STORY ABOUT THREATENED MARSH HELPED LAUNCH MEDIA CAREER OF TV PRESENTER MARK AUSTIN

 

Remembering the birds - Mark Austin

FOLLOWING a long career with the BBC, ITV and now Sky TV, Mark Austin is a well-known face on TV screens in the UK.

Less well-known is that his reporting career began - modestly - with a bird-related story when he was a teenage cub reporter on the Bournemouth Evening Echo back in 1977.

He had been briefed by deputy editor Pat Palmer to track down - on his own initiative - a subject about which he could knock out an  800-word feature in the quiet Dorset village of Stanpit.

After conversations with several residents failed to produce any leads, Austin was feeling despondent as he climbed a turnstile and walked for a while alongside Stanpit Marsh.

As he was doing so, chance decreed that he was approached by a dog-walking woman who asked him if he had "signed the petition".

When Austin asked her to clarify, she revealed that the woman had launched the petition herself  in a bid to persuade the council to turn down a proposed housing development on part of the marsh - "an area of astonishing natural beauty and a haven for birds and other wildlife".

The encounter was all that Austin needed. When he returned to the Echo office, he made a series of phone calls to interested parties, including the council planning officer.

"A few more angry quotes and my first double-page spread for the paper was taking shape," he recalls. "My career as a journalist was up-and-running."

The tale is recounted by Austin in his newly-published book, And Thank You for Watching.

“The key to local newspaper reporting,” he continued, “was to find  an issue, make calls to  people you know will be upset and  - bingo! - a controversy in the making."

Since he transferred, many years ago, from the newspaper world to TV, Austin’s career has prospered - he has covered numerous of the world's top sporting events as well as stories from war zones in Iraq, Libya, Mogadishu and beyond.

But he also remembers another bird yarn from his Bournemouth days - one which ran under the headline Cormorant Beak Bounty Scandal.

                                       

Cormorant - loathed by anglers

It involved a bust-up between the Dorset branch of the RSPB, anglers and Wessex Water over a claim that the authority was offering "£1 a beak in an attempt to cull cormorants who were  being blamed for killing trout, salmon and other fish".

Full of plenty more anecdotes about his colourful career, And Thank You for Watching is published by Atlantic Books at £20 and available where ever books are sold.

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