Journalist and broadcaster Nick Ferrari is to be the chairman of the judges for the 2020 London Press Club Awards. He takes over from Fleet Street editor Bill Hagerty.
The awards are among the most high profile and include those for national daily and Sunday newspapers, broadcaster and Scoop of the year. Also as part of the awards the Press Club honours a Londoner of the Year. This year’s award was received by David Attenborough who urged editors to do their utmost in the battle to save the planet.
Nick Ferrari is best known for his LBC breakfast programme where his spirited questioning of leading politicians has frequently set the media agenda. Nick Ferrari said: “This is an absolute privilege and I’m honoured to accept.”
In Ferrari style, he added: “I’ve chaired very little in recent years and here’s hoping I do better than I did when at school, I chaired the debating society.
“Having allowed the motion: ‘This house believes the headmaster to be a pompous ass,’ I was promptly relieved of my duties.
“Must do better, seems an appropriate sentiment.”
Bill Hagerty, whose Fleet Street editing roles included the Mirror papers and editorship of the Sunday People, has been chair of the Press Club awards for six years.
He said: “I am extremely proud to have been involved with the London Press Club awards, initially as a member of the judging panel and subsequently the panel’s chairman, only the third in its history. Following the late Robert Edwards and then Donald Trelford was a challenge, but soon, with the invaluable assistance of some of journalism’s most illustrious practitioners, the lunch at which the winners and runners-up were thrashed out became a favourite day of the year, matched only by the presentation lunch a few weeks later.
”The London Press Club awards are unique in that they require no entrance fee and are decided solely by an independent judging panel. I hand over the chairmanship to my old friend Nick Ferrari, himself a former winner in the broadcast journalist category, with pleasure and all good wishes. Long may this prince of awards continue to thrive.”
London Press Club chairman Doug Wills said: “Chairing the awards is one of the hardest jobs: there are always so many who deserve to be winners. The chair has to have nerves of steel and the skin of a rhino. Thank you Bill for being a brilliant chair, and thank you Nick for agreeing to take on this unenviable task. I can assure you it will be fun.”
[Photo: Getty Images]
