Broadcaster Steph McGovern has highlighted the importance of furthering the levelling up agenda in the 海角视频 - as a media trailblazer returning north.
And the journalist who made her name in the business sector is keen to see schools re-embrace industrial links like those that fostered her love of engineering - making her long-held specialism as natural, normal and authentic as she is on screen.
Appearing in Humber Business Week on co-founder Paul Sewell’s Elevenses slot, McGovern - now back close to her Middlesbrough roots in Leeds with her Channel Four show Packed Lunch - said: “I have a real soft spot for Hull.
"I think Hull is like Teesside, with so much going on, so many incredible entrepreneurs, so much around the ports and yet they get slagged off all the time and that does my head in when the national media don’t see what an area has. They just go on random statistics, where people doing the stats have never been to the heart of the place.
“I think Hull and Teesside are similar. Industry there needs to change and diversify but for me it is about the people trying to do that, and many doing it successfully, and I don’t think that’s acknowledged enough - it is really impressive to find new industries, redesign what you have been doing and then create a new industry from it, especially a sustainable one. It is incredible.”
Leading on to levelling up, with her show the first to broadcast live from West Yorkshire - albeit from her kitchen in lockdown rather than the new studios - she said: “It is desperately needed. It has been key to get the media industry to move outside. I think that is brilliant.
“Then that has to extend to all the other areas and sectors, where they can be anywhere. It is good we are going to see government departments move up to the North and I think it is really key that we get investment in areas that really need it so we don’t have those terrible statistics following us around.
“The only reason we have them is because there has not been enough investment. Yes there has been private investment, but never enough public sector investment, in terms of getting big employers to areas, there could easily be more done to level it up.
Most Read
“Also transport infrastructure, if we have good links it invariably makes it much more easy to do business properly. The pandemic has changed our view on travel now, which is a good thing, but levelling up is absolutely crucial and I do think it is starting to cut through a bit more now with the government - and why the Tories have been getting more votes as they are certainly showing those intentions.”
Entrepreneurial as a child, she told how she did jumble sales and sold neighbours’ apples. She went to an industry-sponsored school, where tours of the likes of ICI and British Steel were regular events, and had the involvement in the school day.
“That was absolutely key to my career - I knew what a supply chain was when I was 13. I didn’t feel like I was academic, but I could do it.
“We need to value skills more. Communicating, teamwork are all crucial in a job, and I would like to see more parity between delivery of academic and vocational training. I wish it was given the same value.”
She’d love to see careers given the same focus as grades - with a plotting of the next five years from the school gates.
“It needs a massive shake up, it really does. I would love it if schools did league tables of where people went onto afterwards. Parents could then go ‘oh wow’. I would love it if we could flip it on its head and see where they went.”
She told how she only stopped the Beeb business news gig as she couldn’t be on the road all the time having had a baby.
Don’t miss
Telling how she was championed by Robert Peston and Evan Davis, for many her polar opposites, she told how she “wanted to show off jobs, people in the industry, and celebrate it,” clocking up 800 company visits.
Highlights were the automotive sector, then ports, fishing and renewable energy - “how industry turned round for the modern era is really brilliant,” she enthused - with Grimsby and Hull showing how.
On her switch from engineering to media, she said: “I realised I could do well, enjoyed science and went to work for Black and Decker in Durham. I ran a project, it did quite well and I won Young Engineer for Britain. I was invited down to London to appear on a Radio Four show - literally the poshest place in the world - and Television Centre was amazing.
“Because I’m a gobby Northerner I ticked a load of diversity boxes in their eyes as well. I loved it. I knew I was going to London to study at Imperial so I stalked the Radio Four team until they gave me a bit of work experience, worked my way through the ranks, while doing engineering still, and then had to make the choice, and picked the sparkly lights of the media world.
"No-one had sat me down and said ‘this is journalism’. I knew about industry because of our brilliant school.”
She had applied to the BBC locally for work experience when she was younger, but got rejected. “It is important to have knock-backs, as well as triumph,” she said - making a point of reminding them whenever invited on.
And her North East twang is now her greatest weapon.
“I loved being different there (at the BBC). My USP was being normal, so many people were middle and upper class, I felt empowered. When people underestimate you it is your biggest strength.
“My confidence has grown over the years, but there are times when I’m blagging.”