Wendy Hurrell is a British journalist and presenter whose career took her from local radio in Norwich to ITV Anglia and BBC London. Known to London viewers for her weather forecasts, she has also made documentaries and covered the capital’s theatres, hospitals and neighbourhoods, often following the people whose work takes place out of sight.
Quick bio
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Professional name | Wendy Hurrell |
| Profession | Broadcast journalist and television presenter |
| Education | BA, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2000–2003 |
| First broadcasting job | Broadland 102 FM in Norwich |
| Regional television | Production journalism, weather presenting and the history programme Bygones at ITV Anglia |
| Joined BBC London | September 2008 |
| Documentary credit | Dry December, a half-hour film for Inside Out London |
Norfolk, Goldsmiths and the move into broadcasting
Hurrell grew up in Filby, a Norfolk village near Great Yarmouth. One detail of her childhood later found its way onto television. As a girl, she visited Alan Bloom’s steam museum at Bressingham. Years later she returned with an ITV Anglia crew for an edition of Bygones, revisiting a place she had first encountered as a visitor.
She studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, from 2000 to 2003 and gained a BA. Her broadcasting career began at Broadland 102 FM in Norwich. In 2003 she joined Anglia Television as a production journalist. A year later, when weather presenter Sara Thornton went on maternity leave, Hurrell moved to the weather team.
What did she present at ITV Anglia?
In 2007, Hurrell joined Eddie Anderson for the return of Bygones, Anglia’s long-running programme about East Anglian history, rural crafts and working life. The original series had begun in 1967 with Dick Joice as presenter. Its revival gave Hurrell a role that took her beyond the studio and into the homes, farms and collections of people across the region.
One assignment brought her two jobs together. In a May 2008 edition, she met Maurice Skeels, a 78-year-old Fenland farmer who believed his cattle could tell him something about the coming weather. This time the weather presenter was asking the questions, giving Skeels the chance to explain what he watched for in his herd.
BBC London weather and Inside Out
Hurrell joined BBC London in September 2008. She delivered forecasts on BBC London News, during the capital’s regional bulletins on BBC Breakfast and on BBC London 94.9. Viewers outside London who knew the national Breakfast programme would have seen their own regional output in those slots. Hurrell’s role was to give the forecast for the capital.
One late bulletin in 2013 gave viewers an unexpected glimpse of the job. The camera stayed on Hurrell after her forecast and caught her rolling her eyes. When the clip drew attention, she explained that she had just delivered the whole forecast without being able to see the graphics. The Evening Standard carried her account of the technical problem behind the moment.
A month without alcohol for Dry December
For a half-hour Inside Out London film broadcast in January 2012, Hurrell gave up alcohol for December. The timing gave Dry December a simple premise. She would spend the festive season without drinking while speaking to people whose jobs, health or social lives brought them into close contact with alcohol.
The people she met gave the film its scope. Paramedics on London’s specialist alcohol-response vehicles described one side of a night out. Older drinkers offered another perspective, while a woman who had worked in the City spoke about losing her career. Hurrell’s own film archive credits Matthew Lynch as producer.
That year, the jury for the European regional television competition Prix CIRCOM included Hurrell in its account of the Rising Star entries. Its assessment picked out two very different assignments: covering the weather at Wimbledon and speaking to people with drinking problems. It gives a contemporary account of the range she had already developed within four years of joining the BBC.
Covering London’s history, theatre and film
Hurrell wrote and presented a BBC London piece about an exhibition on horses in wartime. She also covered a reconstruction of London before the Great Fire of 1666. Students at De Montfort University used maps from the British Library and descriptions in Samuel Pepys’s diaries to recreate the streets. The result gave a television audience a way to see a part of the city usually encountered through documents.
Her performing arts work ranges from dance at the London Coliseum to musical theatre in Regent’s Park. In 2014 she covered Fredrik Rydman’s Swan Lake: Reloaded, which brought Swedish techno into a production drawing on Tchaikovsky. For the 2017 summer season at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, she covered On the Town, with Miriam-Teak Lee as Claire and Danny Mac as Gabey.
In February 2021, Hurrell interviewed actor Vicky Knight and director Stephan Pierre Mitchell about Reshaped. Mitchell’s own film archive identifies her as the BBC journalist who conducted the interview and dates the BBC One broadcast to 9 February. That credit preserves both the date of the piece and the names of the people she interviewed.
The people who tend London’s shared spaces
Some of Hurrell’s most distinctive subjects are people who return to the same place week after week. Her film Wall of Hearts follows volunteers who gather on Fridays to repaint hearts on the National Covid Memorial Wall beside the Thames. Each heart represents a life lost. The volunteers’ continuing work gives the film its subject: what it takes to care for a memorial after the paint begins to fade.
A west London community garden gave her another way to explore the effects of the pandemic. Hurrell introduced the piece by asking what gardening and contact with nature could offer after months of disruption. In 2025, for The Changing Face of London, she visited the University of East London’s Docklands campus to hear from international students about their experiences of the capital.
Wendy Hurrell’s recent journalism
In February 2026, Hurrell examined why film crews choose Croydon. Her starting point was an escalator in the Whitgift Centre that featured in Taylor Swift’s Opalite video. From that recognisable image, the piece opened onto a local story about a partly empty shopping centre and a borough where new towers stand close to older buildings awaiting redevelopment.
Food was a recurring subject that September. Hurrell and Jess Warren covered the opening of the Big Heart Food Hub in Barking, which aimed to supply up to ten tonnes of food a week to charities and food banks. Later that month, Hurrell examined what it cost the Felix Project to collect surplus food and move it to community organisations. Together, the two pieces followed the journey between a business with food to spare and a kitchen able to use it.
A day on the King’s College Hospital helipad
On 27 October 2026, Hurrell took that same practical approach to the tenth anniversary of the helipad at King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill. Before it opened, helicopters landed in nearby Ruskin Park and the onward transfer could take nearly half an hour. Hospital staff told her that patients landing on the roof could now reach resuscitation in under five minutes.
Hurrell followed those five minutes through the people responsible for them. A trauma nurse takes the call, a helideck officer checks the landing site and a trained porter helps move the patient to the emergency department. More than 2,300 landings had taken place in the helipad’s first decade. Her account gave that figure a human scale by showing what happens during a single arrival.
Frequently asked questions about Wendy Hurrell
Who is Wendy Hurrell?
Wendy Hurrell is a British journalist and presenter known for delivering weather forecasts on BBC London News. Her work also includes documentaries and features on London’s theatres, hospitals and neighbourhoods.
How old is Wendy Hurrell?
Wendy Hurrell is 44 as of 8 November 2026, based on her published date of birth, 24 May 1982. The Evening Standard also gave her age as 31 in October 2013, consistent with that birth year.
What did Wendy Hurrell do before joining BBC London?
Hurrell began her broadcasting career at Broadland 102 FM in Norwich, then joined Anglia Television as a production journalist in 2003. She went on to present weather forecasts and co-host the regional history programme Bygones before joining BBC London in September 2008.
What was Wendy Hurrell’s Inside Out London documentary about?
In Dry December, Hurrell gave up alcohol for a month and explored how drinking affected Londoners during the festive season. The half-hour documentary, broadcast in January 2012, featured paramedics and a former City worker who spoke about losing her career through drinking.
Does Wendy Hurrell have children?
Yes. In December 2015, Hurrell introduced her daughter Freya in a Christmas Day social media post.
