Michael Buerk: BBC man who relishes a tough assignment Ten of them. Chances are they won't be sitting around the campfire debating the moral parameters of nationalism or the contradictions of meritocracy, as Michael and his brainy pals like to do of an evening. Will he stand it? And, more to the point, will his Moral Maze audience stand by him? At least Buerk is no stranger to suffering. It was his unsparing reports from Africa in the Eighties that made him famous. He covered the struggle for majority rule in South Africa, deftly dodging the regime's reporting restrictions, and, when things became too problematic, set off for Ethiopia, where a calamitous but barely reported famine was killing thousands of people a week. Buerk's reports caused a sensation. Wandering among the starving and the heaps of corpses, he spoke of "the closest imaginable thing to hell on earth." Among those watching was Bob Geldof, who, as a direct response to Buerk's broadcasts, brought about Band Aid. The idea of what charitable fundraising could achieve was expanded for ever. As a boy, Buerk had hoped to join the RAF, but his eyesight was below par and his application was rejected. Even before this setback, it had been a complicated childhood. His parents, Gordon and Betty, met at a Christmas dance in Birmingham in 1944 and were married the following year. Gordon was a captain in the Canadian army, who told gripping tales of being torpedoed by a U-boat and fighting his way through Italy. It was all fantasy. And the wedding was a sham. Smooth-talking Gordon already had a wife back in Canada. The consequent collapse of his home life saw little Michael left alone with his mother in Solihull. He writes in his autobiography of his awkwardness as the only boy at his school without a father, and how he was too embarrassed to invite friends home. Two decades passed before he tracked his father down. By then, Gordon was dying of cancer: "I looked at him and I felt no emotion whatsoever." He says he wanted a "glamorous career" by way of compensation, and launched it from the newsroom of the Bromsgrove Weekly Messenger, where he met his future wife, Christine. They have twin boys, one of whom, Roland, is also with the BBC. His unfashionable views on aspects of modern life and broadcasting make it easy to caricature Buerk as an ageing BBC barroom buffer. He has scoffed at women presenters who complain of ageism, arguing that since they landed their jobs with the help of their looks, they shouldn't complain about being sacked when the looks go. He has lampooned the corporation as a redoubt of metropolitan liberalism with "The Guardian as its bible and political correctness as its creed." London has become a city where you feel the only way to hear English spoken is to hail a taxi. The property is being "bought up by Russian crooks, Greek tax-dodgers and Arabs." Happily, there are still a few places where a chap can feel at home. One is in The Moral Maze. Another, in the jungle.