Big Talk Bios: Verity Geere

Verity Geere has 10 years experience as a broadcast journalist and can currently be heard reading the news and co-hosting the Neil Fox Breakfast Show on London’s Magic 105.4. As an intrinsic part of the breakfast show, Verity is able to balance her broadcast journalist duties delivering the news, along with engaging and entertaining 2 million listeners with her presenting skills.

She has worked for various commercial radio stations as well as the BBC, ITN and more recently Sky News. Now, she delivers bespoke bulletins for Magic 105.4 and is also responsible for showbiz news for Sky News Radio.

 

Big Talk Bios: Charley Figgis

Charley is Planning Editor at BBC London TV News. She began in broadcast journalism as breakfast presenter and reporter in BBC local radio. Within TV she has been a senior reporter and news anchor at BBC Newsroom South-East, BBC Cambridge, BBC London and News 24. Her current roles include selecting stories and developing strand ideas and special series for the London audience, plus organising the news team.

Big Talk Bios: Hugh Pym

Hugh is the BBC’s Chief Economics Correspondent and he reports for television programmes such as News At Ten. Prior to the BBC Hugh reported for ITN, Sky and Channel 4, specialising in business and political news. His career highlights include coverage of the Maxwell scandal, the General Election of 1997 and the financial crisis of 2008. Hugh is the co-author of 3 books – “The Guinness Affair” (1987) , “Gordon Brown, the First Year in Power” (1998) and “What Happened?  And other questions about the credit crunch” (2008).

 

Big Talk Bios: Keren Haynes

Keren Haynes is a founding director of leading broadcast PR specialist agency Shout! Communications. Her expertise comes from 15 years spent as a national radio and television journalist combined with 5 years experience in broadcast PR.   Keren’s last  broadcast as a journalist was on Radio 4’s Today programme, where she regularly reported on business, economic and personal finance stories. Prior to the BBC Keren was an ITN News Editor.

Big Talk Bios: Catherine Bayfield

Catherine Bayfield  co-founded  Shout! Communications in 2003, after a successful career in national and regional television. As a broadcast journalist Catherine rose to Executive Producer level, working on national news and magazine programmes on ITV and Sky. At GMTV she was a Senior Producer, and she was Executive Producer of the Richard Littlejohn programme on Sky One. On a regional level Catherine was Head of Planning at London Tonight.

 

Big Talk Bios: Rhian Roberts

Rhian Roberts is Head of Development at BBC Radio 5 live and its sister station BBC Radio Sports Extra. She started with the station as a broadcast journalist, moving on to become editor of some of its high profile programmes, including launch shows with Adrian Chiles and Fi Glover. As well as working on strategy, governance and the day to day running of the station, Rhian has been responsible for recent highlights like the Porn Again documentary with Jacqui Smith and Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode’s collaboration with the BBC Philharmonic orchestra.

Big Talk Bios: Adam Vandermark

Adam Vandermark has been editor of This Morning since December 2009. The show won Best Topical Magazine Show in the 2011 National Television Awards. Prior to this Adam was executive producer for Dispatches, Channel 4’s investigative current affairs strand, 2007-09. He series produced ‘Ann Widdecombe Versus..’ for ITV1, was senior producer for Tonight with Trevor McDonald, and for five years held various producer positions on Channel 4 News.

Big Talk Bios: Richard Martin

Richard is a programme editor and correspondent for Al Jazeera English. He flits between London and the Middle East where he’s a senior member of the team producing news shows. Much of this year has been spent covering the Arab Spring. Richard has previously graced the newsrooms of Sky, ITN and – going far back in time – the ITV regions. He’s also worked at The Sun and The Daily Express.

Big Talk Bios: Tom Bateman

Tom is currently an output editor at BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, where he is responsible for the content of one of the UK’s most listened to radio news programmes, boasting an audience of 9 million people. Tom has worked at BBC News programmes for the last 5 years, most recently at Today on Radio 4 where he reported on UK news, social policy and politics. Before working at the BBC Tom spent many years in commercial radio, most notably at LBC where he used to read the news alongside breakfast show host Nick Ferrari.

What People Said About Shout!’s First Big Talk

Shout!’s first Big Talk sold out, and when questioned after the event 100% said they would like to come to another one.

Here is some of the feedback we got:

• Excellent speakers and good information. An enjoyable event and very well-organised. Well done!
• The quality of the speakers was great and it definitely helped to get some free wine!
• A chance to gain real insights from journalists about their work and how best to work with them
• Speakers were keen to answer any and all questions, good timekeeping!
• The calibre of speakers – all busy people so appreciate their time.  And the goody bags were a great idea!
• Packed a lot of content into a short space of time. Lots of speakers. Plenty of opportunity to ask questions, good value for money.