Nicholas Witchell – Keynote Speaker

Nicholas Witchell is the BBC’s Royal and Diplomatic Correspondent and was one of its senior news presenters.

He joined the BBC as a graduate news trainee in 1976 after completing a law degree at Leeds University. For 4 years he was a BBC reporter in Northern Ireland. He covered the assassination of Earl Mountbattan and the IRA hunger strikes.

In September 1984 he was, with Sue Lawley, one of the founding presenters of BBC Television’s Six O’Clock News. The programme itself made the news one night in 1988 when it was “invaded” by a group of lesbian demonstrators and the programme went ahead with Witchell sitting on one of them!

In 1989 he left the Six O’Clock News to become the main presenter of the re-launched BBC Breakfast News. He spent five years on the breakfast programme.
For 3 years (1995-98) he reported on international affairs as a BBC Diplomatic Correspondent a role which took him frequently to Bosnia.

In the early hours of 31 August 1997 Nicholas Witchell was the first journalist to broadcast the confirmed news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Six days later he did the live BBC radio commentary at Westminster Abbey at the Princess’s funeral.

Nicholas Witchell is an experienced conference chairman, having worked for a number of major British and multi-national companies.