20 Facts About Lorraine Heggessey

Lorraine Sylvia Heggessey was born on 16 November 1956 and is a British television producer and executive.

Lorraine Heggessey has served as the Chief Executive of the production company Talkback Thames.

Until October 2019 Heggessey was the Chief Executive of The Royal Foundation.

Lorraine Heggessey worked initially for the Westminster Press Group, where her first job was as a trainee reporter on the Acton Gazette local newspaper.

Lorraine Heggessey then worked voluntarily in hospital radio and gained a paid job on a local newspaper, before re-applying for the BBC traineeship the following year, this time successfully.

Lorraine Heggessey spent the next fifteen years working in current affairs programming in television.

Lorraine Heggessey then moved on again, this time to the small independent production company Clark Productions, for whom she worked on Channel 4's current affairs programme Hard News.

Lorraine Heggessey worked on another Channel 4 documentary series, Dispatches, before returning to the BBC, where she founded the viewer feedback series Biteback.

Lorraine Heggessey secured another notable television moment when she obtained the first interview with the notorious criminal "Mad" Frankie Fraser, for The Underworld documentary series.

Lorraine Heggessey was considering leaving the BBC again and returning to working in the independent sector, when she was offered the position of Head of Children's BBC.

Lorraine Heggessey was in this role for little over a year however before she was promoted to Controller of BBC One, a post she took up on 1 November 2000.

Lorraine Heggessey had previously been sounded out about the job in 1997, following Michael Jackson's departure, but had turned down the opportunity as she felt she was then not yet experienced enough.

When Lorraine Heggessey arrived at the channel in November 2000, she inherited two controversial schedule changes which had been implemented the previous month, at the behest of Director-General of the BBC Greg Dyke; the main evening BBC News bulletin had been moved from 9pm to 10pm, and Panorama moved from a Monday night prime time slot to a later slot on Sunday nights.

Lorraine Heggessey publicly defended the decision despite it not being hers, claiming that Panorama's ratings would have "dwindled" in its previous slot.

Lorraine Heggessey did later concede in a 2005 interview with The Independent newspaper that arts programming had suffered a cutback under her control of BBC One.

On 14 February 2005 it was announced that Lorraine Heggessey was to leave the BBC to take up the post of Chief Executive at production company Talkback Thames.

At Talkback Thames, Lorraine Heggessey was responsible for overseeing the production of high-profile programmes such as ITV1's The Bill and The X Factor, BBC One's QI and Channel 4's Green Wing.

Lorraine Heggessey was responsible for delivering to BBC One in early 2006 two Stephen Poliakoff dramas that she herself had commissioned before she left the channel, Friends and Crocodiles and Gideon's Daughter, the latter of which went on to win two Golden Globe Awards in 2007.

Lorraine Heggessey returned to the television industry in July 2012, when she became co-owner and Executive Chairman of the new Cardiff-based independent production company Boom Pictures.

In June 2014 Lorraine Heggessey left the company, the success created by her led to its subsequent acquisition by ITV Studios.