Over Christmas, I interviewed Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Newshour and one of President Carter’s closest friends on BBC OS.  I was honoured to choose an item about the seismology of Taylor Swift gigs for Radio 4’s Pick of the Year and got to read a poem on Poetry Please. Last year, I was thrilled to join the family of presenters on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week, celebrating the value of studying history through original diary entries and deconstructing one of the greatest pop songs of all time. I also joined the team on Business Matters, reporting on the US election and the port strike which almost saw New York run out of bananas. I presented the UK General Election results on Radio 2 in July and I was live on BBC World Service as the Assad regime in Syria fell in December. 

I am from a working-class background in the West Midlands. I've hosted over 40,000 hours of live BBC News output and won a range of industry awards including a gold ARIA. Radio Academy Award judges have commented that I am “an assured host, balancing great seriousness and warmth and displaying a strong bond with the audience” and “empathetic and probing, formulating questions that are short, to the point and perfectly timed”.

I was trusted to host the rolling coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth and the January 6th riots on the BBC World Service. I have years of experience of holding politicians to account: the former Prime Minister Theresa May says I have interviewed her more times than any other journalist. I have covered royal weddings and funerals on 5 Live and Radio 2. I visited Prague with adults who were saved from the Nazis by ‘Kindertransport’ and helped them to tell their stories in the places where they had said goodbye to their parents. I am particularly proud of an investigation into the extent of FGM in the Somali community which led to the women I spoke to giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

I currently present international news programmes Newshour, Newsday, The Newsroom and BBC OS on BBC World Service and its most listened-to podcast Global News. I present the Pick of the Week and the Six O’Clock and Midnight News on Radio 4 and have read the news on Radio 2 since 1998. I present rolling news coverage on Global’s LBC News and Forces News on BFBS.

In the past, I presented Saturday PM on Radio 4 (2014-17) and news and phone-in shows on 5 Live (2010-2012). My BBC Radio Berkshire programme (1992-2023) was nominated for 18 Radio Academy Awards including UK News and Current Affairs Programme of the Year and UK Speech Broadcaster of the Year.