Kate Silverton

Kate Silverton (born 4 August 1970) is an English  journalist, currently employed by the  BBC.

[edit] Early life and education
Silverton was born in Waltham Abbey in Essex, England, the daughter of English parents; Terry Silverton, a black-cab driver turned registered hypnotherapist and Patricia Silverton, who now heads her daughter's company. Silverton has two sisters, Claire and Amy. Silverton attended West Hatch High School in Chigwell, Essex, where she was a champion swimmer and started to compete in the triathlon. She was a Girl Guide and gained the Queen's Guide Award. She spent a year studying Arabic and Middle Eastern politics before switching to psychology and graduated from Durham University where she attended St. Cuthbert's Society.Kate went to Zimbabwe with Raleigh International, spending her gap year working for them in Egypt and Lebanon.

[edit] Early career
Silverton worked for a London-based bank before becoming a journalist. She trained with the BBC, working on Look North news before becoming a reporter and presenter at Tyne Tees Television.

She was a panellist on Five's The Wright Stuff, The Heaven and Earth Show, Big Strong Boys and Weekend Breakfast on BBC Radio 5 Live, before joining BBC News.

[edit] BBC News
From 2005 until December 2007, she was the presenter from 08:30-11:00 on BBC News 24 along with colleague Simon McCoy, although she was frequently absent as she was also a regular relief presenter for BBC Breakfast, presenting during some of Sian Williams's maternity leave.[citation needed]

In December 2007, Silverton was named as the presenter of the BBC News (8 p.m. summary) - a 90-second round up of the news shown on BBC One, which she presented for two months. She presented the BBC News at One from February to August 2008, whilst main presenter Sophie Raworth was on maternity leave.

In January 2009, Silverton began to present the BBC Weekend News Late Bulletin as a regular presenter.[citation needed]  From Monday 23 February 2009, Silverton presented BBC Breakfast with Bill Turnbull, again covering for Sian Williams's maternity leave, which ended on 31 August 2009. During September 2009, she presented and reported for BBC News from Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan.

She presented her final news programme on 3 October 2011 before taking maternity leave and returned to the News at One on 2 April 2012. Until May 2012, she was the deputy presenter of the BBC News at One, presenting on Mondays and when main presenter Sophie Raworth was unavailable. Silverton remains the main relief presenter of the programme on Thursdays as well as BBC News at Ten" on Saturdays, but has lost the deputy role to Sian Williams after Williams left BBC Breakfast prior to that programme's relocation to Salford. She occasionally presents on the BBC News Channel and on BBC world news's GMT program.

[edit] Other BBC projects
On 1 April 2008, alongside the historian Dan Snow, she presented live coverage of the celebrations held at RAF Fairford for the 90th Birthday of the Royal Air Force. On 24 August 2008, Silverton presented live coverage of the celebrations of London becoming the 2012 Olympic Games host city, from The Mall. She presented New Year Live aboard HMS Belfast in London on 31 December 2008 on BBC1 with Nick Knowles.

She has appeared as a newsreader on the BBC drama Spooks.

In October 2008, Kate and new presenter Jackson Looseyia joined the original presenting team of Jonathan Scott, Simon King and Saba Douglas-Hamilton for Big Cat Live on BBC1.

 In April 2009, she appeared as a mentor in the BBC 2 series The Speaker, offering her advice on good storytelling and public speaking.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In May 2009, she presented a documentary called 10 Things You Need to Know About Sleep, which looked at different ways to deal with insomnia.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;"> From January 2010, she presented the Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 5 Live, running from 09:30 to 11:00. The show's format was revamped as part of a general review of the schedules in January 201 0.

[edit] Other opportunities
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In February 2008, Kate revealed in an interview in The Independent newspaper that she had been offered a main presenter role for the relaunch of Five News in 2007 which she declined.

[edit] Philip Hayton incident
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In September 2005, Silverton drew some media attention when her BBC News 24 co-newsreader Philip Hayton, who had worked for the BBC for 37 years, resigned his position six months into a year's contract.The Daily Telegraph, without substantiation and quoting an unnamed 'insider', reported that he turned to Silverton during a break and said "I don't like you".The Daily Mirror quoted another BBC 'insider' as saying that Silverton is "...pushy beyond belief. Behind her big superficial smile she can be a really aggressive, manipulative monster who always gets what she wants." Hayton merely cited "incompatibility" with Silverton as his reason and when his managers refused to move Silverton to another time slot, he left. Silverton was in the peculiar position of having to go through the morning's paper review live on air the morning the story broke, avoiding any discussion of the story and chiding her new co-anchor when he looked to refer to it.Hayton said that he left the BBC "without bitterness or rancour".

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">However, several figures spoke up for Silverton. Jon Sopel, a fellow BBC News 24 presenter, who was Silverton's co-anchor at News 24 for several months, commented on the incident saying "She's warm and friendly. With Kate, what you see is what you get - she's bright, lively, talented and vivacious. I like and trust her. Yes, she's ambitious... but aren't we all?"

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Rod Liddle, another of Silverton's former co-presenters and also former programme editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme said: "Kate is intelligent, attractive and has strong opinions. She is far cleverer than Hayton. There are plenty of very stupid women at the BBC but she isn’t one of them. Philip probably needs to work on an island where there are no women. She was absolutely lovely, good fun, professional, intelligent and devoid of the usual afflictions of TV presenters - narcissism and greed." It was later revealed<sup class="noprint Inline-Template" style="line-height:1em;white-space:nowrap;">[where?]  while the pair worked on a short-lived BBC TV politics programme in 2003, Silverton allegedly hit Liddle, who said: "I made a stupid comment about the disabled which Kate rightly took exception to. We took the fight out of the pilot. It's good to get these things out before we go on air. My admiration for Kate knows no bounds".

[edit] Personal life
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Silverton married Mike Heron at Fleet Street's St Bride's Church on Saturday 18 December 2010. On 5 November 2011, Silverton gave birth to a baby girl named Clemency Florence Rose Heron at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. On a BBC Radio 4 programme (broadcast on 2 May 2013), Silverton stated that her daughter had been conceived "naturally" after four unsuccessful cycles of IVF.

[edit] Plastic surgery lawsuit
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In January 2008, Silverton sued a clinic after an allegedly botched cosmetic surgery procedure to remove acne scars.