Ian was born and brought up in the rural English South West. “I am a country lad who leads a city life and because I come from a rural background it does not mean I have straw growing out of my ears and speak with a broad incomprehensible accent. My parents come from Devon and London – so I guess that makes me a Devonshire cockney”.
“My earliest recollections were those tough years we spent living at Princetown on Dartmoor in the late 50′s – early 60′s. As a young lad I lived just a stone’s throw from the most notorious prison in Britain whilst enduring the vicious unrelenting moorland winters”.
Ian Waugh (57) is the third generation in his family connected to broadcasting, his father worked for the BBC for many years.
Ian started his wide-ranging career in the early 1970′s as a voiceover with Independent Television (ITV) in the UK with Westward Television, Southern Television and HTV. Later his deep quality voice was heard on London Weekend Television, TVS, Television South West and the fledgling Sky Channel. “In those days I was very much a ‘voice on a stick’, but the experience and the contacts were invaluable”.
Given a choice, I prefer radio to television, mainly because the broadcasters paint better pictures with the sound, in television the job is already done. Sound broadcasting provides genuine stimulus for the listener. The wireless is honest and in the end a more intimate medium. There’s no artificiality in radio, what you hear is what you get.
Ian joined UK commercial radio with the start of DevonAir Radio as a presenter and later as the station’s Head of Presentation. Within six years he went on to become a successful international broadcast management consultant. “It was quite a change from the UK domestic broadcasting scene and a move that vastly broadened my experience and outlook. Overnight I was in a position to modernise state broadcasters and constructively change the face of the industry internationally”.
Prior to the current Zimbabwean political crisis Ian worked with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation as an adviser and turned a flagging national radio service (Radio 3) into a profitable and popular national station.
Ian Waugh was a production and presentation adviser to Malta’s national broadcaster, Xandir Malta (now PBS) and was later involved in several projects concerning deregulated broadcasting in the republic.
He assisted the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation and helped to establish the country’s first all black presentation television news and current affairs programme as well as assisting and developing several major national radio projects.
Ian Waugh is currently interested in several DRM and DAB digital broadcast ventures across Europe.
“News and current affairs fascinates me. I start the day with news, end with it but I am not ‘glued’ to it. A well-balanced news story to one that is screaming its politics one way or another is definitely my preferred read.
It’s no big deal but I lost the full use of both my legs during the 1990s and suffered two strokes in 2000. This means the regular use of a walking stick and the loss of use of my right side. For me, life goes on.
Despite my physical and mobility restrictions I’m quite an active person and I have to admit I am not the sort of guy to sit still for more than 10 seconds”.
Apart from broadcasting, Ian is a renowned historic researcher, historian and published author. His extensive research into the life of Victorian murderer and celebrity John Lee resulted in the publication of The Man They Could Not Hang which has been well received and reviewed worldwide.
These days Ian lives in the English South East although he still keeps his strong ties with the Westcountry where he was born and brought up as well as Malta in the Mediterranean where he still retains personal and business connections”.
(image: The Railway Stationmaster’s House (middle cream coloured building) at Princetown where we lived between 1957-1962. The Princetown railway had closed in 1956 so we moved in as GWR personnel moved out! The mast is the BBC North Hessary Tor television and radio transmitter where my father worked. We moved to nearby Tavistock just before the infamous winter of 1962/63)