Bogdan Zaryn

A very nice person died this week. I have known radio journalist Bogdan Zaryn for a long time and he was one of the most extra-ordinary people I ever met.

Grieving him are two children, a wife and many, many others. He was in hospital for radical surgery to help him walk again, freely. The first surgery was successful but an emergency surgery after was not. He died Friday, aged 51 years old.

Tragedy always seemed to follow Bogdan. His mother was a survivor of the Nazi’s Auschwitz. She moved to Canada after the war and that’s where she gave birth to Bogdan. Bogdan was born with bad legs, bad back, you name it. The family is not a lucky one.

But even though he was sick for much of the time I knew him, he was also one of the most positive people I ever met. And Bogdan had a special kind of charisma that everyone found irresistible

Even when people got annoyed with Bogdan - and that seemed to be quite often - they never could dislike him. In fact, the opposite. Even when you were annoyed with Bogdan, you always remembered the reasons why you were so, so fond of him.

Bogdan’s guide to journalism

Bogdan never did conventional research. While the rest of us mere mortals looked up stuff in boring old books and computers, Bogus - with typical Bogus logic - thought: why look something up in a book when you can telephone an expert and ask them? So that’s what he did. All day. Everyday. All the time.

After a couple of years of this he had a contact book that resembled a telephone directory for the entire New York State. Bogdan knew LOTS of experts.

Unfortunately, he didn’t just ring experts up. If he didn’t know something - even the most banal of things - he used to ring his work colleagues up, too. Even when they were in the room next door.

Bogdan used to single out individuals at the workplace as the target - victim - of his constant questioning. He phoned them at work, he phoned them at home. At morning, noon and night, Bogdan kept right on phoning.

He knew that he only had a limited time for their direct attention, as after a few days the poor hapless colleague would be such a nervous wreck that they would have to retire to a sanatorium to recuperate - by which time Bogdan had moved on and found himself a new victim to harass. Corridors were littered, at times, with the twitching, gibbering results of Bogdan’s ’special attention’. Some folk would be scared to answer the phone in case it was one of his questions on the other end of the line.

Bogdan was never the most technologically savvy person I ever met. The internet always confused him, a little. Once he was listening to us talking about what a god-send Google was - information in under 0.14 of a second, blah, blah. The next day he came into work and turned on the computer. And then, by reflex, he got on the telephone. This time it was to me. I was in the room next door, so I could hear his voice both on the phone and coming through the dividing wall between us. It was one of his classics.

“How do you spell ‘google’”, he shouted.

“I don’t know,” I said in prophylactic exasperation: “Why don’t you GOOGLE IT!”

It was like that all the time. He was a very hard person to refuse. That’s one reason why he was so good at getting people for an interview. People always stopped for Bogdan, no matter in what rush they were in. I have seen government spokesman being pursued by Bogdan down spiral staircases - Bogdan asking questions as the spokesman helped him get down the steps.

He could illicit the dumb quote from celebrities by asking a perfectly timed, cliché question. He once asked Edyta Gorniak: “So…who is the real Edyta Gorniak?”

Gorniak said: “Ooo, I really don’t know - there are so many sides of me!”

Cringe.

Bogdan had met them all. He interviewed Donald Tusk once about his Kashubian roots, before he became the current prime minister. Tusk didn’t want to speak to him in English and did the interview in Polish. But, somehow - and only Bogdan could get people to do this - he got Tusk to sing him a song in Kashubian! To my knowledge that is a world first.

Even when he was in hospital he was on the telephone the whole time, ringing colleagues up.

After the first, successful operation to help him walk again, he decided that he absolutely must get an interview with his, rather good, surgeon. For two whole days he harassed a couple of colleagues, night, day and very early morning, to get them to send him some recording equipment. Finally, they relented. So a special company car was sent to take to the hospital, not a person, but a small recording device and a microphone. I wonder if the driver made it wear a seat belt?

But you just could not refuse Bogdan, when his mind was set on you doing something for him. And that’s quite a talent he had. A people talent. Bogdan had lots of people-talent.

What a sad day Friday was. It was made all the sadder, for everyone who knew him, for the fact that Bogdan had never been happier. His operation was successful, he was moving house, he had two gorgeous young children. And then one day he went into an operating theatre and never woke up again.

The memories of him will be made up of all the mad stuff he got up to in his life, his wheezy laugh …and maybe his constant questions. But in my mind I will always remember Bogdan’s last masterpiece.

After Bogdan’s operation, the 24 hour news station - TVN 24 - got to hear about this new and risky surgery he had undergone. How they got to know about this is still a mystery to me. Maybe Bogdan rang them up? Anyway, a film crew went down to the hospital in Constancin, on the outskirts of Warsaw, and did an interview with Bogdan. It’s a moving, short piece of film, which you can see here.

I am going to miss him so much.