Keith Wilkinson (reporter)

In 1993 when he was Central's investigative Crime Reporter, he produced an ITV documentary called Stephanie's Story about the kidnapping of estate agent Stephanie Slater by the murderer Michael Sams. Wilkinson was featured in the book, Beyond Fear, My Will To Survive, in which Stephanie describes being taken back to the workshop in Nottinghamshire where she was held hostage.^[18]

Wilkinson was the first television reporter to interview members of the Bridgewater Four on camera whilst they were still serving life sentences in prison. The campaigning Daily Mirror and Private Eye journalist Paul Foot wrote in the book Murder at the Farm that Wilkinson's "persistence in this case contrasted sharply with the abject acceptance of the authorised view by almost all his journalist colleagues in the Midlands".^[19]

In 2003 Wilkinson was calling for greater media access to the British judicial system. In an article in The Guardian he described the principle of open justice as a joke.^[1]

Wilkinson also became known for more light-hearted items. In 2006 he was photographed in the Daily Star^[20] having a bucket of water poured over his head by Chris Tarrant, star of ITV's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?^[21][22] This was a tribute to Tarrant's days on the Tiswas programme when he frequently covered people in water.

Keith Wilkinson was featured as The Human Guinea Pig in a six-month experiment starting in March 2008 on Central Tonight and itvlocal.com. It was launched in conjunction with researchers at the University of Birmingham in England as part of a project about physical fitness in the over-50s. By July, Ironman triathlete Asker Jeukendrup, Professor of Exercise Metabolism and head of the university's Human Performance Laboratory, told ITV that Wilkinson's rate of progress had been "unusual and spectacular". At the end of the project in September, Jeukendrup gave Wilkinson a VO₂ max fitness assessment as a high 52.3.^{[10][23][24][25]}

As part of an ITV News Central special programme in April 2014, Wilkinson filmed Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six inside the former prison wing at Lancaster Castle^[26] where Hill had been held during his trial for the Birmingham pub bombings almost 40 years earlier. It was the first time Hill had returned to the prison and his old cell since his conviction for 21 murders was quashed at the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in 1991, and in an exclusive interview Hill said his time at HMP Lancaster had been the start of a 16-year nightmare to clear his name.^[27] Wilkinson had first interviewed Paddy Hill for Central News inside Gartree Prison in Leicestershire in the 1980s before his appeal hearing at the Old Bailey.^[28]

• TV Newsroom video of Keith Wilkinson final studio interview
• ITV.com/Central
• TV Newsroom
• Keith Wilkinson on Twitter
• twitpic photos of Wilkinson at ITV and as Human Guinea Pig
• Keith Wilkinson filming at ITV Royal Wedding studios
• List and photos of ITV regional news reporters and correspondents