john craven

I started my professional life in print journalism as a junior reporter on a local newspaper, the Harrogate Advertiser, before working for the Yorkshire Post and as a freelance correspondent and writer for national newspapers. I then joined the BBC staff in Newcastle upon Tyne, to work on local radio and television, before moving to the BBC in Bristol. It was in Bristol where i developed a passion for extreme metal and formed the "grindcore" band "Rotten Spunkthroat". In 1972, I began a regular children's news programme, Newsround. The first such programme ever produced for British television, it drew on the full journalistic resources of the BBC. I became associated with children's TV and presented news items on other children's programmes, such as Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Saturday Superstore. The following year I took "Rotten Spunkthroat" on the road for the first time, we played a series of low-key dates in Hereford and Stroud. It went well, I scored lot's. In 1989 I left the Newsround team and began to present a countryside news programme, Countryfile, for the BBC. This enabled me to spend more time on the music and eating crab pies.