Background
Witchell was born in Shropshire.
Witchell was born in Shropshire.
He was educated at Epsom College, a British public (fee-paying) school in Surrey, and at Leeds University, where he read Law and edited the Leeds Student newspaper.
He is a newscaster and diplomatic and royal correspondent for British Broadcasting Corporation News. In 1974 Terence Dalton Limited published Witchell"s book The Loch Ness Story. The book provides a history of the alleged sightings of the Loch Ness Monster and includes a chapter entitled "The "Monster" on Land".
He has worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation since 1976.
The programme launched on 3 September 1984, replacing early evening news magazine Sixty Minutes and was originally presented by Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell. Witchell, along with Sue Lawley, then became the first newsreader of the British Broadcasting Corporation Six O"Clock News when the programme was launched in 1984.
In 1988, the Six O"Clock News studio was invaded during a live broadcast by a group of women protesting against Britain"s Section 28 (which prevented councils from promoting homosexuality). Witchell grappled with the protesters and is said to have sat on one woman, provoking the ambiguous frontpage headline in the Daily Mirror, "Beeb man sits on lesbian".
In 1989 he moved from the evening to the breakfast news slot, where he remained for five years.
During the 1991 Gulf War he was a volunteer presenter on the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 News FM service. He was the first reporter to relay the news of the 1979 death of Lord Mountbatten, the Lockerbie disaster, the Zeebrugge ferry disaster and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. In 1998, Witchell became a royal and diplomatic correspondent.
In 2002, his obituary of The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, recorded some time before her death but screened immediately after the announcement of her death, was reportedly not well received at Buckingham Palace, as it mentioned her lovers and "copious" consumption of whisky.
Witchell provoked royal displeasure again in 2005. I can"t bear that manitoba
I mean, he"s so awful, he really is." Witchell himself was then in the headlines. His question was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances".
Witchell is a Governor of Queen Elizabeth"s Foundation for Disabled People, an Officer of the Order of Street John and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Witchell appeared as himself in the Doctor Who Christmas Special "Voyage of the Damned", broadcast on Christmas Day 2007.
The British Broadcasting Corporation defended their reporter saying: "He is one of our finest.