Paul Vassallo

I can recall listening to BBC WSR late at night in Australia from a young age and never thought I would ever have the great opportunity to work in Bush House and on a programme like WHYS.

 A big hello to the WHYS community! I have just joined the team from BBC Newsgathering.

 It is a big step for me as I have never worked on programme production before.

BBC News runs a very enlightened internal programme whereby staff from other areas and skill sets can bid to work in another department to learn new aspects of our news work and to my surprise I did get offered this great opportunity to work on WHYS and learn with a very experienced and diversely skilled group of colleagues.

The team has given me a great welcome and I hope in my time here, I will deserve a similar warm welcome from the WHYS community.

I have worked for the BBC for 17 years, starting in a now long gone department called, ‘News Information’ which housed our huge newspaper cuttings library. It was there I first started to learn about BBC News, having no previous media experience.

I then went to the Central News Traffic Unit where I have worked for 15 years. It is the central 24/7 hub for incoming audio material. We act as the main audio interface for our world based bureaux and news correspondents.

 I do love this work and working with our far flung news correspondents in this operational role, but I thought it time to try something new, so you all have me here and I will do my best to help the team deliver a quality programme forum for the WHYS community.

Australian born, from a mixed family background with parentage of Anglo-Maltese ancestry (sorry, my Maltese is very poor). Yet, very much the product of the cross cultural melting pot that is Australia.

By the way, If anyone has a simple fool proof recipe / tips for cooking Maltese Pastizzi and Mqarrun il-Forn (baked macaroni-I am a crap cook) please let me know.

I have lived in the UK for 20 years now. I graduated in Politics and History from Melbourne University and have tried my hand at various employment fields before the great opportunity came to me, to work for the BBC.

Probably biased, but I think BBC Radio news is the best and I gain most of my news from the radio.

I am also a keen reader of magazines like the New Statesman and the Economist. I also normally read the Guardian and the Times.

I guess my big concession to all things with technological bells and whistles is reading more on line news material these days. I am a reforming technophobe, still in therapy, but getting there!

I have quickly realised this programme will challenge the way I see, hear, read and source news material and after only a day on the programme, I have been struck by the fact, I have some technological catching up to do!

A keen traveller, I have been given the opportunity to do a fair bit of it in my life. I have the privilege of having set foot on 5 continents. In more recent times I have discovered the great joy of South America, Argentina and Buenos Aires in particular stand out. I know this could be very controversial for some, but it is truly one of the great cities of the world.

Mi encanato! In the last 5 years I have studied Spanish and love the language very much. Amo la lengua que es llena de vida! I am not great at it, but it was a joy to learn and through it I have seen first hand how difficult learning a second language can be, particularly in later life.

That’s more than enough about me. I hope to get to chat with many of you over the coming weeks and listen to your views and opinions on the stories of the day.