In 1961 ITN reporter Brian Widlake met Nelson Mandela, while he was in hiding, to conduct the former president’s first ever TV interview. The 42-year-old was on the run from the police at the time, and Widlake had to pull some strings to arrange to meet him in his hideout, with the interview part of a longer ITN Roving Report programme about apartheid.
The following year Mandela was arrested on allegations of sabotage and other charges and sentenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before finally being freed.
