Kathryn Adie was born on 19 September 1945 and is an English journalist.
21 Facts About Kate Adie
2.
Kate Adie was Chief News Correspondent for BBC News between 1989 and 2003, during which time she reported from war zones around the world.
3.
Kate Adie retired from the BBC in early 2003 and works as a freelance presenter with From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.
4.
Kate Adie was adopted as a baby by a Sunderland pharmacist and his wife, John and Maud Adie, and grew up there.
5.
Kate Adie failed to trace her birth father John Kelly, or his family from Waterford, despite public appeals, she knows only that he had a brother Michael.
6.
Kate Adie had an independent school education at Sunderland Church High School, and then studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where she obtained a degree in Scandinavian Studies and performed in several Gilbert and Sullivan productions.
7.
Kate Adie was the duty reporter one evening in May 1980 and first on the scene when the Special Air Service went in to break up the Iranian Embassy siege.
8.
Kate Adie reported extensively for BBC News, including from the north London crime scenes of serial killer Dennis Nilsen, in 1983.
9.
Kate Adie was thereafter regularly dispatched to report on disasters and conflicts throughout the 1980s, including The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the American bombing of Tripoli in 1986, and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.
10.
Kate Adie was promoted to Chief News Correspondent in 1989 and held the role for fourteen years.
11.
Kate Adie was reportedly injured after being grazed by a bullet which had "shaved the skin off her arm", as she ran through Tiananmen Square at the height of the protests.
12.
Kate Adie famously had a public disagreement with fellow British journalist John Simpson, who reportedly had accused her of falsifying her reports on Tiananmen Square.
13.
Kate Adie was shot by a drunk and irate Libyan army commander after refusing, as a journalist, to act as an intermediary between the British and Libyan governments; the bullet, fired at point-blank range, nicked her collar bone but she did not suffer permanent harm.
14.
In 2003 Kate Adie retired from the BBC, where she had been Chief News Correspondent.
15.
Kate Adie subsequently worked as a freelance journalist, where among other work she gives regular reports on Radio New Zealand, as a public speaker, as well as participating in many of the 500 iPlayer episodes of From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.
16.
Kate Adie hosted two five-part series of Found, a Leopard Films production for BBC One, in 2005 and 2006.
17.
Kate Adie was appointed Chancellor of Bournemouth University on 7 January 2019, succeeding Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers.
18.
Kate Adie stressed the importance of personally verifying news sources.
19.
In 2017 Kate Adie was appointed as ambassador for SSAFA, the UK's oldest military charity.
20.
Kate Adie is currently an ambassador for SkillForce and the non-governmental organisation Farm Africa.
21.
In July 2018 Kate Adie became an Ambassador for the medical charity Overseas Plastic Surgery Appeal.