Hugh pym biography

As the health editor at BBC News, Hugh Pym was a familiar fixture on many television screens throughout the duration of the Covid pandemic. He talks to Joshua Murray about the evolution of journalism, his career highlights, and impartiality at the BBC. He admits that not wholeheartedly throwing himself into working with the student paper and radio station while studying at the University of Oxford hampered his pathway to employment.

Hugh Ruthven Pym is a British journalist and author.

However, his persistence in taking up a postgraduate diploma at Falmouth Technical College now Falmouth University paid dividends, opening the door to work in radio. He recounts being the first journalist to interview Margaret Keenan, the recipient of the first approved Covid vaccine in the world in December Margaret was there, in her 90s and she was just amazing, wonderfully charming, and was really happy to take all of our questions.

On the same day, Pym tells of his tweet about the second vaccine recipient and which led to his most viral social media moment, likely due to the fact that the recipient was a man named William Shakespeare who hailed from Warwickshire, the same home county of his namesake, the famous playwright. That important texture of journalism in every community has changed a lot and I hope that it can be saved and sustained.

I had to drop whatever story I was doing and go on air. That was what we did as political correspondents. I was then sent over to Northern Ireland in the subsequent days to report on the follow-up of the event and cover the politics. He has also covered health and social challenges in Northern Ireland, including problems with waiting lists.

It was clear that something unusual was happening here. On the reporting side, it was important to ensure that the tone was right; I only made a brief appearance on the first day and it was all about getting the tone right, being responsible, not speculating whilst still giving people as much information as we could. In the general election, he was a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in North Wiltshire, a seat which is normally safe Conservative.