Early Life and Career
Jill Dando was born in Ashcombe House Maternity Home, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and was raised a Baptist. When she was three, it was discovered she had a hole in her heart and a blocked pulmonary artery. She had heart surgery on 12 January 1965. She was educated at Worle Infant School, Greenwood Junior School, Worle Comprehensive School, and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre, where she was head girl, and passed two A levels. She studied journalism at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Cardiff.
Dando was a keen thespian. She was a member of Weston-super-Mare Amateur Dramatic Society and Exeter Little Theatre Company, with whom she appeared in plays at the Barnfield Theatre.
Dando was a volunteer at Sunshine Hospital Radio in Weston-super-Mare in 1979. She started her first job as a trainee reporter for the local weekly newspaper, the Weston Mercury, where her father and brother worked. After five years as a print journalist, she began employment with the BBC when she became a newsreader for BBC Radio Devon in 1985. That year, she transferred to BBC South West, where she presented a regional news magazine programme, Spotlight South West. In 1987, she worked for TSW, then worked for BBC Spotlight in Plymouth. In early 1988, Dando made a move from regional to national television when she moved to London to present BBC television news.
Dando went on to present the BBC television programmes Breakfast Time, Breakfast News, the BBC One O'Clock News, the Six O'Clock News, the travel programme Holiday, the crime appeal series Crimewatch (from 1995 until her death) and occasionally Songs of Praise. In 1994 she moved to Fulham.
On 25 April 1999, Dando presented the first episode of The Antiques Inspectors. She was scheduled to present the Six O'Clock News on the evening of the following day. She was featured on the cover of that week's Radio Times magazine (for 24 to 30 April).
At the time of her death she was among those with the highest profile of the BBC's on-screen staff; she had been the 1997 BBC Personality of the Year. Crimewatch reconstructed her murder in an attempt to aid the police in the search for her killer. After Barry George (see below) was charged with the murder but acquitted, Crimewatch made no further appeals for information concerning the case.
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