Nigel Morris, BBC investigations producer, dies aged 44

Over the last 14 years Morris had worked on many of the UK’s flagship investigative journalism programmes including Panorama, Dispatches and ITV’s The Big Story.

For the last three years he was investigations producer for BBC London – heading up the team’s award winning investigations coverage that saw it twice win the Prix Circom, the European award for best regional news programme.

His work included an exposé of the former head of Albania’s secret service, wanted for torture and kidnap, and found living under an assumed name in London; along with immigration scams at a London hotel and revealing how banned dangerous dog breeds could still be bought on the streets of London.

“Loved the story”

BBC London editor Antony Dore said: “Nigel was an old fashioned news journalist who just loved the story.

“He did some outstanding stuff for us in investigative journalism. Nigel brought something to the team that we’d never had before and his skills and experience were behind many of the best stories we’ve done over the last few years. We won awards for stories we would never have got without Nigel”.

Morris’s career began in local newspapers where he worked on a number of titles including the Grimsby Evening Telegraph and Sheffield Star. He was a member of the team responsible for the Star’s award-winning coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Eventually he moved into freelancing as an investigative journalist writing for the Sunday Express including looking at student grants before moving into television journalism, first as a researcher on youth programme Speakeasy before he joined Twenty Twenty’s Big Story for ITV in the mid-90s.

He then joined Ray Fitzwalter Associates and spent 1998 working on a number of investigative documentaries for Channel 4’s Dispatches strand.

During the next few years Morris worked on a range of TV programmes from ITV’s House of Horrors to Sunday Morning with Gloria Hunniford and Speakeasy.

Among Morris’s many other broadcast credits include work To the Ends of the Earth: The Real Bravo Two Zero for Fulcrum in 2001/2002.

Panorama

Between 2003/2004 he worked on Panorama, returning to the programme in 2007 to work with director Andy Bell on a Bafta-nominated film about dog fighting.

He also worked on John Pilger’s 2004 RTS winning feature documentary Stealing a Nation, the story of the US occupation of Diego Garcia, produced by Granada for ITV.

He was an experienced marathon runner and after completing last year’s London Marathon in April, and raising money for the charity War Child, he felt unwell and visited his doctor. He was told he had stomach cancer and underwent chemotherapy for several months, all the time keeping in touch with many of his friends in journalism and broadcasting. But the disease spread and his condition rapidly deteriorated.

Nigel passed away peacefully on 15 December with his family at his bedside. He leaves a wife Marie and two children, Amelie and Noa.

His funeral takes place on Wednesday 5 January at 12.15pm at the Church of Our Lady, Brixton, followed by a service at the West Norwood Crematorium at 2pm.