I'm watching "Welsh TV Gold", a HTV programme featuring the documentaries of John Morgan. It is a worrying thought that, with the reduction of Welsh commercial TV programming, we will have fewer opportunities in future to see the broadcast work of this great journalist.
Even tonight, we saw only a fraction of two of his best pieces: the celebration of Llanelli's 1972 defeat of the All Blacks; and his depiction of Murray "the Camel" Humphreys, the Welsh baptist immigrant who became the FBI's public enemy no. 1. The first will surely be preserved in Wales, because of the men and moment it captures, but the second deserves a wider audience and showing in full.
Morgan also produced a feature on Dylan Thomas, which re-assembled many of the people whose lives the poet had touched. Is it too much to hope that ITV will show this again?
Ironically, round about the time of John Morgan's death, a pub opened in Samlet Road, Llansamlet, and was named the "Dylan Thomas". How much more fitting it would have been to have named it the "John Morgan", after one of Morriston's most distinguished sons.
1 comment:
Morgan was actually born in Treboeth, something I hope to feature in a later post.
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