JOHN SIMPSON

It’s odd how things come back to you. I’m here in Bucharest to make a short film about the Romanian revolution that shook the country 20 years ago. Back in 1989, my valiant cameraman Bob Prabhu waited with me for hours on the morning of Christmas Day, as we tried to blag our way into the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, in what is now Revolution Square in the centre of Bucharest: a large, squat, unlovable building dating back to the early 1940s.

The revolution against Nicolae Ceausescu, the Communist president of Romania, who always reminded me of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (his witch-like wife Elena reminded me even more of Lady Macbeth), had begun four days earlier. The crowd attacked the building and the Macbeths had jumped into a waiting helicopter on the roof and took off just as the revolutionaries thundered up the main staircase. The shooting in the centre of Bucharest went on for several days. It stopped only when the news came through that the Ceausescus had been executed.

Bob and I eventually talked our way into the Central Committee building that Christmas morning. Inside, it was like something out of the Russian Revolution: soldiers lay behind sand-bagged emplacements in the grand entrance hall and any sudden move on our part might have started a wild outburst of firing. On the first floor, where Ceausescu had his immense office, the marble walls were smeared with blood and the carved wooden door was full of bullet holes.

Inside, a deranged sculptor had taken charge of the group of revolutionaries who were guarding the room and had just decided that a poet, who had been a member of the storming party, was an agent working for the secret police, the Securitate. The sculptor ordered his men to strip the poet. Then he put his foot on the back of the poet’s neck and pointed the muzzle of his Kalashnikov at his head.

At this point, Bob told me that his camera was running out of power and asked if I would go and get him another battery from our hotel nearby. I tiptoed out, unsure whether the sculptor might not think I was from the Securitate too. It took me half an hour to get back through all the jittery soldiers — when I finally had, the sculptor was the one lying on the floor in his underpants. The poet, now fully dressed, had his foot on the sculptor’s neck. It was a pretty wacky revolution.

Ceausescus’ flat lay at the back of his office, and the poet eventually allowed us to film inside. ‘Everything is made of gold in there,’ he said. Everything — the door handles, the electrical fittings and so on — was in fact made of rather tacky imitation gilt. The curtains were unlined, the carpet looked worn, and Ceausescu’s pyjamas lay in a heap on the bed. As we left, the Ceausescus’ housekeeper, who seemed to take a fancy to me, gave me his genuinely gold pen as a keepsake.

We met someone else in the building: a taxi driver called Adrian, who spoke quite good English. I knew that all taxi drivers in Bucharest were likely to be working for the Securitate, but we were in desparate need of a translator. I hired him on the spot. He came back to the hotel with us, but as we were starting to edit our material he asked if he could slip out for lunch. I agreed. After a while there was shooting nearby, and Bob went to film it from the roof of our hotel.

When he came back, Bob said, ‘Let me show you these pictures.’ He had filmed Adrian, our new translator, directing a group of Securitate men as they fired down from the roof of a house. Soon afterwards Adrian came back. ‘Good lunch?’ I asked. ‘Very good,’ he said. Then I showed him our pictures. I’ll give him credit for his coolness. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I’m working for a group of revolutionaries who are defending the citizens.’ The trouble was, he was so useful I didn’t want to get rid of him; I just didn’t let him out of my sight any more.

That evening, just as I was about to send my report to London, the word came through that the Ceausescus had been executed. On Christmas Day. I had to rewrite my script in 15 minutes, and it was only when I stopped, my hand aching, that I realised I had used his gold pen to write his obituary.

Now I’m back after 20 years. I’ve tried to find Adrian, of course, but he’s long since vanished. So has the sculptor. The poet is now a politician. Why am I not surprised? I went back to look at the balcony of the Central Committee building where Bob and I had filmed the revolutionaries as they made speeches to the crowd and waved their flags. Now the building belongs to the Interior Ministry.

But not everything has changed. The door onto the balcony still sticks, just as it did in December 1989, causing problems for the revolutionaries who wanted to get out there and had to edge through, one by one. In 20 years, no one had done anything about it. It felt magnificent to be standing there again after all this time.

But now I remembered something else. Twenty years ago there had been a wooden platform for Ceausescu, who was a little man, to stand on when he made his Macbeth-like speeches to the crowd. Now it’s gone. As I say, it’s odd how little things like that come back to you.

John Simpson is the BBC’s world affairs editor and can be seen around the globe on BBC World News, available in 200 countries and territories worldwide, and on selected British Airways flights.

Read John Simpson's last Letter from Bucharest.