Triona Holden

Holden began her career in 1976, aged 17, as a journalist at the Sheffield Star newspaper, eventually becoming their assistant crime reporter.

[2] She briefly worked as a broadcast journalist for Mercia Sound in Coventry, then a freelancer for LBC in London, before joining the BBC in 1982.

In 1987 she was the only reporter to broadcast live from the disaster scene after getting onto the wreck of the Herald of Free Enterprise when it became semi-submerged off Zeebrugge.

While at the BBC, in her role as a reporter, she travelled extensively to war zones, famines, conflicts, and other disasters, including the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests, the Brixton Riots, and the 1986 coup in Lesotho.

[4]Holden retired from the BBC on medical grounds aged 39 after becoming seriously ill with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.