This story coincided with the cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin. Three years later Friend covered the Queen's Silver Jubilee tour of the South Pacific, employing a new, less deferential style that was to become the norm for reporting royal stories.

After five years in Australia, Friend spent another five in Japan as the BBC's Tokyo correspondent, before moving to New York as North American reporter-at-large for Breakfast Time.

At Sky, Friend was a popular figure, known for the help and encouragement he gave to younger, less experienced journalists. Every Christmas he gave a crate of beer to the security guards on the main gate. When he visited the Costa del Sol, where he had a flat, the British expatriate community – many of them Sky News viewers – treated him like a celebrity.

In 2003 Friend was appointed MBE. He retired in October that year.

Bob Friend is survived by his wife, Marion, and their two daughters.