She won a BAFTA for her reporting of the BSE "Mad Cow" crisis in British farming.

Kelly had died by suicide after his exposure as the source for a controversial report by fellow BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, in which it was claimed that the British government had deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to justify a war.

On 2 June 2003, Susan Watts broadcast a report in which she extensively quoted a "senior official involved with the process of pulling together the original September 2002 Blair weapons dossier".

She had felt under "considerable internal pressure"[10] to back her employers, despite her own misgivings and as a result she was represented by independent counsel at the Hutton Inquiry.

Gilligan had decided to make more of similar remarks drawn from his memory of his conversations with Dr Kelly.