Nikki Fox

Disability Correspondent, BBC News

Nikki Fox is the BBC’s Disability Correspondent, reporting on the issues affecting disabled people today.

Nikki started working as the BBC’s Disability Correspondent in 2014. She didn’t study journalism and was pretty rubbish at school, mainly due to not knowing she was dyslexic. But what she lacked in the ability to string a sentence together, she made up for with enthusiasm and a love of music – playing and listening.

Scraping (just) enough qualifications to study music at university, not long after her degree Nikki ended up working as a telephone answerer for a BBC local radio station. She began nervously doing a few bits on air and after a year or so she applied for a TV training programme with Channel 4, starting out as a runner and working her way up to assistant producer on Gok Wan’s ‘How to Look Good Naked’. From picking contributors to making sure everyone’s fake tan was properly rubbed in before they walked down the catwalk, Nikki went on to co-present the same series for disabled people, with her mate Gok.

More work as a TV producer, five radio documentaries (a few of which won awards) debt, unemployment (in no particular order) Nikki finally landed a job at the BBC and her parents were very proud.

Working with the talented Ruth Clegg, David Cheeseman and for a few years the wonderful Michaela Howard, they’ve covered news stories, made three documentaries, chucked a few Paralympians in cars for some karaoke and together, continue to look at the issues impacting disabled people across the board.

Throughout the pandemic, the team have worked tirelessly to cover the many Coronavirus issues impacting disabled people such as social care, the BMI and NICE guidelines and a series looking at how the new measures to keep us all safe have caused difficulties for so many people with all kinds of disabilities.

In 2015, Nikki joined the presenting team for the BBC’s flagship consumer rights programme Watchdog. She continues to work alongside her mate Matt Allwright on the show which is now on The One Show.

A former supermarket checkout operator, Nikki made a series for BBC One with Greg Wallace called Supermarket Secrets and last year finished filming a ‘Truth About…’ documentary on Takeaway food.

She’s tried to be funny on Would I Lie to You for BBC One but don’t talk to her about Celebrity Mastermind, just remember she got every single question bar one, correct on her specialist subject, Kate Bush.

“If you told the 18-year-old me I’d one day go live on the ten o’clock news alongside Fiona Bruce, I’d say, I’m sorry but you are very, VERY wrong.”