Leon Hawthorne

Hawthorne was born in Bristol, England on 11 January 1966; and went to school in Cardiff and Oxford before going to the University of Liverpool at the age of seventeen (1983–1986) and graduating with a BA Combined Honours degree in Politics and Sociology. Whilst at university, he was Deputy Editor of the student newspaper, the Guild & City Gazette and active in student politics.

Hawthorne's television career started in August 1989 when he joined Thames Television as a researcher on a business and economics show, The City Programme. A year later, he joined the BBC as an Assistant Producer on Business Breakfast and Breakfast News, where he began appearing on camera as a reporter. He moved to Bristol, joining the ITV franchisee HTV West in order to work full-time as a reporter and get more on-screen experience. Here he produced short films on local current affairs and presented HTV News. He created a weekly business programme, Money Week, which he presented. Hawthorne returned to London at the launch of London Tonight for Carlton Television and London Weekend Television in January 1993. There he was a regular face reporting on London news, covering a wide range of topics including IRA terrorism, crime, business and showbiz. In 1993, Hawthorne hired a Michael Jackson lookalike for a report on the singer's alleged stay at London's Priory Clinic. Hawthorne's arrival with the fake Jackson in a limousine outside the clinic caused a stir, with hundreds of fans and TV crews mobbing the scene. In the frenzy, one radio station, LBC, reported extensively live on the "arrival" of Michael Jackson, only later to have to apologise for the mistake. In 1996, Hawthorne joined CNN as a World News Anchor, initially working from its London bureau before moving to the network's headquarters in Atlanta. His shows ran at 7.00pm, 8.00pm and 10.00pm and included coverage of the death of Princess Diana; the murder of Gianni Versace; the commando raid on the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru and the resulting rescue of hostages held by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA); and a live interview with Italian Premier Romano Prodi. In 1998, US Vice President Al Gore, on a walkabout around the CNN newsroom mistook Hawthorne for one of his Secret Service agents, a fact which caused some hilarity among the assembled journalists and possible consternation for the Secret Service. Hawthorne returned to London to join the BBC as a Political Correspondent. He was a member of the "Lobby", the select group of journalists attending daily briefings at 10 Downing Street given by then Prime Minister Tony Blair's Press Secretary, Alistair Campbell. Hawthorne reported for BBC1's On The Record; Radio 4's The Westminster Hour and Today Programme; and he presented Despatch Box on BBC2. Whilst working for the BBC, Hawthorne became disillusioned by the bureaucracy and profligacy of the state broadcaster and remarked to a friend "this is no way to run a TV company". She challenged him to do something better and that planted the seed for creating his own TV channel.