Later Career
Such was Hanna's identification with by-elections that in 1987 he was a guest star in Blackadder the Third, reporting on S. Baldrick's victory at the rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold in the episode Dish and Dishonesty (and credited as "his own great-great-great-grandfather"). By this time, however, Hanna had left the BBC to set up his own freelance production company which specialised in trade union issues and mainly worked for the public service television station Channel 4. He also co-presented A Week in Politics for the channel from 1989 until his death. He was an active Radio broadcaster on BBC Radio Five Live from 1994 where he managed to achieve an audience despite his show going out from midnight to 2 AM. From 1996 he presented Medium Wave on BBC Radio 4 and also hosted two series of the panel game Cross Questioned (the second was broadcast posthumously). His media company gave public relations advice to several local authorities on presentation. Hanna also made a successful appearance on Have I Got News For You.
Hanna was an active trade unionist in the National Union of Journalists. He led a strike at the BBC in 1985 when the Governors, bowing to Government pressure, suppressed a documentary called Real Lives: At the Edge of the Union which covered the home life of Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin and Gregory Campbell of the Democratic Unionist Party.
He was a pioneer of online communications in journalism, being a regular contributor to Compuserve's UKPOLItics forum from the early 1990s.
Hanna died in 1997 of a stroke, at the age of 57.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Hanna
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