“LOCAL boy makes good” is a hometown newspaper cliché. But “local girl makes good” doesn't feature anything like as often.I'm pleased to report that North Walsham can boast two such daughters: Carole Walker and Rachel Wexler.

“LOCAL boy makes good” is a hometown newspaper cliché. But “local girl makes good” doesn't feature anything like as often.

I'm pleased to report that North Walsham can boast two such daughters: Carole Walker and Rachel Wexler.

Carole, a former North Walsham High School for Girls pupil, can frequently be seen with that familiar Number 10 door behind her as she reports from Downing Street on the latest Westminster shenanigans in her role as the BBC's political correspondent.

And now Rachel, who once rushed about the playground of Manor Road Junior School, has emerged as an acclaimed producer of high-quality, and always thought-provoking, documentaries.

I was among the audience, which included Rachel and her parents, at Norwich's Cinema City last week when her co-production of The English Surgeon was screened.

The documentary was an illuminating, powerful, moving story about NHS brain surgeon Henry Marsh who spends his free time, not making money in the lucrative private sector, but treating patients in the Ukraine for free.

It left us all thankful for our NHS, appalled at its wastefulness, and humbled by Mr Marsh's great humanitarianism.

I recommend everyone to watch or record it when it's screened on BBC2 in the Storyville series, this Sunday, March 30, at the lamentably late time of 10.55pm.

Director Geoffrey Smith and Mr Marsh were at the Cinema City screening and it gave me the opportunity to thank him personally afterwards. By a wonderful coincidence he just happens to be the very surgeon who operated on my dad shortly before Christmas.