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news
Kate Silverton (Picture Credit - BBC) .pngBBC's Kate Silverton turns down chauffeur-driven car - she'd rather go by bike
BBC Breakfast presenter Kate Silverton last week turned down the offer of a chauffeur-driven car to take her to a book launch – because she preferred to get there under her own steam using pedal power.
Speaking to The Mirror’s Dean Piper as she packed her rucksack to ride home from the launch of Katie Nicholl’s book William and Harry, Silverton explained: "I've cycled for miles today and do a load of cycling each week. I got a call this evening saying do you want a car to the event? But I turned it down. I'm fine on my bike."
Silverton first revealed herself to be a keen cyclist when she was interviewed for a ‘My Perfect Weekend’ feature published last August in the Daily Telegraph, in which she said that on Sundays, she and her fiancé “often cycle to Richmond Park and meet up with a group of friends for a picnic."
She continued: "I'm a huge cycling enthusiast and ideally I'd like to own three bikes. I have this fantasy about having an old Pashley – the sit up and beg type – and peddling [sic] to my home in the country with my whippet in the basket.”
Whether it’s down to the fact that they have to get up at an ungodly hour to get to the studio, or the need to get out and exercise after spending the working day sitting on a sofa, the BBC Breakfast show does seem to attract more than its fair share of cyclists.
Former presenter Dermot Murnaghan, now with Sky, is a self-confessed cycling nut, and last year, regularly commuting by bicycle more than 30 miles a day from his home in North London to the Sky TV studios, and last year “did a Tebbit” by getting on his bike to ride around the West Country to report on the effects of the recession. He also took part in former England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio’s Cycle Slam earlier this year.
Meanwhile, in 2007, BBC Breakfast's sports reporter Chris Hollins and weather presenter Carol Kirkwood undertook a tandem ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow to raise money for Children in Need.
And Mike Bushell, who in the weekend sports slot gets to try out a new sport each week, has tried his hand at cyclocross, roller racing courtesy of Rollapaluza, and last year even tackled Mont Ventoux, as shown in the linked video.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- Mikezerodown 1 sec ago
Another one Mike taking over for peanuts....
- wtjs 9 hours 26 min ago
it seems that most places just rely on sufficient policing to reduce the issue...
- Matt Page 10 hours 10 min ago
Many manufacturers, including Scribe, can give you methods to reduce the noise level. On Scribe, and other ratchet designs it's usually just adding...
- wtjs 10 hours 48 min ago
It wouldn't work at all where wtjs lives...
- Sriracha 11 hours 5 min ago
Pretty sure AI could skim through hours of footage in a few seconds to identify suspicious events. Of course someone in authority has to care in...
- chrisonabike 11 hours 13 min ago
Bonsai samurai? Or is it just a case of "they seem to get smaller every year"?
- mdavidford 13 hours 56 min ago
I dunno - seems like it's coming round on a regular basis...
- Rich_cb 15 hours 38 min ago
The mistake is to focus on the US....
- chrisonabike 15 hours 50 min ago
I mean it seems silly to complain in detail when we're firmly in the territory in the UK of "you will have to live with this the rest of your life ...
- eburtthebike 18 hours 21 min ago
I thought students were supposed to be intelligent?
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11 comments
If it's helmet hair you want, have a look at Vino in picture # 12 in this cracking set of shots from the Giro (warning: also includes bloke in Borat mankini):
http://www.boston.com/sports/blogs/bigshots/2010/06/giro_ditalia_2010.html
She looks remarkably well groomed, and lacking in helmet hair, for a bike commuter.
Lazy, cookie-cutter TV news reporting has become so easy to identify and parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI
I was pretty sure that was going to be the Charlie Brooker clip even before I clicked on it - great piece of TV
If you're not allowed to use a mobile phone while driving, I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be doing a piece to camera... it's not just the Top Gear boys either (who at least are probably better than average at handling a car, not that that matters) but pretty much every reporter.
From memory, Ray Snoddy brought this up on Newswatch one Saturday morning following a viewer's complaint but the producer they wheeled in to respond just shrugged it off.
Yes, it's bloody irritating. The other one that gets my goat is news anchor/studio person talks to reporter expert, who tells him that Fred Bloggs has indeed bitten his dog and the person in the studio then re-casts what the reporter has just told him as a question back to the reporter who then repeats what he just said using a slightly different set of words… only slghtly different mind about the dog biting incident without telling you any more the second time than he did the first.
Sports reports are the worst for this, basically cos they've got hours of airtime to fill with not very much news at all. The pre-tournament coverage of the World Cup so far has been a veritable feast of this it's so light on actual facts it's almost content free.
Has anyone noticed the huge amount of padding added to TV programmes these days by including footage of the presenter driving somewhere? It came in with the move away from hiring experts to present documentaries, and I guess was intended to re-enforce the concept that the presenter is an Everyman on a Voyage of Discovery. But now even a programme about quantum mechanics, presented by a leading theoretical physicist, seemingly must include shots of him driving along a motorway in Denmark talking about his emotions at visiting Copenhagen, and shots of him driving a 4x4 up a mountain, talking at length about how the air is thin, so he can deliver two lines about how atomic physics informed cosmology in front a random big telescope. I guess Dermot Murnaghan's "Economic Cycle" was just another version of this trend.
"Good spot, Simon - though we'll give the Daily Telegraph credit for the confusion."
Indeed, I read the original article in the Telegraph. Professional journos, eh?
"I've cycled for miles today and do a load of cycling each week." Probably should be 'four miles'.
Good spot, Simon - though we'll give the Daily Telegraph credit for the confusion
"Peddling to my home in the country?"
Oh dear, do you mean "pedalling"?