Geoff was born with multiple impairments as a result of thalidomide. He has shortened upper limbs, a missing right eye and extremely restricted vision in his left eye. After graduating with first class honours in Politics and French, he was torn between accepting a place on the Foreign Office’s prestigious ‘fast-stream’ entry into the Diplomatic Service or a traineeship with BBC News. He chose the BBC because he felt it would be better placed to harness his creative talents and more tolerant of his often irreverent style.

His 22 years at the BBC included posts like Editor of ‘From Our Own’ Correspondent as well as daily output editor roles on Today and The World Tonight.

Geoff has done location work in countries including: North America and the Caribbean, the Great Lakes region of Central and East Africa, South Africa, the Far East and most of Europe. In 1994, he was in Rwanda during the genocide and from 1999-2001 ran a development project with the Rwandan media on behalf of BBC World Service and the Thomson Foundation.