BBC man Gardner returns to work after shooting
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner returned to work in a wheelchair today, 10 months after he was shot by terrorists in Saudi Arabia.
Gardner was shot six times at point blank range and one of the bullets actually severed nerves in his spine. His colleague, Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers, was killed in the attack.
The 43-year-old journalist has undergone 12 operations and spent eight months in hospital.
On his first day back at work, he told the BBC News website: “I’m mentally fine, they didn’t get to my head. But physically my circumstances are very changed.”
He hopes to walk again with the aid of callipers or a walking frame but said: “I don’t think I will be on Come Dancing, somehow.”
Gardner, formerly based in the Middle East, will cover UK security issues and said it was “good to be back” at work.
“You won’t catch me padding around the back streets of Riyadh any more, that’s for sure, but I think there is a need to still explain the factors behind security and to analyse when we get these threats,” he said.
Gardner and Cumbers were attacked in Riyadh last June as they filmed the house of an al-Qaida militant.
He described the shooting as an “execution” and said he would have died within two hours had it not been for the expert team of doctors in Saudi Arabia.
After a month in hospital in the Middle East he returned to the UK where he was treated in a spinal injuries unit.
The married father-of-two said he was “very relieved” not to be completely paralysed.
“I have seen plenty of people in the spinal unit having to come to terms with not using their arms,” he said.
The love of his family and his determination to return to work have sustained him through the past 10 months, he said.
Gardner added: “I have had so much support not just from people here at the BBC but from listeners and viewers and that’s fantastic.
“I have had wonderful letters from Saudi Arabia, people saying that as soon as they heard what had happened they rushed to Mecca to pray for me.”
Gardner, who is writing a book about his experiences, said he was enjoying the attention on his first day back to work.
“I fear all the reporting I’m going to do today is about me,” he said. “It is a journalist’s dream, actually, to talk about themselves forever.”
