KEEP IN TOUCH WWW.LANCASTER.AC.UK/ALUMNI | 19 “It was wet and windy, but there was something wonderful about it and I knew that this was where I needed to be. There was a warmth about the place and I loved the collegiate system. The sports facilities were also a big attraction.” He’d tried most sports as a teenager and competed as a swimmer in Junior National Championships until a serious overtraining injury at 14 stopped his dream of being a professional. So his strengths in the pool provided him a swift entry point to student life, first on the Lancaster team and later as its captain. Almost immediately his confidence took wings. He started writing for SCAN. He threw himself into JCR activities at Grizedale, becoming a sports rep at the end of his first year. But he wanted to challenge himself further, so put himself forward for social secretary ‘at the centre of the action’: “That was one of the biggest learning points for me,” he recalls. “There was nowhere to hide. You had to deliver and under pressure - which is good training for what I do now.” In his second year, Nick started working on Bailrigg FM and soon had his own show – ‘Nick’s New Musical Lunch’. It was the taster he needed to decide journalism was the career for him. His studies excited him too. His decision to study psychology was influenced by an inspiring teacher, Howard Parkinson, in his sixth form, but also because, being adopted, he was curious about the factors that made him the person he was. He was also fascinated by gender differences, inequalities and by the experiences of minorities, prompting him to write his thesis on gender stereotypes through history. “Reading people was a key part of psychology and working out why they behaved the way they do. It’s the same in my professional life,” he explains. “With that comes a lot of responsibility. You may know how to make people speak, but then you have to think about whether it’s really what they meant to say. Even today I go back to coaches to check. I think there has to be a duty of care.” After Lancaster, he followed the example of fellow student Anthony Baxter (now a deputy editor at LBC radio) to the University of Central Lancashire, to do a Master’s in broadcast journalism. He then spent two years in London ‘sofa surfing’ with friends while acting as a ‘runner’ at the BBC - making tea but using every opportunity to learn and build contacts on programmes like Watchdog and The One Show, in order to land a job. He even borrowed a spare camera to teach himself filming and spent many of his days of sourcing and creating TV reports to gain further experience and prove his potential. After only two years his determination was rewarded with a job as a BBC sports reporter. “Giving a voice to those who would have otherwise gone unheard’ was the mission statement I created at the beginning of this journey. I’m proud to have dedicated my career to championing women’s sport and revealing stories behind athletes from diverse backgrounds, who have traditionally been overlooked by mainstream media.” The self-styled ‘athletes’ journalist’ feels privileged to hear people’s stories and is particularly proud to have revealed the story of the Syrian paralympic swimmer Ibrahim Al Hussein’s fight to reach his Paralympic dreams, after being disabled in a bomb attack. He also prides himself on the bond he established with Olympic diver Tom Daley since the athlete was 13. It allowed Daley to trust Nick enough to write several exclusives about his sexuality and the impact of his father’s death. Nick himself competes internationally with the GB Masters team as a swimmer and has become a British, European and Asia-Pacific Masters Games gold medallist. Regardless of a sport’s profile, Nick believes successful, pioneering athletes should be noticed: “So many of them should be regarded as megastars and be household names because of what they have already achieved. In many cases that is not the reality, but there are so many inspirational stories of triumph over adversity and I aim to continue ‘fighting the good fight’ for many years to come!” @NickHopeTV Nick receives his Alumni Award in 2022 Nick at the Asia-Pacific Masters Games 2023
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