Today's podcast can't happen as planned, and here's why.

At a round midnight last night, just after I'd fallen asleep in my hotel room here in Piaecenza,

I was called with the news that a colleague had died earlier on in the evening.

It was, and is, impossible news to assimilate.

Not one of us who knew him and worked with him would have suspected that this was possible,

and yet here it is, here we are.

It's now very early on Thursday morning, I'm awake, and David's probably still asleep

in Jerona, but will shortly wake to read the messages I sent him to tell in the news.

I've no doubt that he too will be left searching to make sense of what he reads, as if his

day will have started with the sensation of walking over the edge of a precipice into

thin air.

Ordinarily, these words might not be something that I would choose to publish.

The very act of writing them now and speaking them feels like a delicate process.

His life and its sudden absence perhaps have no place on this rented platform.

And yet, there is a reason why I want you to know who it is that is missing this morning

as my hotel room starts to fill with light, yet another small space and yet another suburb

of another city on a bike race.

The reason I'm here at all is because of him, and the reason that many of you might be listening

to this recording is actually due to the man who's just died.

Steve Dockety was the director and producer of ITV's Tour de France coverage, but those

simple job titles are inadequate to describe the true position he occupied at the heart

of perhaps the most long-standing and enduring production in all of British television.

...