[1][2] He is the son of Brigadier William Hine-Haycock of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and Felicity Hine-Haycock (née Harrison) of Toorak, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, and has two sisters, Rozanthe and Daphne.
[3][4] Hine-Haycock was educated at Wellington College, a boarding independent school for boys (now co-educational) in the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire in South East England, followed by the University of Stirling in the city of Stirling in Central Scotland, where he graduated with BA Honours, and Macalester College, a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, the capital city of Minnesota, in the United States,[2] where he studied English in 1972–73.
[5] Hine-Haycock started in radio as a BBC graduate news trainee.
He worked at BBC News, later becoming a reporter on Westward Diary for the-then ITV regional broadcasting contractor for South West England, Westward Television,[6] followed by Independent Television News.
They lived at Hempstone Park in the village of Littlehempston (near the market town of Totnes) in Devon, in South West England,[1] and provide bed-and-breakfast accommodation.