Charlie Warmington dies: News Letter's legendary columnist Roamer passes away in hospital
The News Letter’s legendary columnist ‘Roamer’, Charlie Warmington, has sadly passed away.
Death notices state the much-loved journalist, whose column delighted readers with colourful and curious tales of Northern Irish history, tradition and people, passed peacefully in hospital.
A second generation Holocaust survivor, his Jewish mother Gertrude was evacuated as a teenager from Nazi-occupied Austria to Northern Ireland on a kindertransport in 1938. Her father was killed in a concentration camp, though her mother lived through the war.
Gertrude married Theo Warmington, a doctor; he was stationed at an Enniskillen leading a team tackling tuberculosis when in 1950, Charlie was born.
The couple’s second son – his older brother Alan followed their father into medicine – Charlie studied architecture at Queen’s University Belfast, and a short spell as a stage designer preceded his journey into journalism via the News Letter, UTV, Downtown Radio and then the BBC.
He worked as a producer and reporter on many of the corporation’s leading news and current affairs programmes, including Radio 4’s flagship programmes ‘The World At One’ and ‘The World This Weekend’.
Also a prolific author of comedy, he penned dozens of satirical shows for theatre, TV and radio, picking up several Sony Awards in the process.
Along with his Roamer columns examining quirky and arresting parts of the province’s everyday history and folklore, he maintained a particular interest in Belfast’s maritime heritage, working with the Lagan Legacy project to set up a museum in a barge moored on the River Lagan – a side of his life he dubbed “Warmington-on-Sea”.
He also wrote and broadcast about mental health, an interest fuelled by his personal struggle with severe clinical depression.
His family history was important to him too; in a piece for the News Letter marking Holocaust Memorial Day in 2015, he revealed the astonishing tale of a 1960s family holiday in which his mother met a former Nazi soldier who was part of the occupying force in Austria, and forgave him.
Describing the man, Fritz, as “a former conscripted German soldier who’d been part of the invasion force that occupied Vienna”, the two families chanced upon each other while both were holidaying in Co Clare.
It was, stated Charlie, “a meeting of memories that could easily have augmented hatred - which is what Holocausts are made of”.
He wrote: “If I could remember and forgive, that would work,” thought Mum, facing a conundrum that millions of pounds and politicians haven’t properly resolved.
“It was hard at the beginning,” Mum recollects. “I always said I would hate the Germans, but somehow as Fritz and I got to know each other the more we respected. We could see that we had to love each other - a love that comes from above”.
“Mum, my father, Fritz and his wife, were to become close, lifelong friends.”
Tributes have been paid to Charlie in the wake of his passing, with broadcaster Mike Philpott stating he is “so sorry to learn of the death of lovely Charlie Warmington”, adding: “The first producer I worked with on my first day at the BBC, and one of the good guys.”
More to follow.