George’s passion for people

NOT many can honestly say they have had a ringside seat at the historic events of the past two decades quite like George Alagiah.

Born out of his self-confessed passion for people, his career as the BBC’s foreign correspondent and subsequent news presenter has seen him garner an impressive bank of memories to recall.

Without pomp or self-importance, the charismatic journalist transports the packed audience from his own back garden barbecue, complete with family snapshots, to his global investigation into the food chain.

A moving montage into the food crisis facing deprived countries is peppered with anecdotes about his time as an anchor, trying to deliver the news for example while being told through his earpiece that he looks ravishing in a dress by a misguided producer.

“Everyday a billion people go to bed hungry, while a billion people go to bed overweight,” is the type of statement he delivers with resonance and newsreader poignancy.

After all he’s an expert at that, having been at the middle of such stories as the Egypt uprising last year and the Japanese Tsunami. He’s on call to head to the Middle East as he speaks. Musing on Egypt he said: “To have been there when people realised they had that voice was something special. Those are the days when you pinch yourself and say someone is paying me to do this.”

All the while maintaining he’s “a good BBC man, who doesn’t have an opinion,” he continues to tell the audience about future attitudes to food — a topic he thinks will be of utmost importance.

His expedition has taken him everywhere, from bean fields in Kenya where food for the west is being discarded because of its minor flaws, to the seas of Senegal, where a struggling fisherman boards a lonely canoe in a bid to challenge high-tech container ships trawling the ocean.

He leaves the audience digesting a poignant message mixed with an insight into the life of one of the most trusted faces in television.