40 years on: An evening with John McCarthy and friends sheds light on their five years – and beyond

On 17 April 1986 John McCarthy CBE was working in Lebanon as a journalist when he was kidnapped and held hostage for five years.  He was cut off from the world, from everyone, including his family and close friends who for four years did not know for sure if he was alive or not.

John, now a patron for Hostage International, was one of the longest-held hostages in history, and months into his incarceration, his close friends started a campaign to keep his name in the public eye.

The Friends of John McCarthy was set up and led by Jill Morrell and Chris Pearson, and forty years on, on17 April 2026, the three joined together for an exclusive conversation chaired by fellow Hostage International patron, Jude Tebbutt, to talk about their experiences and to help raise funds for the charity.

Each spoke from their perspectives from the initial kidnapping and states of disbelief through to the on-going campaign and final release.

When he was kidnapped, John had been on his way to the airport having been called back by his employers WTN (Worldwide Television News) due to the increased security risk following others being taken hostage.

“I was driving out to the airport with a couple of camera crew colleagues and, probably only about ten minutes from the airport, thinking about catching up with Jill and Chris for a beer and talking about experiences in the war zone.”

John’s car was overtaken and stopped and John was pulled into another car.

John said: “In retrospect, it was utterly surreal. You know, so, so weird, what happened to us.

“At that point I was in denial, I couldn’t be kidnapped, I was going to see friends later that evening. This wasn’t happening.

“It was almost like watching a movie, but I happened to be one of the actors in it.”

John was hit on the head by one of his captors, “It really hurt and it burst the bubble.  I was totally terrified.

“I ended up somewhere, had a blindfold put on, and that was the last I saw of any faces.

“For the next five years I only saw the faces of my fellow hostages, otherwise we were always blindfolded and never saw my kidnappers.”

He added: “I was thinking they must have made a terrible mistake… it was just a hiccup.”

Jill, who was also working for WTN back in London, heard from her boss that John had been kidnapped.

She said: “It was a lovely sunny spring morning, I had the day off, and I was getting ready to meet John.

“My phone went and it was my boss. I was annoyed because I thought he was ringing about something related to work, but he said John had been kidnapped and I needed to take a photograph of him in for the lunchtime news.

“I couldn’t process it at all. But he’d given me a job to do so I concentrated on finding a photograph.  “

“I remember getting the taxi to work and looking out on what felt like a different world. but I couldn’t believe it, I thought they’d made a mistake and that John would be on that plane later.”

Chris heard of John’s kidnap on the lunchtime news. He’d been planning to meet up with John that evening.

He said: “Disbelief came first, but a mixture of thinking this is too mad for words, thinking that they’ll chuck him out, but the other side thinking this could go on for a while, and even they kill people.

“The vibe of the afternoon changed.

“I went down to the pub and people were stunned.”

Jill, who was John’s girlfriend at the time, said: “You live hour by hour, day by day, week by week.

“Then weeks and months have gone without any real information or news that John was alive.

“I felt so powerless and I tried to find out as much information as I could.”

Throughout the evening – 40 years on from John’s kidnap – in the beautiful surroundings of Convex Insurance, they shared their experiences of those five years, and beyond. A particular focus was around Jill and Chris’ initial thinking around whether – or not – they should go public to highlight John’s situation and if they could do anything to try to help get him home.

Jude said: “The decision around whether to campaign or not is hard, and is one of the big questions that our team at Hostage International is asked today – whether media campaigns are effective?

“It is complex. We know there are some risks, but we can never be sure if going to the media leads to an earlier release as there is no way to ask the captors holding someone if media influences their decisions.

“But what we do know is that when someone in captivity hears that they are remembered, then that is a huge psychological boost, so Hostage International will always help guide people.”

Hostage International didn’t exist back then, in fact it was set up by one of John’s later cell mates, Sir Terry Waite, as at that time there were no independent experts to offer guidance against the backdrop of the UK government which had advised them to stay quiet.

Talking about whether to go public, Jill said: “I spoke with a French hostage, Jean Louis Normandin,  after he was released and asked him how important it was to know that people were fighting for him at home. He said, ‘it saved my life’. And I thought John doesn’t have that – we were letting him down.

“We never knew if it was the right thing to do.”

The campaign started low-key but grew throughout the years.

Chris said: “It took about two years for the campaign to start and get going. At first, it grew organically but gradually built with a major advertising agency involved. We had so many people helping and running it.”

John first heard about the Friends of John McCarthy at some point over the summer of 1988 and caught some snippets over his time in captivity on the radio, or via other hostages who had access to a radio.

John said: “The BBC World Service kept one going.

“I heard a Middle Eastern expert, and he was talking about it, and he said, ‘I believe the Friends of John McCarthy are influencing British foreign policy towards Lebanon and the Middle East’.

“I was thinking, ‘wow, what are they up to?’.

“At that point it still didn’t translate, I mean I thought it was just you [Jill and Chris] and a couple of other friends getting up to no good!

“But that was just amazing because it wasn’t just that they were not forgetting me, or having a little concert, or just an event to remember me, they were clearly having an effect, according to the senior journalist. And that was just, ‘wow’!

“Every time you heard something like that it gave you hope; someone was shining a light and you thought things must be moving, and it kept you going for another couple of months.

“There was also the sense of, ‘well if they’re keeping going and they’re doing this for me, you know, that’s amazing so I’m not going to give up either’.”

John talked about his friendship and unique bond with fellow hostage and cellmate Brian Keenan, away from the world with only occasional snippets of news passed on by guards or eventually via the media.

“On the face of it we shouldn’t have got on. We were from totally different backgrounds… but amazingly, perhaps those differences were vital. In the early days, I was terrified and he was braver and not afraid to show his anger about conditions. We bounced off each other, particularly in how we dealt with the guards.

“We talked and talked and found that our views of the world were similar, but we – within those circumstances – had to be loyal to each other.

“Supporting each other by challenging each other intellectually but not undermining the other. It was entertaining and interesting and parallel to that we, luckily, shared a sense of humour.

“Particularly when things got brutal, if one of us could make a joke about it that was really important.”

 

Brian was released a year before John, with John released on 8 August 1991.

Jude said: “Release is so surreal, it’s difficult to know what to do.”

When John was released, John and Jill had no professional support.

Jill said: “My life was totally transformed when John came back. The campaign was over and I couldn’t work because of the fame, it was hard.

“The release was euphoric, but it was hard to cope with in other ways.”

Chris added: “The release was mind-bending.

“John was taken off to a safehouse, but when it died down. We, the friends, held back and didn’t want to crowd John and Jill and I probably should have imposed a bit more and suggested going out.

“I don’t think we did the right thing at all.”

At the time there was little support for friends and family who, in John’s word, had equally been held hostage.

John: “When I was released, I was with my dad and brother in Damascus and I had a psychologist and then had some support at RAF Lyneham, but you want to get back to a normal life. I thought I’ll get home and get back to a normal life. I had been anxious about it as I couldn’t picture you [Jill].

“Most of the time, with no pictures in grey cells, memory was like a faded old photograph. But when I came home everyone looked the same so that was alright, and I just wanted to get back to normal

“I was guilty of hiding away; it was weird that everyone knew who you were.

“Perhaps if we’d had counselling, as Hostage International offers, particularly for Jill and me to talk about stuff in a safe environment. We started working on our book together, that was great, but it was separate and we weren’t really recognising each other even though we were desperately committed, it wasn’t happening, someone else would have helped us to see.”

 

Jude, who herself had been held hostage in Somalia in 2011, highlighted how it isn’t really possible to go back to ‘normal’ and has often highlighted how sharing experiences with others in a ‘club that nobody wants to be part of’ through Hostage International has been extremely beneficial.

John echoed the benefits of talking about his experience, and said: “This process of getting ready, talking and meeting to make this presentation with Jude has been very important.

“What we are touching on now is that we would have done better if we’d had other sources of help.

“It is 40 years later, we have all had happy lives, good careers, but it could have been better.

“It’s fascinating that we’ve been going over and looking back in detail and not recognising what all three of us were going through in our separate ways and how that has moved us a great deal and churned things up with some elements of regret, but we are very fortunate that we are still close friends and empathetic.

“Some people won’t have the support of family and friends. All that you [Chris and Jill] did was out of love.

“I was conscious that I had come off the airplane having done nothing for five years and treated as a hero, and Jill was downgraded to a girlfriend who had ‘campaigned tirelessly’.

“Now – Terry (a great cellmate for me in my final year in captivity) having set up Hostage International with Carlo Laurenzi – there is an organisation that supports people like us.

“It is fantastic that it is here but tragic that it is still so needed with around 100 people on their books now, and more than 550 people helped over the years.

“It is desperate but it’s so wonderful.

“[Hostage International] events where Jude and I have been together as patrons, but also as former hostages, with other former hostages, lots of people has been so powerful and moving, and helping one move on even though I thought I’d done that.

“It is always there and it can rise up, and it might be useful to talk to someone from Hostage International.

“Not only am I proud to be a patron, but also a wonderful thing that Terry has set it up, but it needs support.

“We would love to raise more. Please give what you can to support too many families and too many hostages.”

The evening raised over £24,000 to go towards Hostage International’s work in supporting families of hostages and hostages after their release.

Thank you to all our supporters and we hope to build a wider community of regul

ar supporters to continue our essential work for those affected by hostage situations, including arbitrary detention.

Please give what you can.

Sir Terry Waite KCMG CBE set up Hostage International with charity expert Carlo Laurenzi in 2004 after seeing a need for more formal support for former hostages and the families of hostages. Find out more.