Correspondents

Michele Paduano

As a freelance journalist, Michele wrote a story for The Observer about children being born without eyes. There were suggestions that it may be related to pesticide usage.

It generated quite a bit of interest, leading to The Observer running a campaign. With his help, it was then turned into a Public Eye documentary for BBC2.

This led to him being offered a short contract with East Midlands Today in Nottingham. Six months later, he joined Midlands Today.

Since then, during his time on the programme, Michele (pronounced mi-ke-le) has undertaken diverse roles.

His current job involves working for all the local radio stations in the West Midlands as well as Midlands Today so he feels he has to keep on his toes as he never knows what might happen next.

He says "There are so many imponderables whilst producing an item that it's always a relief to see the final article signed, sealed and delivered."

Being of Italian origin, Michele (known as Paddy to colleagues) was chosen to do this job as the ice cream seller didn't speak much English..

Paddy had to keep screaming at him in Italian to speak English...the ice cream seller however, seemed content to just keep pressing the musical bell on his van, ruining every take!

Paddy, who also runs a small antiques business is a committed member of Amnesty International and a founder member of the AI journalists group.

His theory is " I always hope to stumble across that bit of information which could unearth the story that would make that fundamental difference!"