Presenter Louise Priest is leaving the BBC after a career in local radio and regional television spanning nearly 40 years.
A familiar face to breakfast and lunchtime audiences of BBC Look East she said “it never occurred to me to leave” until now.
Joining the corporation in September 1983, she worked in Birmingham and Manchester before getting a job at BBC Radio Norfolk.
“I feel I have made the right decision to go, but I’m also slightly nervous about life after the BBC,” she said.
Having decided journalism was the way forward, Priest’s first job with the corporation was at BBC Radio Guernsey.
It was upon landing a job at BBC Radio Norfolk aged 23 that the county eventually became her long-term home.
“So many things have changed over the years. The way newsrooms are staffed, the advances in technology and of course the digital/online world,” she said.
“I have been so lucky to have a variety of jobs at the BBC it never occurred to me to leave but, after almost 40 years, I felt the time was right.
Priest, now 62, who is married and has two children Clark and Grace, said it had been a “privilege meeting and interviewing people from all walks of life, from a prime minister to a pantomime dame”.
“The early days were very different in terms of equipment. I remember hauling a very heavy ‘mobile’ phone around the Royal Norfolk Show in the 1980s and the radio recording equipment was so heavy – now it’s all done on a smartphone,” she said.
“No two days have ever been the same; the whole range of stories and laughs with my colleagues has meant a very varied work life.
