Paul Heiney

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Paul Heiney (born April 20, 1949 in Sheffield, Yorkshire) has been a television reporter in the United Kingdom for over twenty years, starting with That's Life!. He has worked on In at the Deep End, The Travel Show, Food and Drink and, on BBC Radio 4, You and Yours. More recently he has presented BBC1's consumer affairs programme Watchdog.

In 1990, he transformed his life by taking up traditional farming in Suffolk. For ten years he worked 36 acres with Suffolk Punches. He wrote a diary of his activities for The Times as well as several books. He also presented two videos about farming with horses, Harnessed to the Plough and First Steps to the Furrow, working with his mentors, Roger and Cheryl Clark.

Paul had agreed with his wife, fellow broadcaster and writer Libby Purves, that they should have the farm for no more than ten years. After the farm's sale Paul has tried to make more time for his other great passion, sailing. He has also presented A Victorian Summer for Anglia Television, eight half-hour programmes about traditional farming: the glory of working the land with horses as well as the rigours and difficulties that Victorian farmers faced.

"Working the land", says Paul, "is about the people who labour on it, so I hope we capture some of the richness of character which defines the countrymen and women of the eastern counties. They remain, for me, farming heroes."