Saturday 5 August 2017

Despite everything, the BBC has hired another Gronmark!

Mrs. Anna Leena Gronmark joined the BBC earlier this year. An old BBC chum of mine emailed me about this exciting development earlier today...

...and I was able to assure him that she and I are not related, and that I had never previously heard of her. There are still a few former colleagues of mine working there (including the current DG, who was my first boss at News), and I imagine poor Mrs. Gronmark being asked if she is, by any, chance, related to...and her Googling me and finding this blog and backing away from the computer with a horrified look on her face, quite possibly clutching a crucifix.

With any luck, I've been wiped from the corporation's memory banks, and she's utterly unaware that she's not the first Greenfield (which is roughly what the name means) to work there. She is, as I suspected, a Finn, who has presumably removed the umlaut from her "o" (or from her husband's "o" - I've no idea if she was born Gronmark or became one when she married). I changed the "ø" to an "o" decades ago, partly because I was tired of receiving letters addressed to Mr. Grnmark (the sender having assume that I'd erroneously entered an "o" in my name and then, realising my mistake, had crossed it out), and partly because it used to upset computers. As I've pointed out before, while I am a Norwegian, as was my father, Grønmarks are rare in Norway, but Grönmark is a fairly common name in Finland.

In the unlikely event that Anna Gronmark ever finds her way to this obscure little corner of the blogosphere, let me assure her that I thoroughly enjoyed working for the BBC, consider it a privilege to have worked there, and that, while I complain constantly about its left-liberal social-engineering tendencies, I'm not an abolitionist, and still appreciate all the good things it does. If only its editorial staff would leave their political prejudices at reception on the way into work, and pick them up again on the way out. It's not impossible - I know, because I did it for 20 years (which, come to think of it, may be why I'm so keen to air my prejudices now).

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