F E AT U R E
Royle
Appointment
Effervescent Pam is still a Tees TV news favourite…
WO R D S: M I C HA E L M C G E A RY
PI C T U R E S: M A RT I N WA L K E R
S
buffalo in Kruger National Park – until her father’s work
he’s dined with the Queen, interviewed some of the
brought the family to Guisborough when she was three.
biggest names in show business and counts Ant and
At the age of seven she moved to a house her dad designed
Dec among her friends, but Pam Royle remains very
in Carlton in Cleveland, where she enjoyed an idyllic
much a North Yorkshire girl at heart.
upbringing.
For 35 years, effervescent Pam has been the face of Tyne
“I would wander up the hills with friends and my mother
Tees Television, presenting a wide range of programmes and
wouldn’t know where I was and in those days it didn’t seem
bringing thousands of daily news bulletins into our homes.
to be a concern, we’d be out all day and it felt safe,” she says.
And while she’s loved just about every minute of her
After briefly working in
career so far, watersports fanatic Pam
advertising sales at the Evening
is the first to admit that combining a
Gazette in Middlesbrough and then
high-profile media role with bringing
in the library at the Royal Naval
up a family hasn’t always been plain
College in Devon, where she had
sailing.
her first brush with royalty when
“There was a period when juggling
student Prince Andrew popped in to
everything was just so hard,” she
borrow a book, Pam studied English
told me when we met in one of the
at Newcastle University.
sumptuous suites at the five-star
By the time she graduated she was
Rockliffe Hall Hotel, not far from her
engaged to Mike, who she met in
home in Middleton St George.
the Bay Horse pub in Hutton Rudby
“Philippa, our first child, was born
- PAM ROYLE
when they were both 18. But that
just hours after I came off air. I