The Murder of Jill Dando

Hmmmm, as I mentioned last night I was able to have a look at the 1 o clock from that day and as well as it not being Anna Ford, it didn't seem to end oddly, definitely not sombrely. Of course you'll have to take my word for it.



I imagine it was to get a 'name' to break the news. Like they do for massive stories like Diana, they get the big names in as they're familiar and more reassuring



I was at TVC that day, in fact I must arrived less than an hour after the news was announced. A colleague told me straight away but it didn't really mean anything to me, I couldn't even remember which presenter Dando was oddly, she'd obviously not made much impact on me.


An odd day at the BBC. I caught a bit of one of the studio recordings that evening and the presenter came out first to speak to the audience and address the elephant in the room and reassure them that they were thinking about what had happened and its OK to laugh at the show.

Some would argue that Anna Ford was more senior and a bigger ‘name’ than Jennie Bond, actually. But that’s by the by.........

Are we sure Jennie Bond wasn't the bulletin reader that day? I seem to recall that before the 1999 rebrand, the daytime bulletins used to be read by someone else other than the main One/Six/Nine presenters.

To answer an earlier question, Trevor definitely did the mid-afternoon ITV bulletin. It was commonplace for the Evening News presenter to do this, just as the Lunchtime presenter(s) did the morning bulletins.

Slightly dumbstruck that you hadn't heard of Jill Dando and you don't consider Anna Ford a 'name'.

I'm guessing it's more likely that the news flash was in the other studio being prepared while Anna was still on air.

I think it was mainly the secondary presenter of the Six who presented the bulletins that day. Which would explain why most of them on YT are presented by Jennie, Jill, Moira or Andrew. Although it is odd that the studio is still set up for the One, so maybe they didn't have time to change it.

But he's already said it wasn't Anna Ford.

I'm pretty sure this was the case - as mentioned, they were still doing the hourly news bulletins at the time which would have their own separate presenter. Presumably Jennie Bond was doing all the others that day, and there was one coming up not long after so it made sense for her to do it.

You'll note in Genome it was supposed to be Moira Stuart presenting the Six that day, but presumably she was unavailable.

To be fair Jennie did in fact present a few main bulletins. She was like moira and could pop up anywhere.

Next news after 1pm was on bbc2 around 2pm then 3.50 and that was it.

Also it was same studio for all of bbc news.

Blimey, I remember that day too, I had been having lunch just around the corner from the bar. It was warm and sunny, like a summers day. Got the train home, and was utterly shocked to hear the news on the car radio driving home from the station

I remember security at Sophie and Prince Edward's wedding had to be tightened because of Jill Dando's death and the future royal was given police protection in the lead up to the big day.

Can't believe it's 20 years, it feels like yesterday Jill was presenting Crimewatch or taking us to an exotic location.

It’s been said before, but you can’t help but wonder what Jill’s role would be if she was still around today. She’d no doubt still be on screen in some way.

I remember coming home from school and turning the TV on to find Holiday on Channel 4 thinking it was a bit odd. And suddenly Jon Snow appeared on screen saying "Jill Dando, who was murdered today".

We had a school IT lesson scheduled the next day to produce a newspaper front page based on the previous day's news. So we were given homework to watch the news and prepare notes. When we got in the next day the 9 O'Clock News was played on a loop to assist us, so I remember it quite well.