Michael Buerk touring Shropshire for new show
[gallery] He is perhaps best known as a former newsreader – or maybe as a contestant on I'm a Celebrity – but Michael Buerk has been touring Shropshire for his latest TV venture.
Along with a film crew, the veteran journalist has been working his way along the River Severn, documenting its surroundings for a new BBC series.
And they headed to Bridgnorth over the weekend where they filmed by the river, on the bridge and at Bridgnorth's Cliff Railway, which has just been declared a national heritage site.
Mr Buerk, who began his career in journalism with the Bromsgrove Messenger, told the Shropshire Star: "Bridgnorth has turned out to be a bit of revelation, it is absolutely ideal.
"I've never been here before and it is just so pretty. I live just outside of London but I'm from Birmingham and my wife is from Hereford so we spend a lot of time on the Welsh borders and in the Midlands, but we seem to have missed this place. I don't know how I've managed to miss it." The new TV show will document the River Severn and its surroundings from the source. On Friday, Mr Buerk and the team headed to Ironbridge before filming in Bridgnorth on Saturday before arriving in Worcester.
Mr Buerk added: "The show is still a work-in-progress but I think there are two or three main presenters and it will be one of these magazine-type programmes that looks at interesting things around Britain."
"It will in essence be a series of short films all linked around the River Severn. We started at the source and I got to go around in a coracle. Since then, we have worked our way down and we've been to Ironbridge before Bridgnorth.
"It is great- it's like being paid to be on holiday. It is hard work though, the days are very long, we start at 6.30am in the morning and don't finish until 7.30pm at night."
The crew spent time on Saturday morning filming Mr Buerk using the town's cliff railway.
The railway, which has been transporting people from Low Town to High Town for more than 100 years, has been honoured by the Transport Trust.
The line remains the oldest inland funicular railway in England and attracts tourists from far and wide to the town.
Mr Buerk, 69, added he had found Bridgnorth to be a "very interesting" place and one he would love to come back to for a day out.From 1983 to 1987, he was the BBC's South Africa correspondent during the dying years of apartheid in South Africa.
His uncompromising reports on the brutalities of the regime resulted in the South African government expelling him from the country after four years in the post.
His reporting of the Ethiopian famine in 1984 inspired the Band Aid charity record.
He later anchored the BBC Nine O'Clock News and BBC News at Ten and last year appeared in hit TV show "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!".
