Archive John Craven in Conversation with David Garmston and Alex Love

To mark the 50th anniversary of BBC Newsround, I’m republishing an article about meeting John Craven in October and December 2014.

Earlier this month I went to an event with my friend (who already written about this) at BBC Bristol where I had the chance to meet the Broadcaster John Craven.

Craven who has worked for the BBC since the 60’s began in local news before launching John Craven’s Newsround. Newsround was the first daily news program for children and it used the full resources of BBC News. Craven says parents gave him the most difficult job to tell children news which is difficult to tell children like the Challenger spaceship Disaster to AIDs.

Craven later became the editor of the program which has now helped launch the careers of Krishan Guru-Murthy who presents Channel 4 News, Chris Rogers a Presenter on BBC News and BBC World News and News at Ten’s Julie Etchingham.

Craven also read the news on other children’s programmes, such as Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Saturday Superstore. He said this allowed him to show viewers that he could be fun and read the serious news. The most famous moment came by accident following technical problems when he hand operated a puppet.

But Craven’s most challenging story came in 2001 with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

Another moment that came to light was Thatcher vs young girl who as “Mrs Thatcher, as to where would she be in the event of a Nuclear war?” comment from Alex was that the girl on the phone would have made a good journalist.

I really enjoyed the event it will be remember forever. It was a good event and John Craven, Alex Lovell and David Garmson seem like really genuine people.