Simon Dring is an award-winning foreign correspondent, television presenter and producer. He's worked for Reuters, the Daily Telegraph of London, and BBC Television and Radio News and Current Affairs.
Contents |
Dring grew up in Fakenham, Norfolk, England. He was expelled from boarding school in Woodbridge for swimming naked in the River Ouse. He later studied at King's Lynn Technical College. In 1962, aged 16, he left home to travel overland to India.
Dring got his first media job in 1963, working as a proofreader for the Bangkok World newspaper in Thailand. In 1964 he went to Vietnam, working as a war correspondent for Reuters - their youngest ever foreign correspondent.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph newspaper and BBC Television News, Dring reported from South-East Asia, covering events in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe.
In 1986, Dring helped organise Sport Aid as a paid consultant of UNICEF with Bob Geldof, the biggest mass-participation sporting event ever held.
In 1992 Dring retraced his 1962 journey for BBC Radio 4 as "On The Road Again" In 1994 he made the journey again for an 8-part TV series of the same name for BBC television and the Discovery Channel. A book was also published in 1995 by BBC Books "On The Road Again: Thirty Years On The Traveler's Trail To India".
Dring joined Ekushey Television, the first private terrestrial TV channel in Bangladesh, as managing director in 1997. The station was closed down in 2002 when Dring and three other executives were charged with fraud.[1]
Simon currently lives in Brisbane with his partner, Fiona McPherson, a lawyer and Executive Director of a British Children's Charity in Romania. Their twin daughters, Ava Rose and India Rose, were born on 23 December 2010. Simon has another daughter, Tanya, from a previous marriage. She lives in Spain and has two sons, Nicholas and James.