The star suffered a dramatic fall from grace.
BBC newsreader Ed Mitchell ended up homeless for a interval (Picture: TwoFour)
Former newsreader Ed Mitchell scaled the dizzying heights of a glamorous media profession earlier than crashing again all the way down to earth and a devastating low when he discovered himself penniless and homeless, sleeping on Hove Seafront. The revered broadcaster labored for ITN, the BBC, and Sky Information, amongst others, and interviewed the likes of Margaret Thatcher, John Main, and Tony Blair throughout his spectacular profession. At one stage, he earned £100,000 a 12 months and had a way of life the general public watching him on TV may solely dream about. Nonetheless, a transfer to US broadcaster CNBC signalled the start of his downfall.
In 1999, he was made redundant from his £90,000-a-year submit reporting on enterprise and finance and located himself slipping into monetary bother. He started utilizing his 25 bank cards to repay each other, however though he was capable of finding some freelance work, his earnings have been quickly swallowed up by the large curiosity funds he needed to meet. “It doesn’t matter how a lot you pay them, you by no means really catch up,” he mentioned on the time. “It will get uncontrolled, and the letters pour in, however in the end they’re losing bushes.” He finally needed to promote his £500,000 home in Hove, East Sussex, to cowl his money owed after declaring chapter.
In a 2008 ITV documentary following him as he tried to place his life again collectively, he acknowledged: “There may be an irony that somebody who ought to be an knowledgeable as a enterprise and finance reporter ought to get their funds in such a state.”
His monetary points have been compounded by the truth that he had been scuffling with alcoholism for the reason that starting of his profession. Writing within the ebook What Doesn’t Kill You: Fifteen Tales Of Survival in 2020, he confessed: “I by no means felt solely snug broadcasting till I’d had a number of drinks. Getting simply the correct steadiness between cool confidence and slurring gibberish was all the time key.”
In the identical article, he admitted he had been let go from CNBC due to “an alcohol-related incident”.
He managed to muddle via for six years after his sacking, however issues lastly got here to a head, and he needed to inform his spouse of 25 years, who had tried to intervene about his ingesting many instances, that chapter was their solely choice. By mid-2006, he was left with nothing. His spouse had divorced him, the home was bought to repay the mortgage, and he had “no possessions, no earnings and no concept of what would occur subsequent.”
After a stint of couch browsing and sleeping in council shelters, he had no choice however to take to the streets, the place a reporter discovered him 10 days earlier than Christmas in 2007 and introduced his story to public consideration, one thing he admitted made him “uncomfortable”.
Nonetheless, it additionally marked a turning level. He was quickly the topic of the documentary Saving Ed Mitchell, introduced by his ITN colleague Carol Barnes, which detailed his struggles and confirmed him being given a possibility to return to presenting if he entered rehab within the Priory. He additionally landed a ebook deal and subsequently wrote the bestseller From Headlines to Arduous Occasions, revealed in 2009. He made sufficient cash from the ebook’s gross sales to maneuver right into a flat in Shoreham-by-Sea.
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Within the intervening years, he admits to a relapse and one other stint in rehab, however he has managed to drag his life again collectively. In 2012, he remarried. He met Mandy Tines “within the darkest days of tough sleeping, when she introduced me espresso and soup,” so she has seen him at his worst.
In 2009, it was introduced he would develop and current programmes for Inexcess Tv. In November 2014, he started presenting a every day programme for a brand new monetary radio station, Share Radio, in London. He has additionally skilled aspiring broadcasters, passing on his expertise to the following technology, and has maintained regular media work. “Probably the most lucky escape was getting out of everlasting homelessness,” he mentioned in 2020. “Solely my previous as somebody recognisable from TV bought me out of that deep ditch.”
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