Gary Burgess, who was given a terminal-cancer diagnosis at the end of last year, completed his last radio show at Channel 103 on Sunday and yesterday bid farewell to his colleagues at ITV Channel.
He began his career in Blackpool in 1993 at the age of 17 before moving to Guernsey in 2003, and settled in Jersey nine years later. The much-loved broadcaster has received widespread acclaim from Islanders for his reporting during the pandemic and is a finalist in two JEP Pride of Jersey Awards – in the Community Champion and Diversity and Inclusion categories.
Speaking yesterday about what life had been like since announcing his diagnosis, Mr Burgess said: ‘It has actually been amazing. To receive a terminal-cancer diagnosis is as rubbish as you would expect but, actually, having so many people, even those I do not know, smothering me with kindness is just humbling beyond words and means more than you would ever guess. On the lowest, darkest days a message to make me smile arrives unexpectedly for no reason from a stranger. There are other days where it is gratitude for your journalism for converting some confusing Covid stuff into plain speak on the news.
‘It has made a huge difference to me as well as Alan, my husband. It just shows you how good people are.’
In 2018, in the wake of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry, the government announced that it would be launching a redress scheme to compensate people who, as children in care, had suffered abuse at the hands of the state. However, former residents of Les Chênes secure unit, who had suffered abuse, were not initially eligible for the scheme. Mr Burgess said that one of the proudest moments of his career had been campaigning to change this.
‘It is a credit to our local media landscape – both the JEP and ITV Channel Television – that they let me keep both stories going, perhaps a little bit more than you might think they were due,’ he said. ‘I know, because I have been told, that keeping the pressure on helped contribute towards righting that wrong. That, from a campaigning perspective, means the world to me.’
At the beginning of 2020, the world, as most people knew it, changed. Around the same time, the government announced plans for a major overhaul of its make-up. Department structures were reorganised, ministers’ responsibilities changed and senior staff reshuffled.
And Mr Burgess said he thought Jersey’s press offering was sometimes taken for granted and that it was ‘vital’ that the local media continued to scrutinise the government robustly.
‘Would we have known the housing status of Charlie Parker? Would we have known about his second and third jobs? Would we have known about the U-turn upon U-turn upon U-turn in the final weeks of his job? About his strangely ended contract, then a new contract? Then his golden goodbye? That is just one example [of the effectiveness of local media] but it is a very important example,’ he said.
