BBC Breakfast icon Bill Turnbull kept a secret for his co-presenter Sian Williams for over 25 years, she has now revealed. Bill, who passed away aged 66 on Wednesday, acted as a listening ear for Sian when she suffered an accident in the '90s and asked him to keep it to himself.
The pair had only just met at the time, but the late presenter stayed true to his word and never told anyone, the Mirror reports. In 1992, Sian was a "rookie" Radio 4 presenter when she met Bill in Arkansas during the US presidential election campaign.
He was the BBC's Washington correspondent at the time, and met Sian before working on producing a Bill Clinton programme together. Shortly after they met at a restaurant, Sian collapsed - but Bill was on hand to help.
She told The Telegraph : "I was nervous. It was my first big assignment away from base. I’d just returned to work after having my first child and I was anxious to prove myself as a capable producer. Half an hour after arriving in a hotel in the state capital Little Rock, I met Bill Turnbull in a hotel restaurant to discuss the programme and, over a meal, promptly keeled over and collapsed.
"He called the paramedics and we spent the first evening of our trip in the hospital’s ER department. I was fine - it was probably jetlag and nerves - the trip was memorable, the programme (eventually) was a good one and he vowed never to tell anyone what had happened. He kept that secret for 25 years."
As they travelled together on the flight home, Bill even joked saying he would only work with her again "if she didn't pull another stunt like that". And they would end up working together again less than a decade later, when Sian was working weekends at BBC Breakfast.
She said: "That friendship, forged in adversity – and laughter – continued and deepened. You don’t get up at 3.30am every morning to go to work if you don’t like who you’re working with, and we trusted and respected one another. It meant a partnership based on companionship, not competition."
This touching tribute comes after a video from 2018 was unearthed of Bill talking about his 2017 cancer diagnosis, which he described as "the worst days of my life". He explained in the video for Channel 4's Stand Up To Cancer that he wished he'd gone to the doctor sooner, as he had been ignoring his symptoms.
After his GP told him he has cancer, and that it had spread to the bone, he said: "I thought now I’ve got to deal with the future of having much less of a future than I thought I had. And then this, like, dark cloud comes down. So, it’s a very difficult moment and those first few days after diagnosis are really horrible. Probably the worst days of my life."
Speaking about his "amazing life", Bill explained that he wouldn’t feel upset if his life was to end.
He said: "If it was all to end tomorrow, I would not feel hard done by because I’ve had an amazing life. I’ve been incredibly lucky and if one thing comes out of this, it’s that actually, if you know that your time is limited, you appreciate so much more the world around you and particularly the love of my family."
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