Kate Silverton

Kate Silverton is an accomplished, versatile journalist and was a key member of the BBC News team. Having presented BBC Breakfast and BBC News 24, as well as produced several documentaries for Panorama. Kate has reported from the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, covered the glitz and glamour of the Oscars in Hollywood, and stepped out beneath the glitter ball as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing.

Kate studied Arabic and Middle Eastern politics and gained a BSc in psychology. After a spell in corporate finance, she moved into journalism and initially joined BBC Look North before moving to Tyne Tees. She has covered major assignments at home and abroad, won praise for her reporting from Iraq, and has been named the BT Journalist of the Year.

Kate has been a keen traveller since her first expedition with Operation Raleigh to Zimbabwe. She has subsequently travelled extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East, visiting Lesotho, Uganda, and Oman. She has lived on a Kibbutz in Israel and with Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt.

A background in psychology led Kate to retrain as a children’s counsellor under the children’s mental health charity, Place2Be. She has since given philanthropic support to organisations that include the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, the NHS Maudsley Foundation Trust, the NSPCC and their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Royal Foundation.

Her book There's No Such Thing as Naughty provides unique strategies, easy-to-follow scripts, and simple techniques to help individuals manage the everyday challenges around raisings children and is a Sunday Times Best Seller.

Kate is professional and engaging. After dinner audiences have been treated to a peek behind the scenes and to an account of Kate’s traumatic experience with the Welsh Bitches (a line of rocks off the coast of Wales where she went white-water kayaking).