'I don't know if I am going to be celebrating another 40 years, but it certainly ain't over yet,' says TV's Anne

“IT sure ain’t over yet,” says journalist, broadcaster and presenter Anne Davies.

- By LYNETTE PINCHESS

A familiar face on TV screens, both locally and nationally, she is celebrating an extraordinary 40-year milestone of delivering the news.

Currently a presenter on BBC East Midlands Today, Surrey-born Anne’s career in television goes even further back to when she started out behind the scenes. Her first job out of university was in London as the editor's secretary on BBC Panorama.

“I always wanted to be on the other side of things. I longed to be a journalist and presenter,” she said.

Question Time and the Money Programme followed before moving north for a stint as a station assistant at Radio Leicester.

Since then she’s worked for GMTV and Central TV and has been part of the enormous change in broadcasting where television journalists now film their own stories on their mobile phone and provide for online and radio, as well as social media.

At the beginning it was an era when many females were the “support act” whereas now they take centre stage both in front of and behind the camera. Anne recalled: “There have been such massive changes in television throughout that period.

“When I first started, there was a drinking culture, and it was a very male-dominated culture as well.

“Every office had a drinks cabinet. If you said that today people would be absolutely gobsmacked - that just doesn’t happen. After every programme, we all sat round drinking gin and tonics out of paper cups.

“At Central TV there was a proper bar on the same corridor as the newsroom at Lenton Lane, so it was a very, very different world.

“Now if there’s a big celebration, we move more and more towards having a fantastic cake rather than bottles of whatever.”