The inspirational Suu Kyi

‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me.

‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me. It means that once again I am officially a free person,’ says Aung San Suu Kyi at the beginning of the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4 (Tuesday mornings). That connection between the BBC and the powerful, emotive word ‘freedom’, made by one of the most influential figures of the 21st century, has finally broken through to the politicians who are deciding on the fate of the World Service. Last week the Foreign Office, coincidentally maybe, but probably reactively, decided not to cut three of the foreign-language services previously threatened with budget-slashing abolition — the Hindi service, the Arabic service and the Somali service. But the threat to the World Service is still not over, and Suu Kyi pointed out how damaging the cuts have already been.

In an interview she declared that what had helped her most through the early years of her house arrest (when she was still allowed the ‘freedom’ to listen to the radio) was not, as you might expect, the news bulletins, the information branch, the serious reportage, but the inane chatter of Dave Lee Travis — or rather the conversation of his ‘listeners’ who wrote in to his request programme, A Jolly Good Show, on the World Service. What she enjoyed was not just the weird variety of music but also hearing about the ‘ordinary lives’ of others. How people manage day-by-day, coping with their own private griefs and tribulations. Or even just how they shop, cook, argue, find solace, chat, joke and above all laugh. As her mother used to tell her, who needs to watch sad films when there is so much sadness in your own life? (Suu Kyi’s father was assassinated by the Burmese authorities when she was just two years old.