Woodings in the Spotlight

Father and son writers tell their unique stories in unique London radio interview

Dan and Andrew Wooding share how God has led them in journalism careers that are 3,000 miles apart
By Michael Ireland, Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

LONDON, ENGLAND (ANS) -- Journalists Dan and Andrew Wooding were reunited in the British capital recently to share their stories on Premier Christian radio in London. They shared with listeners how God has led them in different writing careers as they live some 3,000 miles apart. Sitting in for regular host John Pantry on the Inspirational Breakfast Show on London's Premier Christian radio, Michael Fanstone began his radio program by introducing Dan Wooding, international journalist and author of more than 40 books.

"He started work as a journalist in Birmingham in 1968. This is the beginning of a long story. Then he moved to work for a number of national newspapers including The Times, The Sunday People, The Sunday Mirror, later emigrating to the USA, where among other things he’s co-hosted the popular TV show the Hollywood Connection as well as being a regular guest on the 700 Club. That’s not all, because having discovered God’s love and care, he specialized as a journalist probing issues to do with persecuted Christians. But now he’s back in his home country on a visit in which he’s leading a team from an organization He Intends Victory based in Irvine, California. My list of things that my guest has been involved in over the years could go on a lot longer than this; I tell you I’ve just sort of nipped a few things out and plucked them out but I’m going to stop now and say good morning to Dan Wooding."

UKWooding explained: "You know I was actually born in Nigeria -- my parents were missionaries from Liverpool and I was born there in1940. But we moved to England when my dad got really sick in 1942 and as I grew I had a dream to become a journalist and my dad being a pastor -- and you being a pastor -- will understand this, he felt there was no more disgusting career for his son. I mean, this was like having an axe murderer around, and he’d say 'son, don’t’ ever get involved in journalism; they’re wicked people they drink, smoke and swear as well.' But he was K to start with because I got my first job with Billy Graham. And if you want to go 'ooh, ah' please feel free to do so."

Wooding said he moved to London and the very first interview he was sent on was to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral to interview Coretta Scott King, just weeks after her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., had been murdered.

"I thought 'this is a really interesting job,' I’m going to interview this lady and the kids were running around in the home of Canon Collins and then shortly afterwards they sent me to the Hilton on Park Lane to interview Mahalia Jackson the great black Gospel singer. Sadly she died two days later, I’m not sure whether I was involved with her death or not! But unfortunately after about a year of working for The Christian (newspaper) we all got what we call the 'left foot of fellowship,' and Billy Graham fired the lot of us. So I went onto a secular paper in West London in Ealing and very soon became a reporter with the Monty Python team. I traveled around with them I did a lot of the early material. I think this is the only thing that I’ve ever done that my son Andrew is proud of is that I helped to launch the Monty Python career)."
Wooding recalled how a few years ago his oldest son, Andrew, found out that Michael Palin was going to be in the L.A. area, he took a video and told him of his father'sinvolvement in the early days, and brought back this wonderful video from Michael Palin in hwish Palin is heard saying 'Dan, you had no idea what you were doing when you helped to launch Monty Python, but a big thank you on behalf of the team.'"

Fanstone said: "But it’s not just Monty Python is it because you’ve interviewed Paul McCartney, Ringo Star, David Soul, Mother Theresa and in complete contrast (gangster) Ronny Kray?"
"Well, it was the Kray’s that got me into Fleet Street. There was a priest in Perivale in Middlesex who I would go and see each week to get local stories and he told me one day he was the parish priest of the Kray’s and would I like to do a story on the priest who never gave up on Ronny and Reggie, (Britain's most famous and infamous gangsters) and so I did. The next thing I know, Mrs. Kray phoned me, asked me to come round for tea (we took all the kids with us, poor ole Andrew’s still recovering from it!). We went to the very place where Ronny and Reggie were arrested.

Fanstone asked if Wooding had a gun pointed at his head while he was there?
Andrew Wooding chipped in: "We were in a high-rise building and there were pictures of her lovely sons there on the table."

Dan Wooding continued: "It was so funny because she handed me a note written on toilet paper smuggled out of Parkhurst (Prison) which said 'Dear Dan, fank you for de lovely story you wrote about us to counteract all the filf that has been already writ about us.' I’d like to commission you now to write my life story. It’s going to be called Cray Country. I mean this is getting a little bit out of control;I’m a pastor’s kid. Now next thing you know I’m meeting all the Kray people, I’m getting messages to go to White Chapel Tube Station to meet the gentleman with the broken nose and the cauliflower ears and so eventually I persuaded him not to do a book but to do a series from the Sunday People. The next thing I know I’ve got a job as a staff reporter and eventually became the sort of guy where anybody who had a nervous breakdown, heart attack or a divorce it was my job was to go in and do a story. So I did one of the last interviews with Eric Morecambe. That got off to a great start, by the way. He’d just had a heart attack and I said Eric what was it like when you had your heart attack? He said oh wonderful I enjoyed every minute of it. I did (comedian) Larry Grason’s story… It was sort of getting a little bit out of control because I did a lot of crime stories. One of the books I wrote was called King Squealer, which was featured two weeks ago on BBC2. They had me on and we were talking about those days. But I went through this period of just losing my faith. We used to drink in a bar called The Stab In The Back and one friend, who had a ministry of rebuking, came to the bar -- I don’t know whether you know Christians with that ministry -- but he basically said 'look at you, you’re wasting your life you’ve got all this talent and you’re wasting it on this drivel: I want you to give your life back to Christ, walk away from Fleet Street, come with me to Uganda and write a book about the church and Idi Amin.'

"Then he said the clincher. He said 'you won’t get paid and you’ll probably get shot at.' So I thought only a Christian could come up with a deal like that!" Wooding recalled.
"I did walk away and I went to Uganda and Pickering and English published it here called the Uganda Holocaust, and it was in Uganda I just knew that my life had to change. God had given me certain skills as a communicator and that was when I just said I want to help persecuted Christians and I met some of the greatest heroes. And I’ve interviewed a lot of celebrities and yet these were the heroes and so that’s what I do. In America I have my own news service which is www.assistnews.net you can see all the stories there today and I also have two radio shows and they’re both devoted to missions and the persecuted church in Los Angeles."
Fanstone asked Wooding about how large an issue the persecuted church has become in his life over the many years since then?

"It started many years ago, it’s been about twenty-five years now. I worked with brother Andrew for many years, did several books for him including his life story. I didn’t do God’s Smuggler but I did God’s Smuggler to China and it’s sort of been very fascinating. One of the challenges was to try and wake up the church around the world about what is happening in restricted countries. It’s quite fascinating because I am the only Brummie who is on national radio in America, and they can understand me! They can’t understand Ozzy Osbourne but they can understand me. My accent is nothing like as bad as his, and of course I’m not stoned all the time !"

"OK, so there you are you’re now changing direction you’re focusing on the persecuted Christians around the world," said Fanstone."This has a profound effect on your faith then, not only do you give up your normal paid job but you start to get spiritually enriched by meeting these people?"

"These people are amazing. I mean I have been to just about every restricted country on earth and been to some very dangerous situations as you could imagine and it just amazes me that these people are like from the Acts of the Apostles many of them. They live under such horrendous conditions. You go to a place like Gaza and you find there’s a Baptist church. Believe it or not (there is a) Gaza Baptist Church.

"It’s got nineteen members, it’s constantly getting taken over by Fatah or Hamas -- they have big gun battles from the roof up there. They have a little Bible bookstore that’s constantly being blown up and they have a library there. It’s just incredible. Go to Bethlehem; Bethlehem, believe it or not, has a Bible College with 120 Palestinian Christians there who are caught in the crossfire between the Israelis and the Palestinian Muslims, and yet it’s just fascinating. And so that’s what I try to do; I try and interpret, because sometimes they’re so exotic that it’s hard for westerners to comprehend. But I just say if you’re a racist, don’t go to heaven because you’re going to meet a lot of people from different races who speak different languages and you’re going to be shocked who you’re going to find there."

Fanstone said he has been reading Wooding's buiogrpahy "From Tabloid to Truth." Now among other things you’re the executive director of Assist Ministries. Is that to do with persecuted Christians or this is different?

"It means Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times and the idea is to raise awareness and help Christians who’ve been persecuted, and we do that through various ways through humanitarian aid but also through communication through media. So I have a worldwide news service that’s free of charge anybody listening -- I know British people love anything free -- it’s free and there’s no catch. Nobody will come and knock on your door and ask you to come to the local Baptist church, so you’re OK! But what we do is we give a subscription to media, to Christian leaders, to anybody who wants to know more about missions and the persecuted church. So Assist Ministries is all part of that. And then we also have a pen pal ministry where we link (and this is to get people involved in evangelism) we link Christians in the west with non-Christians in China and Taiwan and Russia by e-mail. And also my youngest son Peter runs Assist Europe and they work in Beslan where they had that horrendous siege many years ago. He’s taking teams over to Beslan regularly. And again that’s www.assisteurope.net . And you can get information if you’d like to go on the next trip to Russia, it’s pretty intense, but he leads that.""There’s something I need to ask you about -- why you’re in the UK at the moment, because you’re leading a team from He Intends Victory which happens to be the same name as the book you wrote a little while back; and the focus here is on HIV and AIDS. This is a bit different from all the other stuff we’ve talked about' what got you into this?" Fanstone asked.
Wooding responded: "Well they’re persecuted Christians as well. I mean the people with HIV and AIDS who love Jesus were persecuted by the church unmercifully for years. It’s one of the big scandals of Christianity that there was so much disinformation that went out about HIV/AIDS that many of these people, especially in the United States, were kicked out of their churches by their pastors because they thought that you could get HIV from just sitting next to someone.

"One day I had a phone call from a missionary from Uganda who knew I’d written a book about Uganda and said that they had another holocaust going on there called HIV. Idi Amin had fled, and now this was an even worse holocaust. They wanted to know more about HIV and AIDS. So I started checking it out and I found this little support group in Irvine, California called He Intends Victory. There were all these people who found out that they’d gotten HIV. One of them was a Hemophiliac who got it from tainted blood products, one was a wife whose husband had been unfaithful and gave it to her. And I noticed that the church was pointing the finger in judgment, saying 'they deserve it; it’s the gay plague, blah, blah blah' and as I met these people I just thought you know Jesus reached out and touched the leper. He didn’t just heal the leper -- he touched the most infectious person possible; and so they pulled me in and asked would you write a book about Christians living with HIV and AIDS and what the Christian response should be. So we’ve just had a team over, one is the widow of the hemophiliac and she’s telling this unbelievable story of how he got it from tainted blood products and then we have a guy who lived a double life who betrayed his wife and three kids, eventually got full blown AIDS. Through that, he gave his life back to Christ, but he backslid. I went with him when he confessed the whole thing before the church, what he’d done, and he and his wife now minister together. She’s forgiven him and so the idea basically is to say that people with HIV should be able to have an opportunity to go to church. But every church I believe should have an AIDS policy; they should have a way where they welcome people. You know, the church can either be a country club or a hospital. And I believe that the church should be a hospital for hurting people where they can come for physical and spiritual healing. So we’ve been on this wonderful tour and the highlight of it was we went to Strawberry Field. We were in Liverpool and Strawberry Field where John Lennon used to climb over the wall as a little kid and it is now an on fire Christian church, a Salvation Army church and prayer center; and my two friends from America were Beatles fans and we went round the corner to John Lennon’s old house. You could see where he would come round and climb over there. So if you’re ever in Liverpool what a great place to go."
Fanstone then turned his attention to Andrew Wooding, Dan's oldest son, who is also a journalist.
"Andrew, I’m fascinated; you obviously grew up and saw your dad leaping all over the place being a journalist and yet that didn’t some how put you off being a journalist yourself because that’s what you’ve become?"

"I think it stamps of pure greed because I needed to supplement my pocket money income and so Dad exploited me mercilessly and got me to transcribe interviews, type, edit, etc., and I got extra pocket money to buy records!"

"I was surrounded by paper; there was always the smell of newspapers everywhere. I think you got me doing my first word processing job. So, yes I’m very grateful."

"But you’ve got a role now along side the Archbishop of Canterbury, which sounds fascinating to me," said Fanstone.

"That’s correct. Back in the nineties I was involved in Christian publishing and I was doing ministry on the weekends, not to say that Christian publishing isn’t ministry. I was doing youth work and I got to the point where I thought I want to swap this over. I want to do publishing as a hobby and do ministry professionally. So I joined Church Army, did Church Army training, and ironically once I was commissioned from Church Army I’ve now ended up back in editing again as my Church Army job. I’m editing a website that promotes Fresh Expressions of church. I’m employed by Church Army, but I’m part of the Archbishop’s Fresh Expressions team." Wooding explained: "Tthere are a lot of misconceptions, a lot of misunderstandings about it. But back in the 90s when I lived in Worthing, I was part of a church plant called the Queen Street Fellowship and it was a parish church in more of a posh area of Worthing. So they planted a church on a council (housing) estate and our launch service was attended by John Pantry who played half an hour of Queen Songs. I don’t know if I’ve outed him now, and to see John Pantry singing Radio Gogo was quite interesting!

"But the idea is if traditional churches are working fantastic let them keep working, keep funding them and let’s encourage them. Where they’re not working don’t expect people out there to come to us -- we need to go to them and plant churches where they’re at: in their offices, wherever they are in their schools, in their networks and work with them. So that’s what we’re trying to promote and we’re trying to through the website we’re about to launch in October. We’re trying to show people that they can do it and get various principles."

"Anyone who wants to read Andrew’s story about his early life as the son of a journalist can do so on the website called www.fromtabloidtotruth.com," said Dan Wooding. "That’s the name of my latest book and how I escaped the British tabloids, and he’s got a wonderful story in there of death threats from witches all sorts of strange stories. So rather than him tell it now www.fromtabloidtotruth.com and click on Andrew Wooding’s story. "

Michael Fanstone asked Dan Wooding: "You’ve done so much, you’ve got your finger in so many pies, have you over the years any as yet unfulfilled dreams?"

Wooding replied: "I don’t know really I’ve just done so much. When I moved to America I wanted to get into broadcasting there because I was told I was the worst ever interviewer for BBC1 when I used to do interviews for Radio 1 and they said Dan you’re the worst interviewer we’ve ever had! The way I would interview people is that I would say tell me about your stamp collection and they’d say 'Well I started collecting stamps three days after I murdered my grandmother.' I would say 'oh that’s great and how many stamps do you have?' The BBC said you need to actually listen to what people say. So in America now I have two radio programs, and as you said I had a TV show and it’s fascinating. That’s one of the things I love because radio is such a powerful medium to reach out, and so I don’t know if I have anything unfulfilled. I’ve got some lovely grandkids now. We both live in America now both our kids both accepted Christ in America, moved back here with YWAM and I’m just thrilled to be back. So I think the final thing that I fulfilled was to be on Premier Radio, and this is it!"

Original story in Assist News