Nigel Wrench

Nigel Wrench (born 1960) spent his journalistic career working as an English radio presenter and reporter, mainly for BBC Radio 4.

Born in Birmingham, Wrench grew up in South Africa, where he began his career in journalism after a degree at Rhodes University. After newspaper work on the Johannesburg Sunday Express, he spent much of the 1980s reporting on the anti-apartheid protests of the era. His first radio job was with Johannesburg-based Capital Radio 604, which provided the first independent source of broadcast news in South Africa.

At Turnstyle News, an independent radio news agency, Wrench reported for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the UK-based Independent Radio News and London Broadcasting Company.

In December 1985, he was among those detained briefly by police when reporting the illegal return of Winnie Mandela to Soweto.

In recently published diary extracts, Wrench has revealed the personal thoughts behind his South African reporting. In the aftermath of one police shooting in Soweto in August 1986 he wrote: "A kid showed me welts from shotgun wounds. I came away mentally wounded myself. Cry for the country! I throw an ANC thumbs-up salute through the sunroof [of the car]. It is less a gesture than a commitment, quite frankly. This after once pleading non-involvement. Enough, no longer."