SUSIE FOWLER-WATT LEAVES BBC LOOK EAST AFTER 35 YEARS

Susie Fowler-Watt has announced that she is leaving the BBC after 35 years. She said she will present her final BBC Look East programme on Friday 18 December. Fowler-Watt qualified as a psychotherapist in 2024 and said she wants to concentrate on that work. “I have absolutely loved the job, but I'm now in a new chapter of life, and keen to focus my energy on my therapy work,” she said.

Fowler-Watt joined BBC Radio Surrey in 1991 and later worked in local radio reporting, production and presenting. She then joined the BBC’s political unit at Westminster, where she worked on national television programmes. Before becoming a lead presenter of BBC Look East in 1997, she worked as its political correspondent. The regional news programme covers Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

Fowler-Watt spent 23 years presenting BBC Look East alongside Stewart White, first at St Catherine’s Close in Norwich and later at The Forum, where the BBC moved in 2003. During her career, she interviewed eight prime ministers, including David Cameron before the 2016 EU referendum and Boris Johnson at Downing Street during the Covid pandemic in 2020. She said presenting the 18.30 regional news programme had brought her into “hundreds of thousands of homes every evening”. Fowler-Watt said she would give viewers a fuller farewell before leaving just before Christmas.