'The more trust you build up, the more you have got to lose'

WHEN Huw Edwards took to the airwaves on September 8, 2022, to announce the shock death of Queen Elizabeth, he was the BBC's most senior and certainly best paid news anchor, and the obvious choice for such a solemn, shattering occasion.

- Matt Nixson

His appearance at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday, less than two years later, to plead guilty to making indecent images of children, marks the most sudden and dramatic recent public fall from grace and the death of a once glittering career.

Before the publication of a bombshell newspaper story last July, revealing claims an unnamed BBC presenter had paid a young person tens of thousands of pounds for explicit photos over three years, starting when they were just 17, it was hard to name a more respected broadcaster or safer pair of hands.

For two decades, Edwards, now 62, had been the main presenter of the BBC's flagship News At Ten programme and the Beeb's leading anchorman for state occasions, covering national joy and mourning.

He was considered a hero in his native Wales. His authoritative burr was a comforting presence in living rooms the length of the country, reassuring the nation as he took us through events that shaped its course.

Disaster

Yet five days after the revelations in The Sun, Edwards' TV producer wife Vicky Flind named him as the presenter at the centre of the allegations.

Her husband, she revealed, was "suffering from serious mental health issues".

She said: "As is well documented, he has been treated for severe depression in recent years.

"The events of the last few days have greatly worsened matters, he has suffered another serious episode and is now receiving in-patient hospital care where he'll stay for the foreseeable future."

Ms Flind added her husband would respond to the allegations when he was well enough.