[3] Sergeant's early life meant that he followed his father's work, and was brought up in locations including Jerusalem and Oxford.

After graduation he starred with Alan Bennett in a series of sketch shows on the BBC entitled On the Margin and wrote comedy scripts.

Whilst in Washington during his "gap year" he was present in the crowd to witness Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

[5] Sergeant started his journalism career as a correspondent for the Liverpool Echo where he worked for around three years before joining the BBC as a radio reporter in 1970.

He then worked on a documentary called "The Europe We Joined" and has presented BBC Radio 4 programmes Today and The World at One.

In 1987, in Moscow following Margaret Thatcher, he made a comment implying that she had already started campaigning for the general election in June 1987, despite not having officially declared the contest.

Another political scoop was gained when he was granted the only interview with the then Welsh secretary, Ron Davies, after he had been forced to resign following his "moment of madness" on Clapham Common in October 1998.

Sergeant competed with partner Kristina Rihanoff in the sixth series of Strictly Come Dancing which began on 20 September 2008.

In 2014, he became the narrator for the UK version of the interesting facts game programme, Duck Quacks Don't Echo, first series only.

[11] Whilst appearing on the ITV game show The Chase, Sergeant made clear the one memory he has over his many years of experience in broadcasting is when he was a young man working in Washington, D.C.; he heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 speech "I Have a Dream" live, at the Lincoln Memorial.