Speaker / Host
Tim Willcox
Highly respected speaker, event host and conference facilitator, BBC presenter Tim Willcox is a former ITN correspondent and national newspaper journalist. He has more than 25 years experience reporting on and chasing stories around the world. Furthermore Tim is also a documentary maker for ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
About Tim Willcox
Tim Willcox presents fascinating illustrated talks about his life on the road, and is also an experienced and first class facilitator at conferences, seminars, awards ceremonies and other events at home and abroad.
Tim Willcox is one of the most widely watched presenters on BBC News. Appearing in the studio and on location, Tim has presented on BBC1, BBC4, News Channel and BBC World. He has a wealth of national and international experience having covered most of the big breaking news stories of the past decade.
Tim Willcox was on the ground during the Rescue of the Chilean Miners
In October 2010 Tim spent a month covering the rescue of the Chilean miners. His widely acclaimed coverage was watched by millions and included live interviews with the families simultaneously translated from Spanish into English. He also secured an exclusive TV interview with Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera. Since then he has covered the Arab Spring uprisings – reporting and presenting the main BBC1 bulletins from Egypt and the front line in Libya. He also presented live from Tokyo on the earthquake and tsunami.
Before becoming a BBC presenter, Tim was a presenter and correspondent at ITN and on Fleet Street (Mirror Group Newspapers) with assignments and postings in Moscow, Iraq, Jerusalem, Rwanda, 9/11 in New York, US, Australia and much of Europe. Tim has also made and presented documentaries for ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
A graduate in Spanish from Durham University Tim’s passions are Spain (and most things Spanish), South America, Classical Music (a former 1st trumpet in the British Youth Symphony Orchestra) and his small flock of Shetland sheep which he breeds at his home in Oxfordshire.
Tim Willcox’s cameo TV and Film roles
Tim has also played himself in the TV series ‘Spooks’, ‘State of Play’, and ‘Sex Traffic’, and in the films ‘102 Dalmations’ and ‘Clueless’.
But what was the real story?
Caught up in gun battles between looters, and the terrifying Mai-Mai tribe in the former Zaire how do film crews work, live and relax? And how do you navigate check points in Africa manned by 14 year olds bristling with AK47’s?
Why did Chilean President Pinera’s press secretary try to pull the exclusive interview in the Atacama Desert during the miners’ rescue, and what was Camp Hope really like?
Why was the shallow end of Baghdad swimming pools one of the best way of getting stories when Saddam Hussein was alive? And how do Moscow traffic police react when they’ve just killed two pedestrians?
How does Earl Spencer react when he doesn’t approve of an interview?
With 5 years on Fleet Street under Robert Maxwell at the Mirror Tim also reveals the picaresque world of tabloid life in the 1980s – filing stories on edible guinea pigs during a coup in Peru (the newsdesk wasn’t interested in the coup) to tracking down the Kings Cross ‘working girl’ who had sex with the Director of Public Prosecutions.
