BVA ARCHIVE: Profiles
Tribute by Tom Harris taken directly from his speech notes, given during the BVA Social Evening, at which the first Gunnar Rugheimer Award was presented… to Gunnar Rugheimer!
Gunnar Rugheimer
I always understood that a tribute was something like Danegeld (or, in this case, is it Svenskgeld?) that was paid to hoards of Norsemen who arrived in Britain in longboats, intent on rape and pillage. Clearly, either my hearing or Gunnar's was at fault, as when he duly arrived it was in a Volvo and not a longboat; He must have been sitting at his oar on stroke side, not bow side, and missed the message. We are eternally grateful that he clearly missed the team coach's pre-match speech about rape and pillage and "keeping the numbers up in the 1970 something season". Britain's gene pool is assuredly the poorer.
Now let's see… a potted history: Birthday 22nd February 1923. Early years (the dark ages) shrouded in mystery. Post-war, decided to re-enact Eric the Red's invasion of America in 1948, but turned right too sharply at Greenland and ended up in Canada. Yet again, seems to have missed out on team orders about rape and pillage and, instead, thought he heard the words "lake and village". There was some-thing about "stunning old trout" too. All this was clearly too good to be ignored and Gunnar took out Canadian citizenship
Gunnar has had a lifetime's interest in watching others try to communicate. And he soon realised that any medium which enabled the sight and sound of mankind demonstrating just how tricky this can be, was bound to be a surefire success. We are therefore unsurprised to find that, in a trice, the CBS network had snapped him up and that Gunnar had become Director of European Programming. However, this was in an age before Ingmar Bergman's viewer rating was in the top 10 and films such as Jag är Nyfiken had aroused the curiosity of North America.
The process of actually running a television network while being able to do some simultaneous fishing must somehow have grabbed the Rugheimer imagination as, next, we find him organising an entity called Telefis Eireann in the emerald Isle. Much to his chagrin, when the job was done Gunnar discovered that they hadn't installed a trout lake at headquarters. In a fit of pique he therefore retired back to Scandinavia to install national TV networks in any country that would have him. So successful was he at filling in the holes in the global network, national shortages of netting rapidly developed and Gunnar was once again on the move.
Thinking that places such as White City and Bush House were sure to contain chalk streams, Gunnar joined the BBC to find that, once again, he was expected to go fishing in his spare time. It was a curious sort of job: Gunnar was by now into property in a big way. He had decided that, much against the advice of the local estate agents, he wanted to buy Dallas, complete with its simple oil-countryfolk occupants, but he felt that he might get a better deal if he bought it through third parties in New York. So, off to New York, where, by pure serendipity, he met a lady called Ingrid. It may be that Gunnar confused the magic initials IR and JR but anyway, he indicated that he was buying and she told him firmly that she wasn't selling. (Even though property development and speech therapy are not entirely dissimilar, it appears that Ingrid didn't have the proxy authority at the time).
We should be aware that at that time Gunnar had another hobby, a game called "Outlasting Directors General of national broadcasting net-works". Gunnar was very good at this game and, while at the BBC, won 5-0. A never-to-be-repeated whitewash and, who knows, a very early pilot for a series called "Survival").
Having become undisputed champion of Survival, how-ever, Gunnar was becoming restless. The siren song of the nets was calling, satellites were beckoning, there were new nets to be broadcast. Gunnar moved from his simple terrestrial existence into orbit with an incredibly high-tech venture: BSB. All would have been harmony and tranquility and (event-ually) working mini-squarials, but for the evil antipodean multi-media-mega-magnate Murdoch, who coveted sole ownership of the sky and its nets. This led to "the great battle of the sky" which few at BSB survived, but from which Gunnar narrowly escaped by devising an intricate golden balloon with which to float free on the eve of battle. But enough of history, what of Gunnar the man? What of Gunnar and the BVA?
Long ago, there lived a poor ENT Senior Registrar in darkest Oxfordshire, who didn't have enough papers to his name. Now, the medical among you will know that the quickest cure for paperless-ness is to run a symposium, sit in the chair, and hey presto! Magically, you have gravitas, authority and experience in whatever the subject of the symposium. It is a good cure, but the potion demands that the person making the symposium concoction mixes in any recognised world authorities on the subject that they happen to have lying around in the cupboard. Unfort-unately, the desired subject for the symposium was multi-disciplinary voice clinics, a subject first suggested by the poor Registrar's lady. They were running such a clinic in the wilds of Oxfordshire at the time, but didn't know anyone famous in the world of voice. Enter the good fairy - Ingrid. "Hey, I know a couple of people who could help out" (this turns out to be a list of her personal friends number-ing about half the scientists, speech therapists and laryng-ologists seriously into voice on the planet). "But Ingrid we have no money. How shall we pay them?" "No matter dear, they will come because they want to help...". And, stone me, they did! So successful was this wizard wheeze, that the Registrar and his wife tried the same spell the following year, with similar kindness from the good fairy.
Then came the fateful word, phrase, or saying from the good fairy's husband: the wizard (you've guessed) Gunnar. Something along the lines of "This is such fun we need a society to keep it going..." Thus was born the Voice Research Society - named in honour of the voice and of the research that we hoped (some day) to be able to do.
The VRS stumbled along with no funds or staff, aided only by goodwill and much late-night work. Gunnar and Ingrid were at all times held responsible for the birth of the multidisciplinary management model and, therefore, from its inception, they have never been allowed to rest. The VRS hit a rocky patch when another organisation began covering similar ground and it fell to Gunnar to send out diplomats and foot-soldiers to win the peace and restore national unity in the land. This virtually bloodless revolution was achieved with few shots being fired and no serious casualties. After a short engagement, the two societies were amalgamated and promptly gave birth to the BVA. Suffice it to say that it is almost entirely through Gunnar's advice, experience, skills, patience, generosity of his time and his office, his secretary, et al, that the Association has survived through: becoming a charity, then a charitable limited company; enjoys a member-ship - many of whom actually pay their dues; is small, yet stable and financially solvent; has changed the face of voice management in this sceptred isle forever; and made "multidisciplinary" the norm to which all should aspire - even before it became a trendy catchphrase in governmental "medic-speak".
It is said that behind every great man there stands a woman who is bloody exhausted. This may, or may not be true of Ingrid. But Ingrid, you can't hide, we know where you live... I would like the assembled motley to be upstanding, - Gunnar can sit; God knows, he earned it.
I want to propose a toast on behalf of a very grateful BVA, to Gunnar, without whom we would never have made it, and without whom the management of voice problems in Britain and would not have evolved in the same way for the better.
