F E AT U R E
Action girl – fun-loving Pam
regularly enjoys jet skiing at Tees
and Hartlepool Yacht Club.
Partnership – Pam met her surveyor husband Mike in the
Bay Horse pub in Hutton Rudby when they were both 18.
travel correspondent for a satellite TV channel broadcasting
throughout Europe.”
Once again that meant the couple had to part and for
three years Pam lived in London, undergoing ITN’s graduate
training scheme and reading the LWT news at weekends.
“Then Tyne Tees called to say they wanted me back as a
co-presenter alongside Paul Frost. I initially turned them
down, but when they came back a second time I agreed. I
just wanted to come home. London’s great but it’s not like
home, not like the North East.”
That was in 1989 and Pam has been a fixture at Tyne Tees
ever since, with former Gazette reporter “Frostie” being the
first of her many on-screen “husbands”.
“He was such a character and a brilliant journalist and also
a brilliant performer and the viewers loved him,” she says.
He was followed in 1994 by Stuart McNeil – “a very strong
journalist and a smashing person” and then Andrew Friend
– “a joy to work with and so quick-witted”.
She already knew BBC “rival” Mike Neville and his wife
Pam socially – they were the “other” Mike and Pam – and
in the late-1990s the North East broadcasting legend, who
sadly died in 2017, switched sides and joined her in the City
Road studios, where they enjoyed a hugely successful
decade together.
She has now spent a similar amount of time paired
with Ian Payne, a “generous and supportive” co-
presenter.
Although she believes passionately that women
should be paid the same as their male counterparts,
Pam – who has been her union’s “Mother of Chapel”,
the media equivalent of a shop steward, for about 20
years – has never felt discriminated against because of
her gender.
“I actually think the media wasn’t a bad place to be as a
woman,” she says. “The gender pay gap wasn’t something we
even thought about – it didn’t dawn on me that there might
be one!”
Now the children are grown up – Philippa, 27, is a lawyer,
and Lawrence, 24, an assistant farm manager on a 2,500-
acre estate – she and Mike love walking in the Cleveland
Hills and the whole family enjoy outdoor pursuits including
jet skiing, power-boating and water skiing at Hartlepool
Marina.
She is passionate about her charity work and is a
longstanding patron of Great North Air Ambulance, North
East Ladies’ Day, the Sunshine Fund and wheelchair curling
team Nort hern ICE, and worked closely with the Salvation
Army for many years. She is also a County Durham Deputy
Lieutenant, carrying out duties on behalf of the Queen.
It’s little wonder she recently took the decision to cut
down her workload to four days a week.
But viewers can be reassured that the region’s favourite
newsreader has no intention of leaving their screens
any time soon.
tees-life.co.uk
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