Nicholas Owen
A high-profile corporate event lives or dies on the person holding it together at the front of the room. A leadership town hall, a regulated industry conference, a charity gala, an awards night, a medical congress with sensitive clinical content: each demands a host who can read a room, handle a programme overrun, interview a difficult panellist and keep an audience with them for hours. Most organisations underestimate how rare that craft is until they have hired badly.
Nicholas Owen is a veteran BBC and ITN news anchor who hosts, moderates and chairs corporate conferences, awards ceremonies and international medical congresses.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Nicholas Owen
- A hard-news anchor pedigree built on News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News, which gives him the authority to chair regulated, high-stakes and politically sensitive sessions without losing the room.
- A documented track record on serious scientific and medical platforms, including the European Society of Cardiology and the European Haematology Association, where clinical accuracy and pacing matter as much as presence.
- Royal Television Society award-winning reporting credentials from his years as ITN Royal Correspondent, which translate into a calm, considered interview style suited to senior leaders and high-profile guests.
- After-dinner range built over fifty years in journalism, drawing on the memoir Days Like This, with material that works for City audiences, charity galas and trade dinners alike.
- Charity-sector credibility through long-standing Ambassador roles with The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust, useful when the event has a philanthropic dimension that needs handling with care.
Biography highlights
- Anchor of ITV’s News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News across more than two decades at ITN.
- ITN Royal Correspondent 1994 to 2000; central to ITN’s RTS Award-winning coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
- Channel 4 News Business and Economics Correspondent, following seven years at the Financial Times and earlier roles at the Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph.
- BBC News presenter from 2007; main relief presenter for BBC Weekend News on BBC One and the BBC News Channel.
- Author of Diana: The People’s Princess (Carlton Books) and the memoir Days Like This (Blenheim Press).
- Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Brighton (2015); Ambassador for The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust.
Biography
A live audience programme is harder than a news bulletin. The autocue is gone, the running order will slip, and the chair has to interview a CEO, a clinician and a winner in the same hour without losing pace. Nicholas Owen has done versions of that job, on air and on stage, for the better part of fifty years.
His broadcast record runs from the Surrey Mirror in 1964 through Fleet Street (Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, seven years at the Financial Times), into BBC North East in 1981 and then ITN from 1984. At ITN he anchored News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News, served as Business and Economics Correspondent on Channel 4 News, and presented Midnight Special during the First Gulf War. He rejoined the BBC in 2007 as a presenter on BBC News and the BBC News Channel.
The work that defined his public profile was the ITN Royal Correspondent role he held from 1994 to 2000. He was central to ITN’s coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, for which ITN received a Royal Television Society Award. He later wrote Diana: The People’s Princess for Carlton Books, and his own memoir Days Like This in 2012.
Corporate buyers hire him for the craft built across those decades: chairing industry conferences and awards ceremonies, moderating international medical congresses including the European Society of Cardiology and the European Haematology Association, handling question time sessions and after-dinner programmes for City and charity audiences. The University of Brighton awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2015 for his journalism and his charity work as Ambassador for The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust.
Key speaking topics
- Conference hosting and chairing
- Awards ceremony presenting
- Panel moderation and question time
- Medical and scientific congress facilitation
- After-dinner speaking and corporate entertainment
- Broadcast journalism and the Royal story
- Economic trends and business news interviewing
Ideal for
- Corporate awards organisers and trade body event leads commissioning a known broadcast face to chair the night.
- Conference programme directors at medical, scientific and financial industry congresses needing a chair who can handle technical content with clinical pacing.
- Heads of internal communications running senior leadership town halls, AGMs and results events that need a steady external presence.
- Charity and foundation event leads where Ambassador-level fluency in Prince’s Trust and Children’s Trust subject matter adds value.
Audience outcomes
- A programme that runs to time, handles overruns cleanly and keeps senior speakers in their slots.
- Interviews with panellists and award winners that draw out something memorable rather than reading the brief back at them.
- A host who can move between a serious clinical session, a corporate prize-giving and an after-dinner address in the same event week.
- An audience that leaves with the sense that the event was professionally held, not merely populated.