Anne Davies
Anne Davies is now the face of the BBC in the East Midlands where she has worked since leaving ITV’s breakfast programme GMTV. During her television career she has covered everything from the Aids pandemic in Botswana to New York Fashion week in the Big Apple and has interviewed everyone from the Lord Chancellor to Cynthia Paine. And now alongside her television work Anne is part of a two woman show currently performing at arts festivals and country houses with a unique evening of Edwardian elegance and high class hanky panky!!
Anne started out in BBC Current Affairs as a researcher on Question Time and The Money Programme before moving to Radio Leicester. From there she made the leap back into television via the ITN News Trainee scheme and so to the Central Newsroom in Nottingham. Whilst there Anne also fronted Central’s environmental programme – Earthdwellers Guide, produced and presented a series of fashion programmes for ITV as well as one of the first daytime programmes Look Good Feel Great with Diana Moran (of Green Goddess fame).
Then the move to GMTV and it was on January 1st 1993 that Anne opened the new ITV breakfast show with Eamon Holmes. During her time there Anne did pretty much everything – the sofa, the Newshour, the news, the Sunday Review, the GMTV house and all the interior design strands, Get Up and Give charity week, her own cookery strands (with her own recipes from her own kitchen), holiday specials, the Aids special from Botswana (and subsequent articles for Womans Own).
Anne was also the presenter of The Villa – a twice daily magazine programme from Spain running on GMTV and ITV lunchtime for the summer. Returning to England she then fronted ITV’s Our House and Anglia’s consumer magazine Fair and Square.
In 1998 and 1991 Anne appeared at Drury Lane Theatre in two special celebrity pantomimes for the Duchess of York’s charity.
But a girl can only get up at 3am for so long, especially with a family in Leicestershire and GMTV in London, so she then made the move to the BBC as anchor for the 6.30 news programme East Midlands Today. Whilst there she presented five series of the documentary series Inside Out, always fronts Children In need, has hosted the BBC East Midlands Sports Awards and recently helped the programme win a Royal Television Society Award with her coverage of the Madeleine McCann story.
Anne is one of the main presenters of Travel Channel’s “Thompson TV”
An after dinner speaker and regular host of award ceremonies and charity events Anne is also Patron of Macmillan Cancer Support for Leicestershire and Rutland and has, with her own committee raised thousands of pounds for the charity.
Her two woman show – Aston and Annie – also spawned a mini television series for BBC East Midlands and they are hoping that, with their original material, the next stop will be the Edinburgh Festival in 2009.
In the small amount of spare time left Anne managed to acquire a diploma in psychodynamic counselling and Grade One piano (a late starter obviously). She sorts a family of teenagers, a huge daft dog, fits in a bit of writing and when it all gets too much escapes to the kitchen to pursue her favourite hobby of all – cooking.