Travel for work was a bonus in 1985. That year was the fourth centenary of the births of composers Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti. And I’m not sure that it wasn’t that Scarlatti ( maybe by a hair’s breadth over Handel) was the most travelled of the three that influenced her to propose a series of commemorative programmes based on the life-itinerary of this lesser-known, almost exclusively keyboard-composer. She and I spent two months in continental Europe.... ‘In Search of Scarlatti’... in the spring of 1985, travelling through Italy, Portugal and Spain for a series of twelve programmes broadcast that summer. It says something for the RTE of the day, and for Venetia O Sullivan’s standing in the organisation, and persistence, that such a worthy enterprise was sanctioned. Working with her, or to be chosen to work with her was a privilege. One had to be patient, sometimes very patient. I remember the first night of our Scarlatti journey, when we were sitting in a small restaurant in Naples - Scarlatti’s birthplace – a restaurant that happened to be called Bocca del Inferno ( Mouth of Hell). And possibly I had let a certain unease about our enterprise to surface. I asked her “ What shape do you see these programmes taking. In other words, what are we searching for ?” Venetia sipped her wine, looked over the table at me, smiled and said “ We have to wait and see, dear. We’re here, where it all began. We have to wait, explore, see what happens. ” It was a bit that way, working with her, exploratory. That’s not to say that one didn’t prepare, or that research was not important. Quite the contrary. With Venetia O Sullivan one could never be sloppy, one could never be imprecise, woolly, inaccurate (the great sin ) . One could never ‘chance one’s arm’ or say ‘ ah sur’ ‘twill do’. And if she came to trust you, believed in you, that was everything. Then, out of any chaotic ‘Bocca del Inferno’ there could come satisfaction, fulfilment, once or twice magic. Broadening her music-programme horizon which she was always happy to do, she then began to look at other ‘musics’.. Jazz in particular. With Michael James Ford as script-writer and presenter there were programmes on Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton and other legends of the genre.