What Can You Tell Me About Nicholas Witchell, The BBC News Reporter?

Witchell, the Royal Correspondent, was born in 1953 in Cosford, Shropshire where his father was a Royal Air Force officer at the time.

Witchell, distinctive by his ginger hair, spent most of his childhood in Surrey, attending school at Epsom College. He read law at Leeds University and completed his degree. But he never practised as a lawyer, having been bitten by the journalism bug editing the student newspaper.

Having decided on a career in journalism, Witchell joined the BBC in 1976. He was for several years a television news reporter in Northern Ireland and has covered wars in places such as Beirut and the Falkland Islands.

In 1984 he became a BBC newscaster, presenting the nightly Six O'Clock News. In September 1989 he fronted at launch BBC Television's new "Breakfast News" programme. Since then he has had a host of TV news assignments for the BBC, latterly as Royal Correspondent.

Witchell has also written a book about the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon.