JCIP #343 - Niamh Hughes - Part 1

In episode 343 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Niamh Hughes. 

Niamh is a freelance journalist, producer, presenter and voiceover artist. 

Niamh also happens to have a disability called Congenital Hemiplegia, which is a form of unilateral cerebral palsy. The disability only affects the right side of her body, so she can’t use her right hand and has to type with one hand.

Prior to going freelance, Niamh worked for many years at the BBC and worked as a reporter and producer on the BBC’s accessibility outlet and brand, Access All, then called BBC Ouch.

In Part 1 of this bumper episode, we chart Niamh’s journalism journey and how she was inspired to get involved in it by previous podcast guest Izzie Clarke!

We then discuss how she got her foot in the door at the Beeb, the various roles she's done in her very impressive career so far, including BBC Ouch, Newsnight's 'The 100 Women' programme, BBC News, her decision to leave the Beeb in March 2025 and the challenges of going freelance. 

As always, #itsokaytovent

You can find out more about Niamh's work here.

You can follow Niamh on social media below: 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hi Venters, welcome back to another episode of the Just Checking In Podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Cocker, and this podcast is brought to you by Vent, a place where everyone, but especially men and boys, can open up about their mental health issues, break down stigmas, and start conversations. In each episode, I check in with a special guest. We have a natter and a chat about all things mental health, as well as anything and everything else they are passionate about. If it helps that person with their mental health, we discuss it. My special guest for this episode is Neave Hughes. Neave is a freelance journalist, producer, presenter, and voiceover artist. Now I have known Neve for many years, over 20 years in fact, where we first met at an afterschool drama school we went to together. Now for the first half of my time there, I absolutely loved it. I loved the escapism, the drama teachers we had, and despite not knowing any of the other kids that well and them being quite different from me, enjoyed their company and I think fitted in well too. However, when I joined the older group when I was around 15 years old, a year into the first theatre production we did, we also went on a tour to Bolton in Lancashire, and unfortunately the older kids in that older group who were between 1 to 3 school years above me, as the group was anywhere between 15 to 18 years old began to bully me and bully me pretty severely, with the teacher himself even joining in at various points. I've written about this on the Vent website and how it took me to the point of suicide during the worst moments of that bullying. It killed my love of theatre temporarily and impacted my public speaking ability significantly for around seven to eight years. Thankfully, I overcame all of that and have moved forward with my life. However, in that older group, I only ever kept in touch with two people from it who showed me that kindness. My friend Josh Hill, who was in the same year as my older brother at secondary school and is now an established professional actor in his own right, going on to perform in theatre productions with the likes of David Andrew Scott and films like Legend and Pride, and has also been in a theatre production of High Noon in the West End in 2026. The other person who showed me kindness was Neve, and it's Neave who I'll be interviewing on this podcast today. Outside of all the skills that she has as a journalist, Neave also happens to have a disability called congenital hemoplasia, which is a form of unilateral cerebral prosy. This disability only affects the right side of her body, so she can't use the full function of her right hand and has to type with her left hand. What I didn't know growing up is that Neve was born with this condition, and it didn't come about because of an accident or other reason which caused her to develop it, so she has only known life alongside her disability. I reconnected with Neve properly when I joined the BBC in 2019, as Neve had already started working there for several years already and had established herself as a professional journalist. Prior to that and during that time, Neve was one of the main reasons why my views on disability and disability issues have evolved and developed over time, because as part of her journalism career at the BBC, she worked as a reporter and producer on the corporation's accessibility outlet and brand Access All, which was then called BBC Ouch. In part one of this bumper episode, because Lee absolutely loves a chat, we chart Neve's journalism journey and how she was inspired to get involved in it by previous podcast guest and friend of mine, Izzy Clark, a very Northeast London theory of six degrees. We then discuss how she got her foot in the door of the Bib, the various roles that she did in her very impressive career at the company. That includes BBC Ouch, the Hundred Women programme, BBC News, before finally we discuss her decision to leave the BBC in March 2025 and the challenges of going freelance. There are some podcasts which I see as a gift to the person or their family. This podcast is a thank you to Neve as well as Josh for that support, small as she may think it was, because even the smallest kindness and gestures for someone in a hugely difficult place for their mental health can mean a massive amount. So this is how part one of my conversation with the wonderful and award-winning Neve Hughes went. Neve, welcome to the Just Checking In Pod. Thank you so much for letting me check in with you. When we reconnected, we were both at the B, but I'd walk past you in new broadcasting house. You'd be busy off doing something spectacular. I'd be doing something mundane and be like, oh, I'm on to my late shift. How are you, Neve? And you'd be like, yeah, I've just done this with this and this and him. And I was like, oh right, sounds like your life should go really great.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

No, firstly, that is a complete lie. I was lovely. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm grand. I don't know how much of a timestamp you want to put on this, but it's three days before Christmas, and we're all a bit like feeling good though. Like, I'm one of those people, because I have so many family birthdays in December, I don't feel festive until right the last minute. Like traditionally, we didn't even put up our Christmas tree until like the 15th of December.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Unheard of.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

I know, but give the Sagittarians their moment. That's what I'd say. They need it.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

I know your mum's gonna listen to this, so Nise Mum, if you're listening, hello. I hope I do a good job with your daughter. She's in good hands. I hope you enjoy this odd listen. Without further ado, are you ready to start the show?

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Yeah, why not? Let's do this. Sorry, I've known you for like 20 something years now. So this is just like bring back the jazz hands, bring back Gary and Phil Wizard Stories energy.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

We're gonna start your pop-out by talking about your amazing journalism journey as it's encompassed so many different roles in one big organization, and then now you're doing amazing freelance work too. Tell me back to the beginning first though. How did you fall in love with writing, storytelling, presenting, everything in between?

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Ooh, I think if we're gonna go back right to the beginning when it comes to storytelling, it has to go back right to infancy. Don't want to harp on too much about it, but I come from a very Irish background, the land of the saints and the scholars, right? And my mother was a natural storyteller. She was tick, daughter point there. Yes, exactly. But she was also and is a huge reader and actively encouraged my sister and I and my brother to read always. Like if you go to our family home, first thing you see is books and pictures of writers. We've got three pictures of Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yates, and James Joyce, you know, very famous Irish and Anglo-Irish writers, and that was instilled in us from a really young age. And we also, my sister and I were joking about this the other day. As a three-piece, we spent an inordinate amount of time watching like comedy shows that we definitely shouldn't have been watching. Like the young ones, age four. We definitely shouldn't have been watching that. Father Ted's, we would watch a lot of Vicar of Dibbly and Comic Comic Strip, Faulty Towers, and having that exposure to TV and sitcoms, dramas, and things like that, we would be sort of through osmosis understanding the art of storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

When you go to the pub and there's shanokies.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

I'm thinking of Banshees and here. But there's always like an element of now you can never guess this. And then Pristinize. Wait till I tell you. Wait till I tell you. But there's always an element of surprise, drama, jeopardy. And I think sometimes it's hard to pin down the formula of how that happens. You just sort of learn it through as you go. And then by the time I got to school, when it came to things like, you know, English and literacy classes, when we'd be reading books for the first time, that's where I found my sort of comfort area. I was always more into the arts and the humanities subjects, much to my father's dismay, he was a math teacher. But he it's sorry, Nate's dad. But it came quite naturally to us. And then in adulthood, some of our family friends would always say, Oh, the Hughes, they always have a great story to tell. They always know, or I'm looking forward to seeing them at the pub because it's like Neve, Emma, or John. But it's like we're terrible for just not shutting up, basically. No! Yes, we can chat for England. We don't really have an off-switch as a family, and so Christmases are hilarious. We have so many bits, so many jokes, so many in-jokes, and we are just chatting utter, utter nonsense. In fact, like COVID was actually a strangely nice time. Obviously, it was a tragic time and it was a really difficult time for the entire world. But when you kind of look at the micro as opposed to the macro, it was a weirdly enjoyable time reconnecting with family.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

What I loved finding out when we spoke of FairPow is that you were also inspired by mutual friend, friend of the pod, Izzy Clark as well in this journey. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

So Izzy and I met in primary school and we were fast friends. We went to different secondary schools, kind of lost touch a bit, regained touch just because when we went to university and we were following each other on Facebook and whatnot, she was doing student radio.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

She was a big name on campus and university knots.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Yeah, she was she was doing amazingly well for herself. And she'd done, she'd made really cool things on the student radio, and she was doing really, really well. And I saw this different side to her, albeit through social media, because we were kind of like the awkward shy girls in school. And it was great to see her kind of come out of her shell in that way and see her blossom, but also get her flowers. Like she did really well, not only internally in the university, but she was recognized outside of the university through like student radio awards and things. She won like best female presenter or something.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Izzy, I'm sending you this pod. I hope you bloody listen to these. You're getting all the compliments.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

No, but she was just such a huge inspiration. And I remember when I was doing my undergraduate, I was studying English literature and I loved it, and I was really studious, but I didn't do that many societies. I had a small group of friends from my course. I lived with some of them, and we were I wouldn't change it for the world, that experience. It was fantastic. But it did occur to me once I left my undergrad and pursued postgraduate education that I kind of wanted to do an activity. You wanted to branch out a bit more. Yeah, and do something that was sort of adjacent to what I was doing, in the sense that I was a good writer. I had the experience, I was writing essays all the time for my university course. I was told I was a good writer, both from an essay and a prose standpoint. And I thought, oh, I'd seen online that Izzy was doing all this stuff, and I thought that sounds cool. Izzy and I are quite similar. Maybe I'll just try the radio station at university. So I went to Cardiff. At Cardiff University, their radio station is called Express. Express radio.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

This is during your master's, right? Not your first time.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

So I'd done my undergrad at Swansea? Yes, in Swansea's. And I was really happy. Got my first class honours.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Very jealous.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

And I was really happy, but it was one of those things where nobody from my friendship group was staying in Swansea. Right. And based in London, usually, I thought I've either got to go back to London and start the world of work or continue studying. And I wasn't ready to go to the world of work yet. I just didn't feel ready. I loved academia. I loved studying. I loved reading. And with the grades I got, I got a place at Cardiff University for their master's course in English literature. But yeah, I just didn't feel ready to go and be an adult yet, basically.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Which is fine.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Which is fine. And it ended up being the best year of my life.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Like you said, you want to give radio a chance after being inspired by Izzy, and you get involved with a university radio station called Express, spelt with an X. And you first of all hosted a folk music show, which I was pleasantly surprised by, and you began to get a lot of feedback from it, not just about your music taste, but your voice, your broadcasting style, those dulcet tones naturally coming through. How did that give you the confidence to think, actually, I could do this maybe for a career here?

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Because I'm one of those sad, sad losers that feeds off of validation. Um I mostly it never occurred to me to be on the radio. It just never occurred to me. I was a writer, I was very introverted, and I liked doing solitary things. But then going to Express, meeting all these people, not only going to the studio, broadcasting live with my co-presenter Sarah, having been produced by our lovely producer Alice Robbins at the time, we had a really good relationship in terms of like planning the shows. I looked forward to the shows every week. I looked forward to seeing those people every week who were like writing for the newspaper, writing for the magazine in the Students' Union and Cardiff University, where they had basically like the newsroom and the studio, and then there was like a TV studio. Wow, very professional. That was their sort of student media centre. I looked forward to it every Saturday evening, and I remember we had our show, yeah, it was a folk show, and it was just something that came really naturally to me. Like I loved and I still love the folk show on radio too, and I listened to it all the time. But folk is one of the first genres that I gravitated to. I think when you're really young, before you discover your own music taste, you sort of feed off of your parents' tastes. And for me, a lot of that was prog rock and folk music, traditional folk music.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, mine was Lanshill Indy of the early noughties. My first album was Killer's Hot Fuss that I ever got.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

But but this is what I mean. It's like as in when you're really young and all you are exposed to is what's in the chart.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And then when you're like sort of approaching secondary school, you start to Then you start. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

And for me that was Green Day.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Fair. Well, what mine was pop punk as well.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Excellent. But it was it was the genre that I could kind of rattle off the cuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

It was yours.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

And I could kind of talk quite confidently about those artists and say like why I love them. But I remember it goes sort of circling back to your question. I remember quite distinctly strangers coming up to me and saying, Oh wow, okay. Not even your friends and stuff. Well as in like Friends of Friends or whatever you want. I was like, that's really sweet. Thank you. At this point, about six months into the course, I was sort of getting ready to feel like I don't want to pursue academia any further than a master's. I think I'm ready to go out into the world. And this felt like quite a good fit for me. I loved being on the air, but I also loved producing. I loved being in that environment where everything was a little bit hairy because it was because it was live. It's rock and roll. Exactly. And anything could go wrong. But being at AliExpress, like interviewing local bands, going to gigs and stuff, I felt like, oh, this is a bit of me. Yeah, exactly. Oh my god. I mean, why wouldn't I be? But it felt like a good fit. It was something I enjoyed and it was something that I felt that I was good at. And when you're 21, 22, that's kind of as far as you need to go, I think, because you have no idea where your career's going to take you, no idea what the working world is like. You're just thinking, I want to make some money, but I also ideally, fingers crossed, want to enjoy myself doing it. And so towards the end of the year, I made like a little demo tape of all my presenting, all my sort of best bits, and I sent it off to the Cardiff University student media report.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

A sizzle reel, I think the professional term would be, or something like that, right? Is that what it's called? I think something like that, yeah. It's like a highlight reel, a sizzle reel. Yeah, like a show reel. Yeah, show reel, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Yeah. And then I sent it off, I just sort of forgot about it because I have my finals to think of. And um I was shortlisted for the Best Newcomer Award at the Cardiff Student Media Awards. And it was a really exciting time. I'd never really received that kind of recognition before. And it was across the whole media sweep, so radio, both the magazine, the newspaper, and the TV station. So, you know, it was competitive, and these are different disciplines, so they have very different skill sets. So it's just, you don't know what's going on. Anyway, we get to the evening of, and I'm in my glad rags and thinking, like, I'm ready to do my Joe Tribbiani loser face. And then they call my name and say that I've won the award, and I get this cute little trophy, and it's amazing. And part of the sort of prize was that one of the judges offered you like a one-to-one session, as in like just to give you a little bit of advice and say, like, what do you want to do with your life? Here's the red book, and you've got to fill it out now. And I think because I'm a fairly quiet person, I tend to just put my headphones on and get on with it. That's my style. I'm not the type of person to dominate a room. I don't walk into a room and light the place up, but it's just not me. Wouldn't go as far as to say I'm a warflower, but I just don't crave that. And so, in the workplace and in education, that doesn't always play in your favour because you can get lost a little bit. If you're not extraordinary or whatever, you can kind of get a little bit lost. And this was one of those moments where I thought, actually, I could be quite good at this. You can do both. I could do both. I can be myself, but also get recognised and be appreciated a little bit for my work. It's not the be all lend all, but it was nice to feel appreciated. Of course. In that moment. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah. You have that green light moment, as Matthew McConaughey says. And off the back of the winning the award, it leads to getting your first proverbial foot in the door at the BBC, the Beb, and none other than the Jeremy Vine Show and Radio Two. I'm not going to do the impression, although I could easily do it. You could. I could. Oh, I love doing my Jeremy Vine impression. It's great. Tell me back to that two-week placement. You walk through the doors of Wogan House, very established, very esteemed. You're going past all the celebs. How did you feel, first of all?

SPEAKER_03 19:16

I felt about three inches tall. Well, Jamie Vine's about six foot six, so that also doesn't help. Yeah, it doesn't help either. And for context, I'm five foot four. But I remember going in, and at the time it was actually called Western House. Oh, was it? Oh, okay. This is 2015. This was before we lost Terry, and I actually saw him in the corridors once. And yeah, exactly. He was just really well turned out, and I was definitely a bit starstruck because we used to listen to Wake Up to Wogan growing up. And yeah, it was just a really surreal experience. I sort of came shuffling in slightly overdressed because I didn't really know how to dress. I was in like a white blouse, very smart trousers, and then you walk in and everyone's in jeans and t-shirts.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Hey you, it's all about creating a first impression.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Yeah, exactly. Also, this was like, yes, it was radio, yes, it was live radio, but it was current affairs and it was journalism. So it felt like a slightly different vibe to producing like a rolling music.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Commodore mayo, whatever it was, it would be. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:11

Yeah, it was a little bit, it was a bit more choreographed. It was a it was not quite as candid. So I wanted to dress the part. And effectively, I was doing the phones. It's a call-in show, it's a phone-in show for anyone who doesn't know how the Jeremy Vine show works. And they pick various topics adhering to the news agenda or you know, topics that have come up. Yes. And it could drum up a little bit of debate or controversy. The idea is it's to get people talking. And I would take calls and screen them and vet them and say, like, oh, this person's got a great point on this soft topic, or this person has like an opposition view to a caller we had on 15 minutes ago. We should probably get that person on for balance, but also they've just brought up something I didn't even think about.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Or equally, this person is unhinged and I need to get them off the phone.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

I'm saying nothing. You have to be discerning. So you'd vet those calls and you'd patch them through to the studio. You'd write like a little blurb and say, This is Jim, and he opposes X, or he thinks you haven't talked about this topic. And you'd send them off, and Jeremy would have to see those little briefs and go, Okay, well, I'm now teeing up my own hypothesis on how I'm going to handle this call. And that's kind of how it worked. And that was a little placement. I did that for a couple of weeks, and they seemed to like us enough to keep me on a sort of like a rolling freelance basis, and I was booked for various shifts. But one of the nice things about being in that environment is yes, it's fast, yes, it's live, everyone was really lovely. And I met some really nice people. Yeah, I met some really nice people on that show, people I still keep in touch with now. And one of the nice things on that floor is that they have all the daytime shows. So at the time it was Chris Evans on breakfast, Ken Bruce was still. Ken Bruce. Ken Bruce.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Hello, Jess. It's me, Ken Bruce. Hey, you're on Podmaster.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

Thank you, Teddy. And who else? So we had, yeah, it was that Simon Mayo was on drive time and it was still Steve Wright on Resident SR RIP. He was on the afternoon show. And I kind of just networked. Yeah. I just sort of took a big deep breath, pulled up a big girl knickers, and just went and said hello to people. I said hello to editors and said, hi, I'm Neve. I'm currently at the Jeremy Vine Show. I am looking for work, but I've been doing X, Y, and Z and very aware that I was fresh out of university, there was a strong chance they'd tell me where to go. Because, you know, they need people with experience. And having worked in the industry now for 10 years, I understand that thought process way more now than I did. But fair play to them, they took a chance on me, and I started doing the phones on the All Request Friday show on Radio 2 with Simon Mayo. And again, great little gig. Very similar structures to the Jeremy Vine show in that you're just vetting calls and taking requests. And you know, this is around sort of 2016, 2017. So every other call was like, Can I have des Cai plays? And you're like, no, no, no, you can't. So you'd have to do a little bit of mental gymnastics of going, is this a good song, first of all? Do they have a story? Do they have something fun to say? Are they in the car, for example? Are they on the way to a Hendoo? Or are they on the way to a holiday at the time?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Did you feel like a wedding DJ, really? Like when someone comes up to you and goes, Have you got this song? And you're like, No, I'll see, mate.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

I'll see. No, absolutely not. Abort that. But it was fun. And again, really nice colleagues, some people I've reconnected with quite recently. And it was fun. It was a bit chaotic, but it was fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

You're still doing part-time work at this point as well to make ends mate. So that's a lot.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

I was doing part-time work elsewhere that didn't have anything to do with journalism because I was just trying to make money. I was still living at home, which was a blessing. Definitely in hindsight. Thanks, Mum and Dad. But it was just chaotic. I really fed off the chaos and I really loved it. But of course, you have to grow up at some point. And when Radio 4 came knocking. Any answers? Any answers, because they knew that I was doing phone shifts.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Out and about.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

They knew the girl for the job, which is great.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

Yeah, they, you know, it's a bit incestuous, but we go with it. And once I got there, I met somebody who was about to go on like a secondment, and she was looking for somebody to replace her.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Well, let's talk about that green light moment then. So you're asked to help out on the then called BBC Ouch podcast, which focused on disability issues and amplified disability voices. You had never heard of it at the time, but you said yes, get me involved. What was that first podcast like? And given what we'll later talk about with your own disability, how did you feel being in a room where, first of all, you saw peers for the first time that were all similar in some way to you?

SPEAKER_03 25:05

It was a bit mad. I think first of all, I had gone to a current affairs department, so this is really boring. When I'd got this cover role, I was doing something called production coordination. I was off the phones and I was basically doing all the production for radio shows and even down to like booking flights for reporters and hotels for reporters.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

A lot of admin, basically.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yeah, and I was booking studios, I was like a runner as well. So it was a pretty busy job. And I remember one of my colleagues, Janet, who I'm still friends with, she basically said, Oh, she knew that I had a disability, and she was like, Hey, do you want to come with me to do some mixing for a show? But basically, because the studio space is so finite and sought after, it's like gold dust. There's this one podcaster has to come in super early on a Thursday to record their podcast because it's the only time it's available. And I'm like, okay, cool, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Jill Dandaroom is fully booked up. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

It was that kind of vibe. And so I was like, yeah, sure. I went into the studio and I was asked, Oh, do you know how to drive a desk? And I was like, Yeah, from my express days, I know how to drive a desk and I had to set up a recording and know how to mix and things. So I went in with Janet and she was doing the studio managing for this strange podcast called Ouch, and I thought, I've no idea what this is. What is this? And it was about disability topics and disability news and current affairs. It was probably the first time an able-bodied person, i.e. Janet, had been outnumbered in a room. I'd never been in a room full of disabled people. It was just a really odd feeling. I still to this day don't know how to explain it. It was a very emotional moment because I just I think when you have a disability and it's sort of teetering on you occupy this strange liminal space whereby you know how to operate in a mainstream space. You know how to keep up in a mainstream space, but you know innately that you are different, and there will be moments when that difference is amplified.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

And pointed out to you quite starkly. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Because I don't have, as you can tell, I don't have any problems verbally communicating, for example. I'm not a wheelchair user, I don't have a walking aid, I don't have a service animal, for example. So my access requirements and my disability is different. Super obvious to the naked eye. And that is a topic we will go on too, I think. I'm sure we will. But it was just a really profound moment, and I thought, oh, I like these people. I want to hang out with these people. So the editor who was still the editor, his name's Damon Rose, I said, Hey, I don't suppose I could make this a slightly regular thing where I mix your show. And he's like, Yeah, it'd be kind of cool to have a disabled mixer editor, and so I was doing that every Thursday, but I was sort of acutely aware of the show. I started listening to it as a punter and taking it all in and thinking, Oh, I could do some stuff here. It was quite a low-key, very flexible show where you could pitch kind of anything and they would consider it. Whereas I think nowadays just because it is really composite. Because it's more gatekeeping, but it's a bit more bureaucratic. It has its merits, I guess. But back in the day it was way more flexible, and so I took Damon to one side and Beth, his colleague, and one of my friends now, and just said, Look, I don't suppose you are open to anything. You're open to ideas, you're open to pitches. Is that something you'd be up for? And they said yes. And I did a few podcasts with them, and I was like on a sort of like, yeah, I'd done a few bits with them, but then I remember it was around March 2018, and they had one of their now presenter, Emma Tracy, went on maternity leave at the time, and they'd got somebody to cover her, and that person had to drop out for other reasons, and they asked me to cover from March to August. And in that six-month period, five-month period, I started to make podcasts for them, and I was like a regular producer, editor, reporter. It was like my first proper contract with them.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Did it feel like a big break for you at that time?

SPEAKER_03 29:30

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Or maybe that not your feet were two feet in the door, but maybe like one and a half. I don't know. Sort of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

I mean, I didn't go for the job in the first place, so I definitely didn't feel second best, but I was like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

I'm seizing my chance here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:47

Because I'd been doing freelance work and just kind of doing whatever. I'd show up, I'd do the job, I'd go home. It was nothing special in the sense that I wasn't investing my time and my energy into like a one particular project. And I was ready for a project. I was ready for something to blossom and have a project to start as well. Exactly. And what was really interesting is that yes, I was making reports, yes, I was writing, but I was writing from a very personal standpoint, and it was something I hadn't really confronted before. Which is new, which is fresh, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Yeah, but it's also step out of your comfort zone again. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Growing up, like I was never made to feel ashamed of my disability. I'm not gonna sit here and say that woe is me. But I never really, really thought about it. I never sat down and really thought, not critically, but thought what's the word I'm looking for?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

That has pros and cons, by the way. So you the fact that you weren't thinking about it is also can be a great thing because you never m were made to feel ashamed or belittled, but also you didn't have that time to really kind of think about your identity really deeply.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Yes. So growing up, I always knew that I had this disability, I would sort of sneak off every few weeks to have appointments, checkups, I had like plaster casts on my right leg for my splint. So I was diagnosed with something called congenital hemoplasia when I was a baby. And I was a great Almond Street kid. I've got my little pin, my little gosh pin. And yeah, basically when I was really tiny, I started to pick up crayons and things, and I was getting curious as a baby. And my mum originally was kind of thinking, Oh, this is cool. She's left-handed, because I was picking things up with my left hand, drawing on the walls, but I was drawing with my left hand and I was engaging with the world with my left hand. And we've got a few lefties in our family. Hey, I'm one power. Welcome to the club. She was like, Okay, okay, this is kind of fun, this is kind of cool. Like my gran and my uncle are both left-handed on my mum's side. It runs in the family, right? But she and my dad started to notice that I was only using my left hand. And they thought, hmm, this is a bit odd. Like I had my right arm pressed up against my chest. It wasn't interacting with the world, and I wasn't discovering the world with my right hand. And they thought, oh, this is um we're not quite sure what's going on here. I also was walking a little, I wasn't moving in the same way as other kids were. And because I'm the eldest, I'm the first baby for both my parents. So everything was an experiment, and they were engaging with all the baby books, they were talking to the parents in the antenatal classes and keeping an eye on how other kids were developing, and I wasn't developing at the same rate as these other kids. And so naturally, they take me to the doctors, and long story short, in February 1994, I was taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital, and I was diagnosed with congenital hemoplasia, which is a kind of offshoot of cerebral palsy. So some people actually call it unilateral cerebral palsy because it only affects one side of my body. And just for a little bit of context, like my left hand is completely fine, my left leg completely fine. Hunky dory, got isolation in my fingers, I can pick things up, I can function in a sort of quote unquote normal way. But my right hand is out of action, I can't really do anything with it. The movement is very stilted, it's very slow, the muscles are incredibly tight in my right hand, and the same goes for my right leg. I can't walk on my heel, I walk with a small limp, and the muscle growth isn't quite as good in my right leg. It's one of those things that only I notice, but like I don't build up muscle in my right leg as well as I do on my left.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

So if you did leg day, it would all go to your left.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

A little bit, or I would have to put in overtime with just my right leg. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

So do more than the other just to try and balance it out on more. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

So I can't stand on my right leg, for example, as a balancing act. It's just one of those things. And, you know, my parents were worried. They were rightfully worried. They didn't know what that was. And I'm the I'm the first kid, like I'm their first child. That's really anxiety-inducing. That's really scary if you don't know what parenthood looks like.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

They might not know if it's a gene that's hereditary, if they have another child, all these sort of things are going through ahead.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

The doctors were they had to give their prognosis and they said, look, don't be surprised if she never walks or talks. You have to prepare yourself for this. That's the scariest part. If you're a first-time parent, you don't know what you're doing anyway, with you know, child who hasn't been diagnosed with anything, or a child who hasn't got anything that you need to take them to the doctors for. But then to face that prognosis and the diagnosis, you sort of think, where do I go from here? Where is my support network? And I only really appreciated in the last sort of five years how scary that must have been for my parents.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

And confusing, I guess, because you know, like for me, obviously diagnosed autism, but I know the how severe autism can be and it can cause not just selective mutism, but complete mutism. But that wasn't the case with you. So they must have been thinking, well, it's not that. So how could this interact with your speech, for example? So there's all those other things to consider as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

And for those listening who might know someone with cerebral palsy, because I it's really important to point out that I technically have like a similar condition to Rosie Jones, the comedian. She a CP, and it affects her speech somewhat, it affects her gait somewhat. We technically have like a very similar condition. And it's the same with Lost Voice Guy, another comedian who communicates through like a voice box. It's really important to tell people that it is caused by brain damage. I suffered a stroke in the second trimester of my mother's pregnancy. Wow. So I didn't even know that was that's why. That's why I have this.

unknown 35:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

I've stopped blowing my mind. I ain't no babies could have strokes inside the wound.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

You can have a stroke in utero. So I have bruising on the left side of my brain. I have a load of bruising that means that messages don't transmit properly to the right side of my body. When did you find that out? Oh, years later. It was I mean, they told my parents when I was an infant that's what's happened. But when you hear bruising brain stroke, you your head goes to the dark place. Yeah, of course. No, naturally. And you're like, you think, oh, I don't know how to process this. I don't know what's happening, and I don't know what's gonna happen to my daughter.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

I'm just thinking about from your mum's perspective, like, does she even know that's happening inside them? Did she feel anything? She didn't even feel anything. No, no, it's she no reason.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

And the the birth itself, like I was a natural birth, and it was like everything was fine, as fine as can be for a first-time mum going through that for the first time. Everything sort of went smoothly.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

So everything must have come out of the blue then?

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah. Wow, that sort of blown my mind. Yeah. And no one was prepared for that. But I kind of once my parents had the diagnosis, they were putting provisions in, they were looking into like wheelchairs and zimmers and stuff like that. I eventually started to experiment a little bit. I w I was a fairly adaptive kid. I was crawling a little late, but I was speaking at a normal Which must have been so emotional for them to see that. Yeah, like my vocabulary was coming along and it was very much adhering to the timelines stipulated in all the baby books. I was starting to talk, I was starting to engage with them.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

They could read to you and you were you were reading with them.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

I was reading with them, I was following along, I was pointing at the pictures, I'd be like, cat, ah, mama, dad. I was doing that, and crawling was a little slow, and then walking, I was a little slow, but I got there. But it was one of those things where you couldn't have predicted that. You can't predict stuff like that when it comes to brain damage, because every single person is going to experience that differently.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

It's a massive, massive spectrum, and yeah, it's fine though.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

We'll dive into that even more later in the pod part. I want to come back to Ouch. Before we talk about your favourite stories very briefly, you said to me off there that BBC Alch at that time and your continued focus, and it always has been from that moment, was about moving away from something called disability inspiration porn. Just tell my listeners what that is and why it's problematic too.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

So inspiration porn, how I've always read it, is like because disabled people don't hit the headlines very often, but when they do, it's because they're there for a very specific reason and often it is Paralympics, so they're competing in a sport and representing their country in a particular sport, or they are doing something that people don't expect. And the comment section on these articles are usually, oh, you're a huge inspiration to me. And my first question is always, inspired you to do what? Inspired you how? Are you just saying that because you don't know what else to say? And firstly, are you saying that because you don't know how to react? It's problematic because there is an assumption that disabled people can't do anything. And if you don't have any experience with a disability, you just assume that people who might be a wheelchair user, people who are visually impaired, part of the deaf community, have cerebral palsy, have a really tragic life.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Maybe chuck in a counter-argument. It's not a criticism. Say, for example, and I can't remember the lad's name, this is bad of me. There was a Formula One driver, a young Formula One driver, who went through a horrific crash. And I think he lost either both use of his legs or he ended up being kind of partially disabled as well. And they built like a car which was able to. I don't know what the science is. Formula One fans don't get in my DMs about this. They managed to make it a way so he could drive without almost using his legs. And there was a lot of people who said, kind of, this is giving me a lot of gratitude for, you know, if I'm able-bodied and being able to use my legs, all that sort of stuff. Is that problematic? The response to that story.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

It's not problematic. I think it reads into this idea that if you become disabled through an injury or if through a diagnosis, that's the end. It's as if your life has no value. It's as if there's no hope for you. You have to give up your life, you have to give up everything. There's no way around the end of the tunnel now. Yeah, you're not going to have a fulfilling life. That's the narrative that's spun. Okay. And if you go back to my diagnosis, for example, I'm not blaming my parents for this, or anyone for that matter. But there is a sort of catastrophizing element when it comes to diagnosis because you are going, Oh, oh, now they can't do X.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Now they can't do Y.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

There's a big fixation on what you cannot do. And that's quite a self-defeating prophecy, really.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

I'm not blaming anyone, but it is just the culture that we have. And what I would say to that is it doesn't speak to the person, the disabled person themselves. It speaks to the fact that we don't have an infrastructure that is accessible. I say accessible in the broadest term because it's not accessible to lots of people of colour, for example, for people who speak English as a foreign language in this country, for queer people, for example, the list goes on. It just speaks to the fact that our world is not accessible and that's fundamentally what it is. We know innately that disabled people are going to have to find work around and they're going to have to adapt to this world that is not designed for them. We are going to have to negotiate our surroundings in a way that an able-bodied or a non-disabled person doesn't have to think about. And that's an enormous privilege.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

I want to come back to ouch again because you worked on some amazing stories. And I want to just give you a chance here to briefly sort of highlight some of your favourites. So what were kind of your favorites from a personal perspective, professional perspective, and how did they almost maybe boost your mental health at the time, or maybe give you a little bit of validation too for the job you were doing?

SPEAKER_03 42:22

There's two or three that really spring to mind. I at the time I was looking for a new pair of shoes, and one thing with my disability is because one of my legs is longer than the other, my left foot is bigger than my right. It's just like one of those weird quirks. But it was a big enough jump that you'd have to, like growing up, my mum would go to certain shoe shops and she would have to buy two pairs of shoes. Oh wow, that's dark. And then use the left of one and the right of the other. Some places were way more chill about it. And a sort of accommodating or getting that. Yeah, one from each. And like some children's shoe shops had like odd shoe schemes where yeah, where you had time, that one, or no, even in the late 90s, early 2000s, that was pretty cool. But it was expensive, and that still carried on into early adulthood. But I would often put loads and loads of insoles into my shoes and just busk it from there. But yeah, I remember needing a new pair of shoes and thinking, oh, maybe I'm thinking about this too selfishly, but I could always just have a chat with some people and see how they feel about shoes and buying shoes and just the world of shoes from the point of view of a disabled person. And I think I was watching Ugly Betty and they referred to shoes, it was like a really high pair of stilettos. And one of the characters says, I choose fashion over function. And I was like, Oh, we've definitely all been there. That phrase has kind of stuck in my head a little bit. And I thought, oh, what if I talk to some disabled people about the experience of buying shoes? And feeling as though they can't buy nice shoes or they have to go for the orthopaedic option, but as a result, they have to sacrifice style and they have to sacrifice sort of self-expression as a result. That was a really interesting concept. And so I got a few people to come on, and they're called the podcast If the shoe fits. I presented it and I had a really nice conversation with some disabled people about the trials and tribulations of buying shoes. Back in the day, Ouch used to do like these 15-minute burst podcasts. They were really short. That was kind of what was in vogue at the time. And it was just a really fun little sound bite about disabled people buying shoes. And we talked about the politics of it, about the fact that because of these weird ideas that we have about disability, whereby you're so invisible, you don't feel like you have the right to express yourself through style. You don't feel like you have the right to engage in fashion trends. You don't have the access to fashion because you don't fit into this very small cookie-cutter idea of what is acceptable, whether that be femininity, masculinity, you know, attractive, unattractive, whatever you want to call it. So you have to make that sacrifice very early on. And it just pushes you even further into the margins. And so we were like, let's kind of bust a few of those myths that disabled people can't be fashionable or disabled people can't be stylish, and just talk about shoes and how we love shoes and how we have these workarounds to make ourselves feel good and make ourselves feel stylish or trendy. And that was one that really stuck out. It was a bit self-indulgent, admittedly.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

But But hey, it's a good story. It was fun. It was I never thought about it before.

SPEAKER_03 45:43

Yeah, it was less attributed to a new story. But that was the nice thing about Ouch is that you can kind of have those cerebral conversations and you don't have to make it all about current affairs. Of course, it's important. And yes, we'll talk about like the disability action plan. Yes, we'll talk about how the budget is going to affect disabled people, whether that be your energy bills or how accessible the workplace or healthcare is for you. But we can just chew the fat over the fact that all we can wear is Dr. Martin's and they're expensive.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

They are expensive, they're very expensive. Before we move on, you also interviewed the woman behind a megaviral campaign video called Assume That I Can, confronted by actress Madison Tevlin in 2024, who happens to have Down syndrome. Tell my listeners about that campaign and how it countered the bigotry of low expectations in disability.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

Yeah. So Assume That I Can every year at the end of March is World Down Syndrome Day. And every year they have like a social media video campaign. And 2024 they did this campaign called Assume That I Can and Maybe I Will. And Madison Tevlin runs through all of these classic scenarios that she and other people with Down syndrome and learning disabilities face. There was a scene with her in a bar ordering like a margarita, and then the bartender gives her a soda or a fizzy drink. And she's looking at the bartender like really queen. And there were other ones where like her parents were like tucking her into bed at night, even though she's a fully grown woman.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

There were What about relationships as well?

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Yeah, saying like, oh, like I can't go on a date or I can't.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

You assume that I can go on a date, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

Because it speaks to the fact that disability is so tied up in what we assume you can't do. And the association with learning disabilities and Because you know, if you have a learning disability, you don't learn in the same way as other people without a learning disability. You might not pick up on certain things like social cues, for example.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Or on the severe end, you might not be as neurodeveloped as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:03

And you are in a more vulnerable state, perhaps, than some of your counterparts. You know, you might struggle with like money or like financial management, for example. And what that should be a signal of is okay, we are going to find provisions to help you. We are going to find workarounds to assist you and find ways to adapt and assist you. But again, like I said, it speaks to the fact that our infrastructure, whether that be the outside environment, whether that be how we communicate in the workplace or in healthcare, is just fundamentally not accessible. But we have to find these workarounds. But often what happens is instead of finding those workarounds, we say, no, no, no, you're you you can't be included here. We're not going to make the changes that we need to make this space accessible. We're just going to alienate you from it. You feel marginalized, it makes you feel very down, and it does affect your mental health and et cetera, et cetera. But with the assume that I can campaign, it takes all of these scenarios where they think you can't read Shakespeare, you can't work and live independently, you can't go to a bar and order a cocktail.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

You can't have a relationship.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

You can't have a sexual relationship or a romantic relationship. And it twists it on its head and said, if you open up your mind and say, you know, you can do this. You might need a little bit of help along the way, but you ultimately can do this, then you will. It's like with anything. It's like if you teach somebody, it's that classic phrase, right? Of like, what is it, you you teach a man to fish and he'll be able to fish for the rest of his life. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Give him a fishing rod. You know, you know it better than I do.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

But it's that principle of like, if you teach someone and you teach them ropes and they start to understand the nuances of how things operate and how things work, and they can find their own ways to adapt and they can tap into their own resources, they will be able to do that task. They will be able to do this thing that you don't think they're able to do. And if you open up your mind and if you open up the sort of opportunity and the possibility for people with Down syndrome, with any learning disability to do all of these things, then they will. And so I was really taken by this advert, by this campaign. I felt that it really opened up and spoke to the entire disabled community in many respects. And I think anyone with a disability saw themselves in that campaign. And I I just thought, as my wonderful friend Matt says, Shy Bern's getting out, and you have to just go. I'm gonna give her a call, see if she's up for coming on the podcast. And lo and behold, she was. So we stayed quite late actually because she was based in LA and we were in uh you know sunny London town, and so we set up a recording, it was like half eight at night, which is quite a while after hours for us, and we spoke to her for a little while and we talked about the campaign, we talked about all those elements about how you need to open up the possibility for people with learning disabilities and disabled people in general to fulfil their potential.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Move the Overton window, basically, in a societal sense.

SPEAKER_03 51:23

And what was amazing was that Madison framed it in such a way of like, now I'm able to do all these things. I feel so much more comfortable in my own skin. I feel kind of proud to be part of this community and proud to have Down syndrome. I feel proud to be who I am. This isn't a catastrophe for me. There are going to be times when having Down syndrome is difficult. And she said to herself, like she finds certain like instructions really difficult to follow, or like big wads of text really hard to read. But there are workarounds and we will find a way to muddle through this. It doesn't mean that I'm the problem. It doesn't mean that I'm not worthy of being here, and it doesn't mean that I am a burden. It just means that I have identified the fact that this is not an accessible space, but I'm going to make it accessible for me.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

You know, we've known each other a long time now, and when you started working in this space, particularly obviously in BBC Alch, you really helped me sort of evolve my own views on disability just throughout the years. And I remember saying that to you, offair, and one of the key themes that has run throughout this podcast is you're not inspiring for simply existing, right? Now, when I learned that you were born with CH, I'm not going to try and say it because I definitely will get it tongue-twisted, and it wasn't some sort of injury that you would have recovered from. Because you know, I didn't know your entire details when you came to RDC, and I just saw you go with the splints, and I was like, oh right, she's gone through something and she's recovering from it.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

Now you're in this space where people are slowly learning that people are changing their views. What now needs to change further?

SPEAKER_03 53:08

There needs to be disabled people at legislative level. There needs to be disabled people in places of power.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Yeah, not just Tani Gray Thompson. Bless her.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

Yeah. You can't put that on Tani Gray Thompson. You can't put it all on. She does enough, bless her. I know. Spikey. Like she's got a busy enough skill.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

She was at the coal face for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 53:26

You can't put it all on one person. It's like when you talk about the token ex. You can't put it all on that person. Or Liz Carr, whoever is. Liz Carr. You can't put it on these people. Matt Fraser. You can't put it all on these people to represent an entire community because being disabled is not an homogenous experience.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

It's not all they are either.

SPEAKER_03 53:47

So there needs to be better represent we've been wanging on about this for years now. There needs to be better better representation of all minorities in places of power, in editorial positions in like the journalism industry. There needs to be people represented in in every area of the hierarchy. It takes that personal experience to go, well, I know this isn't working.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Or this shouldn't be signed off.

SPEAKER_03 54:12

Or this shouldn't be signed off. Or this needs to be signed off.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

And go, right, so we need to fix all of these problems. We need to engage with a community. We need to engage with these people and say, like, what's going well, what's not, how do we fix it? What would you like to see? Workshop it, focus group it, whatever you need to do. And that's how you make these spaces more accessible for all communities. It's not just the disability community. I think what's really nice is that over the years I have reframed accessibility as not just a disability thing with the little disability logo with the wheelchair. I don't just see it that way. I see it as like you have to be accessible for every single person, whether they are all walks of life. All walks of life, whether they're in an immigrant community, whether they are a person of colour, whether they are queer, for example.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Let's come back to the beep and that career trajectory. Yeah. Because in May 2019, another green light moment, another huge moment comes when you're offered a permanent contract. So given everything you'd gone through, all the late nights, all the late shifts, all the blood, the sweat, the tears, Jeremy Vine's two-week show placement. How did you feel in that moment when you got the news?

SPEAKER_03 55:26

Relieved. Well, I mean, I was I was getting a regular paycheck, like it was fine, but I was so, so relieved. And I remember it was a lovely day because my lovely colleague Reha also got a permanent contract on the same day, and we were both on cloud nine. It just felt I don't want to say validating, but it certainly felt like my hard work had paid off. Because I'm not a particularly confident person. I do sort of second guess a lot of what I do, and I know I need to stop doing that and have a little faith in what I do. But it was one of those moments where I go, okay, yeah, Niamh's arrived. She's she's she's okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

I'm actually good at my job.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

Yeah, I think as well, like none of us are telepathic. Like, we often need to be told in no uncertain terms, this is going well. You could work on this, here's my feedback, do with it what you will. Sometimes it takes being given a permanent contract for that to truly sink in.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

I'm going to try and do a whistle stop tour here because I'm conscious we've already been speaking for an hour and I have we could make this foolbot a Lord of the Rings film. So you want to broaden your horizons beyond BBC Ouch.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

And you've always had an interest in current affairs digital. So you land a role at BBC Stories in January 2020, where friend of the pod Florence Craig worked for a long time. What were some of the stories you worked on there? And then how did it lead to getting to a very coveted BBC news job?

SPEAKER_03 56:52

So I had a very roundabout way because, as you said, January 2020, and we all know what happened that year. So I started out thinking, oh, I'd make a few short films, but then of course the pandemic happens. And I was involved in a program about the aesthetics industry.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

What does that mean? Sorry. Like plastic surgery?

SPEAKER_03 57:12

No. So it more like the tweakman style thing. So like fillers? Fillers, Botox, dermal fillers, like um, you know, the sort of they're not facelifts, but they're called like the um the fox eye lift. Oh yes, so it is still a heavily unregulated industry.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

I mean, look at the buckle fat stuff going on.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Good God.

SPEAKER_03 57:34

Now the thing is, I don't judge anyone for getting a treat a tweakment. You do you. I'm very much of that persuasion because you don't know what's going on in someone's mind. I also know what it's like to be a woman growing up in the 2000s when nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. I know what that feels like. So I'm not gonna sit here and judge someone for making a tweakment to their lips or their cheeks or whatever. What I do take issue with is the fact that it's completely unregulated, and anybody who gets a treatment that goes wrong, they have no one to hold to account. And that was the theme of the programme.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

That's a cross surgery right now, where you've got the turkey teeth, BBLs, buckle fat removal. It's all going on, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 58:15

It's a huge, huge industry, and we were doing an investigation into not only how unregulated this industry is, but how we could find solutions and hold people to account. But that was an amazing doc. That was called Under the Skin Beauty Botch Beauty Business. And I also worked on another film called Hidden Girls, which was about the women in gang culture.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 58:42

Yeah. So that was a really, really heavy doc.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

Do you mean like the victims of exploitation, or do you mean like the ones who are at the top of a sort of almost the ones there's always like a woman managing the admin side of gangs?

SPEAKER_03 58:52

Well, that's which version. Well, it's mostly the women who are exploited. The ones who are perhaps used as sex workers, who are carrying drugs over county lines, the women in the hospitals who are checking in on the men who might have got caught up in a scrap in AE. So we were talking to victims, we were talking to survivors, we were talking to charities who were on the front line trying to help the women get out of these awful situations. And it was a film that my colleagues Brandon and Amanda and I, we were so, so proud of it. And we got some awards for it.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

So you don't hear it a lot. You don't hear about those that part, do it? Because gang culture is so glamorised and all the films and TV programs.

SPEAKER_03 59:39

But it was one of those docks where didn't have a presenter, didn't have a voiceover. Oh wow. It was just the girls. And it was Amanda's baby. Um, she'd made a film called Lost Boys, which was the boys and the gangs, and then she wanted to do the girls. That was the whole premise. And I was roped in because I had some experience in filmmaking because she came from a news background. And so yeah, I helped her that way. And Brandon as well was our director and like editor, videographer. He was incredible and he graded that film and he made it look amazing. He's so talented, love him. And yeah, those two I was really proud of. Yeah, I didn't get to work on as many projects as I would have liked to have done in that department, but that was purely down to circumstance, and there was nothing we could have done about the uh the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

Yeah, the impending uh once in their lifetime global pandemic. I said lifetime touch wood. You then jump again, you move to BBC News as a broadcast journalist in December 2021. You're now getting more live experience. I'm using an air quotes there. So you join BBC News, very weird timing. You join BBC News a week before Parsi Gate broke.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

You then work on the Russia-Ukraine war, President Donald Trump's re-election in 2024, the fall of Afghanistan, and the October 7th massacre by Hamas militants when they invaded Israel. That's a lot. Did it feel like I remember speaking to many BBC News colleagues when I was working at the B, but then and now it is just like you're in a constant churn. It is a constant world in it. Is that how it felt?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

Yeah. We playfully call it churnalism.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

But it's it's tough.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

News never stops.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:07

It never stops. My mother still doesn't quite get that like I used to do weekend shifts.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:13

And I'd be like, the news happens on Saturday, mum. That her news happens on Sunday night. You know the way you watch the news on Sunday night? You know the way Clive Myrie is on the telly on Sunday night? That's actually happening. He's there on Sunday in his finery.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

I've just got a visual manager, does it not take a break?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:34

It'll be off for Christmas. It's like, no, no, Linda, it won't. I'm sorry, I'm absolutely rinsing my mother hair. It doesn't stop. And I would do a mix of like early and late shifts, because that's just the nature of news. Like often what would happen is your call time would be six or seven a.m. and you'd work through to about five or six, depending on your shift. There'd be like staggered times throughout the day. So some people come in at six, some people come in at seven, eight, etc. etc. And then it'd be overnights and whatnot. And you'd be covering everything from like maternity scandals, like that was a story I worked on quite heavily, particularly in Nottingham. Staffordshire. And yeah, like I say, party gate when Allegra Strassman suddenly became a thing, and we were talking about all the misdemeanours and indiscretions of our government. Yeah. Then it was the political unrest over in the States. We were talking about political unrest all over the world from South America, everything that's going on in Venezuela. I am still going now, by the way, Venezuela. Yes. Just rattling off some story without going into too much detail. Just to name but a few.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:48

And that wasn't in a long space of time either. That was about what, 18 months?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

Yes, more or less.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:53

I was mostly at the BBC News channels, I was in the main red newsroom from end of 2021 to end of 2023.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:02

You'd be on the telly when they pan out.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:05

Right? Listen, I was technically in the background when the Queen passed away. Oh Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

You were there. I was out of the BBC press office at that point. But I had colleagues who were still there.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:16

Yeah. It was mad because you do write rehearsals for it. Oh yeah. I don't know like how far people know this. There are rehearsals and it was called like Operation Operation Lion?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Something like that, yeah. Yeah, Operation Lion, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

And then when it happens, it's London Bridge has fallen.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:33

It's mad. But you'd come in and you'd be paid for like a half day, and you'd come in and you'd sort of act like nothing was going on, like Oscar-winning performances from all around. Like, oh yeah, oh and then you'd suddenly get to it and you'd have to dig out obituar that have been pre-made. You'd have to pretend to like call up people, you'd have presenters come in when they're not on shift to do a practice run of what happens when a senior member of the royal family passes away. It was full on, it was mad. I'll tell you this much though, I needed it. I needed change of pace. Not just a change of pace. I think from a sort of strategic standpoint, I needed to that experience sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:20

Because even though I knew it wasn't for me long term.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:24

Just to have it under your belt, innit? You'll never get that anywhere else. I'll never get what I had at the BBC Press office anywhere else.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

As a journalist, you need the opportunity to be more proactive. And that made me more proactive. So for example, now I'm working on a couple of projects that I'm hoping to get green lit in 2026. But it has made me go like, right, this is the topic. Furious Google. I've already called up for six people. Whereas back in the day, I wouldn't have had the confidence to just go, I'm gonna Fuck it. Shai Burns getting out. You don't know. Yeah, you don't know, you don't know if people are gonna say yes, you don't know if they're gonna say no. But it makes you think, right, I've got five minutes to create a story. Because often what would happen in in the newsroom is you'd go in really, really early and you'd discuss the news agenda for the day and you'd divvy out stories, you'd divvy out all sorts, and then you'd have these like three or four stories, and you'd be going through all these mental gymnastics of like, how do I prioritize, how do I manage my time well, how do I look after my guests well, how do I negotiate this space? And you learn to just adapt. Some people get it, some people don't like it, some people don't last more than six months, and that's fine, like it's not for everyone, but I definitely thrived on the madness. And what was really nice is as well, and I know I've said this like four or five times now, I met some incredible people, really incredible people in that experience, and I'm still friends with a lot of them, I still socialise with them. And yeah, so some of my closest friends like that I met lots of really cool people, and I've been to their weddings, I've you know, I've met their parents and stuff. It's really Really strong, lifelong friendships, really solid friendships have come out of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

You go back to Ouch, and I know they say never go back, but you go back to Ouch, it's rebranded Access All. Yeah. I want to s briefly skip over that because you then go to another amazing opportunity, which is the one before you leave the BBC, which is a programme called A Hundred Women. Whenever it's on the BBC News, it's always trailed all those previous interviews. So you get to see that all the time now if you ever flick on the BBC News channel. A job application comes up and you work on four documentaries of that series. So Tracy Emmin, Ray, iconic now, less iconic at the time because she wasn't as well known.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

And the definitely iconic actress Sharon Stone, which, as we spoke off air, getting her interview was almost a movie in itself. Just tell me about her.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Oh, don't. It was a classic case of too many cooks. And then so I was a part of the 100 women. I've just I'll just explain what it is. It's so it's now global women, but effectively it's a season that celebrates incredible women in their field. So it could be anything from arts and culture, it could be climate activism, women in tech, women in medicine, doesn't matter what it is. We try and represent these women from all over the world, across all the continents. We try to give a mouthpiece to like indigenous communities or like the traveler community, for example, women you wouldn't hear from in mainstream media. And that was kind of the whole point. And as a part of the season, we would nominate 100 women who have made a big impact throughout the year. As well as that, we would make films. There was a film about women tattoo artists in South Korea where it's technically illegal to have a tattoo. We would make films about women who were trafficked, like human trafficking, and you know, women in Afghanistan, women who are trying to make sure young girls are getting an education, for example.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:59

Yeah, unfortunately that's probably not the case, sadly now. But yeah, separate podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

A part of the 100 women experience is that we would try and get some big names for the list. And that particular year, so for example, in the past they've had people like America Ferreira, Shimon Gozie, and then oh gosh, who else have had like Billie Eilish? Oh yeah, like really big names, and so they always call them the big bids list, the people who we will the big cheeses, the big cheeses, as it were, and you know, I'd be writing emails to Sesha Ronan's people, Florence Pugh, or who else did I put in a bid for? I tried Julie Andrews just for a laugh. Dame, Dame. Dame Julie Andrews. I'm sorry. Sorry. Dame Julie Andrews. I just thought, oh sorry, I'm gonna go for it. Because I mean, with those situations, you give like a nice overview of their career, and we could obviously talk about like everything from Sound of Music to Mary Poppins, her theatre career, and now she's in Bridgerton. So like you can definitely get a nice breadth of Princess Diaries. Princess Diaries, honourable mention. Yeah. A queen is never late to everyone's house, is simply earnest. Now that screams your childhood of the Princess Diaries 2 are royal engagements. No less. But one of those big bids, because I came from the disability journalism background, they kind of said, Oh, could we maybe pick your brains about like disabled women who have made a big impact? And in fact, I did put Madison Tevlin up from the ad for from the Assume That I Can campaign. She made it onto the list, which was really cool. But I also was looking to household names, and I think I put in a bid for like Emma Watson because she has ADHD, and she's spoken a little bit about her neurodiversity in the past, and I thought it might be a nice idea to open that up. But then I put uh a bid in for Sharon Stone because she went through a massive brain hemorrhage. Did she? Yeah, in the early 2000s, and it really affected her career, it affected her personal life, and it took a long time for her to rehabilitate herself.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:59

And because she was this sex symbol, fan fatale figure.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:04

How did she deal with the loss of that almost? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:07

Yeah, and the fact that, you know, she felt even though acting was her career and her passion, it felt like all of that had been undermined because she was so beautiful, and that's all it felt that that was all people really valued. Because Basic Instinct had that really iconic scene, those feelings were somewhat amplified, and we gave her a space to talk about that in the first place. Hollywood, unfortunately. How she feels about it, you know, 30-something years on. But it was an absolute nightmare getting it organised. The original plan was to go to LA and film her in her own habitat because she's a painter now. Oh yeah, she's a painter, like she's sold some of her stuff. She's very I'm not doing this because I've worked on it, but it was genuinely really good stuff. And we thought, why not get her in her studio showing some of her paintings in her natural habitat where she feels comfortable enough to speak candidly. And so that was the original plan.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

Didn't work?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:01

No. Basically, it didn't happen in LA, and we managed to speak to her in Turin. But you got it done. We got it done. We went to Italy and it was amazing. And it was just a really surreal moment having her sit there with Chichi Izundu, the presenter interviewer. It was just mad. It was one of those moments that I'll always remember. And I was so starstruck.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

You would be often.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:26

I've never, I don't think I've ever really well, I have, that's a complete lie. But it was one of those moments where you have to go, I need to be professional.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:35

I need to not be weird and flappy. I need to focus.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

Yeah. Especially when you're around the celebs all the time in the B. Like the fact that you were that level means that it was serious.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:45

The best part though was because it was such a flying visit, and because everything was done at the 11th hour, as soon as the interview finished, I had to go back to London. Couldn't even stop and have a chat. No, we didn't. I had all my bags in the room packed, like on set. My suitcase was there, everything. And I ran to the airport. But it was at the time where there was that massive storm during the end of November last year. So my flight was delayed by four hours anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

But Oh, so you could have had a chat.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

Well, I was stuck in Turin Airport, like munching on a cornetto.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

We fast forward to March 2025, and after almost 10 years, you make the decision to leave the Bib and you go freelance. Tell me why you made the decision and how you felt on your very last day.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:33

Um why did I do it? I think 10 years working in one space is too long. That's a personal thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:41

So no offense to anyone who's been in the same seat for 20 plus years.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:44

There's a lot of BBC lifers who are listening to this going, oops.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:46

I'm sorry. I I felt a bit institutionalized. Yeah. Yeah, I hear it. I felt I was very used to one way of working, and the journalism business is much bigger than the BBC. So I knew a few friends who'd gone on to Pastors New who'd taken on contracts at other outlets, who had gone freelance themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

My good friend Christian Hugo, former BBCer.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:07

Yeah, like they said this was a really good thing for me to do. It was a very healthy thing to do to kind of get out. But I also felt that I almost exhausted myself. You'd done it, you've done everything you could do. I'd done the live TV. Yeah, I'd done the live TV, I'd done the podcast, the radio, the live stuff, the pre-recorded stuff. BBC News. It's an amazing opportunity. Of course it is. I wouldn't have changed it for the world, but I needed to go. I think I'd exhausted those opportunities and my permanent contract was with the BBC News Channel. I was enjoying it, but also the churn got a little bit too much, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

Guess for everyone.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:45

Yeah, and I think it was healthy to have a break. It was healthy to get out and get some sunlight and just not be in that environment. Also, there were lots of changes going on, and I don't think that it was suited to my way of working. I I'm not, as you can probably tell from this nearly two-hour conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:05

We'd have to make this a part one and part two for the editors.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:08

I um I'm not a linear thinker. I physically can't go from A to Z. I need to go from A to P, maybe back to C, back to J, then to Z. That's how my brain operates. And so I needed the space to be more creative and more imaginative, I guess. Whereas at the BBC News Channel, and fair enough, this is how it has to work, there is a formula. And you have to adhere to that formula. And that honestly, quite frankly, I was bored, which is a terrible thing to say, but I was bored.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:36

It's honest, honesty is what this podcast is about.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

I and I just did I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And I had so many ideas and things that weren't coming to fruition that were less gathering dust in a folder. And I thought I need to get out and try and see if I can make these things happen. And it was probably the best decision I've ever made. And I ended up taking a little bit of time off. I was in a fortunate position whereby I had the means to do that. And I took like six weeks off. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:07

And just felt like a teacher on the summer holidays.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:10

Kind of. It was actually really nice because it was April, May time. Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:13

The few months of summer we get. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:16

It was a beautiful outside. It was all I did was like go to yoga classes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Oh amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:21

That's all I did. I just read my book.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:23

What life? It was great. Yoga and reading.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:25

Honestly, I could have got used to that quickly. I could just get paid for this. Can I just get paid for this? Exactly. Exactly. But um eventually I thought, no, in that time I was also laying down some groundwork and like sending out emails to anyone and everyone who'd listen and eventually built up enough contacts to branch out into the big wide world of freelancing. So it wasn't too bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:48

Well, we could do a whole other half an hour on freelancing, but I'm conscious of time. Let's reflect on your journalism journey, Belle. So, first of all, what's been your proudest achievement on it so far?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

I know you've asked me this before, and I keep changing my mind. I think it probably is. It has to be something in ouch or access all. I keep calling it Access All Nay Ouch.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:16

Like it's been married off. Yeah. This is my former name.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:20

But because it was so original. It was stories for and by disabled people that were welcoming in non-disabled listeners. Like me.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:28

And they were hopefully insightful conversations and insightful stories that took people away from these very stifling headlines whereby a disabled person was only as good as the extraordinary thing that they've done. These Paralympians, for example, amazing. They're not superheroes. They're not superhumans because they've just done something because you don't expect them to. Disabled people make cups of tea by themselves. They cotch in front of the telly for hours. They go on dates, they have relationships, they go partying, they go to a choir every Thursday. You know, they do normal things. They engage with public life. They have a job and they grab a coffee with a mate. They are normal people. I always, when I go to Access All now and I see all my disabled colleagues, I go, ha ha, normal people, great. They are just like everybody else. They've just got to navigate the world in a slightly different way to non-disabled people. That's how I've always framed it. And ouch slash access all gave people a platform to tell those stories, to be like, yeah, I've had some difficulties in my life where I felt marginalized, I felt alienated, or I felt like I don't belong, I don't fit in. And I have felt a certain type of way about my disability, and I have felt really down about it in the past. But I've gone through these, you know, multiple thought processes, and I've come out the other side where I felt way more comfortable in my own body, and I've made these conscious decisions to be like, do you know what? Sod it. I'm gonna take the ball by the horns, I'm gonna take this opportunity and I'm not gonna let anything stop me. And I hope that everyone listening to those stories can get something out of it and can learn a little bit more about the community, not just from the trials and the tribulations, the fights for you know basic access to healthcare or education, but also the fact that we are just like everybody else fundamentally.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:36

And as a final question before we move on, what has this wider journalism journey also taught you about yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:44

That I'm way more capable than I give myself credit for. These weird ideas I have up here can come to fruition, and I see it all the time. Like now, they still run a lot of the trails or the trailers of films I've made. And I see it just like through osmosis. I'm making a cup of tea and I see it on the telly. I made that. I made that happen. That was a silly idea I had with my feet up and a cup of coffee. And I made it happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:20

Thank you for listening to part one of Niam Hughes' journey. If you enjoyed it, please do listen to part two of Neave's Journey. If you enjoyed it, please do listen to part two of Niam's Journey, which is available on all streaming platforms for you to listen to when you are ready. As always, thank you to all the ventors who've tuned into this episode. Remember, if you've liked what you've heard, give it a share on social media, tag us at VentHelpUK. Tell your friends, work colleagues, or family about us. If you're feeling generous, write us a review and give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we're doing at Vent, please consider supporting us by going to patreon.com slash vent helpuk or make a one-off donation to our PayPal. All of those links are on our link tree. That's linktr.ee slash vent helpuk. We hope to check in with you again very soon. And remember, guys, it is always okay to vent.