Stacey Dooley

Stacey Jaclyn Dooley (born 9 March 1987) is a British television presenter and investigative journalist. She rose to fame in 2009 after appearing in a number of BBC Three documentaries highlighting child labour issues in developing countries.

Background and career

Dooley was born in Luton, where she grew up on a council estate, and once worked as a shop assistant.^[1]

Dooley first appeared on television as one of the participants on the documentary TV series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. Dooley and the other participants were selected to illustrate the typical fashion-obsessed consumer. Thanks to her popularity on the show, partly because of her interest in third world labour laws, she was given her own show, Stacey Dooley Investigates, in August 2009. The two-part special was shown on BBC Three throughout August and September 2009. It also aired in Australia on ABC2 from 2 June 2010.^[2]

In October 2010, BBC Three aired two further programmes, the first on former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the second on sex trafficking and underage sex slavery in Cambodia. The Radio Times commented on the series, "She sees the joyless expressions of girls parading before men in a bar in Phnom Penh – one girl clutches a cuddly toy. It seems a hopeless situation, especially when we learn that the children are being betrayed by their own families. But spirited, empathetic Stacey won't be thwarted, and sees a way out via a charity that gives [the children] a new purpose in life."^[3]

In 2011, BBC Three aired Tourism and the Truth: Stacey Dooley Investigates. Over two episodes, Dooley investigated how tourism in Thailand and Kenya is affecting local workers, in particular with regard to local wages, corruption and environmental changes.^[4]

My Hometown Fanatics was broadcast on BBC Three on 20 February 2012. In the programme, Dooley was in Luton, where she talks to Islamists and the English Defence League. A three-part series entitled Coming Here Soon was broadcast on BBC Three in June and July 2012, in which Dooley explores the lives of young people in three countries affected by the global financial crisis: Greece, Ireland and Japan.^[5] The programme on Japan was criticised by some due to the fact that it ignored the Samaritan's guidelines on reporting of suicide. ^[6]

Filmography

References