Robert Orchard is a freelance British journalist and lecturer.
One of three children born to a Devonshire farmer and a Welsh nurse, he was educated at a grammar school in mid-Devon and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, followed by a year's PGCE teacher training course.
Orchard succeeded Geoffrey Perkins as president of Oxford University's student revue company, the Etceteras, and gathered a talented team of sketch-writers that included former TW3 scriptwriter and chemistry tutor, John Albery, and fellow-students Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, who met here for the first time.
He began his journalistic career at the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff, before moving on to BBC Wales and worked in broadcasting for the BBC for more than 30 years, covering mainly politics and parliament for TV and radio from 1984 — including the Brighton Bomb and the fall of Margaret Thatcher. He also worked in Brussels and Strasbourg setting up a new EU reporter post for BBC regions before becoming political correspondent, first for BBC Wales and then for network BBC TV and Radio News in a team led by John Cole, and including his former BBC Wales colleague, Huw Edwards. Orchard focused on reporting Parliament from 1992, mainly on Radio 4, becoming a BBC parliamentary correspondent and presenting Yesterday in Parliament — with a brief to entertain as well as inform, and later the more measured, nightly Today in Parliament, along with other specialist parliamentary programmes on TV and radio. He reported on major UK politicians such as John Major.
