KIRSTI ADAIR

CLASS OF 1997

Producer, BBC

After leaving Belfast High, I went off to Christ’s College, Cambridge to study law. On a year abroad in France, I decided that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, so when I got back to university I started to write for the student paper and get work experience in journalism while finishing the degree. I then spent the summer touring local newsrooms from the Carrick Advertiser to Manchester Evening News, and the following year completed a postgraduate newspaper training course at City University in London before taking up a trainee reporter role at the Liverpool Echo. After three years there and a bit of shift work on national newspapers, I moved into making TV documentaries with a researcher job in ITV current affairs based in Bristol.

I joined the BBC a couple of years later, working as a broadcast journalist for the regional news programme in the East of England before becoming an assistant producer at Newsround in Television Centre in London. This gave me brilliant opportunities to travel round the world to all kinds of stories and shoot and edit my own footage. It was also fun to star-spot showbiz guests in the coffee queue. I worked my way up to producer and then deputy editor which isn’t quite as much fun but pays more.

I’ve had the chance to work on BAFTA and Emmy award-winning children’s documentaries and cover lots of big stories which are sometimes a challenge to interpret for children. We now make content for lots of other BBC outlets including iPlayer, radio, news and breakfast programmes. It’s an interesting job with lots of tight deadlines and as we are live there is always the potential for lots to go wrong. The new challenge is to keep our daily news bulletin relevant to a new generation who mostly watch it in school.

I remember Belfast High as being somewhere everyone was known. I loved the sport – the trips were great – and there were lots of opportunities to try new things. It’s where I met some of my closest friends. I don’t think I would have thought about heading to Cambridge if teachers there hadn’t suggested it, so I’m grateful I was pushed along a little bit!