Tom Heap

Thomas John Gillespie "Tom" Heap (born 6 January 1966) is the Rural Affairs Correspondent of BBC News, and a United Kingdom television and radio reporter and presenter best known for his contributions to the BBC One programme Countryfile, the same channel's Panorama programme, and the BBC Radio 4 programme Costing the Earth. Since February 2012, he has also been Director and media presenter of the media company Checked Shirt TV Limited.

Thomas John Gillespie Heap was born on 6 January 1966, and is the son of John Arnfield Heap, a former scientific adviser who became the head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Polar Regions Section (from 1975-1992), and Margaret Grace Gillespie Spicer, known as 'Peg', the daughter of Captain Sir Stewart Spicer, Baronet, of the Royal Navy. He has two sisters.

Heap was educated at Oakham School, a boarding and day independent school in the market town of Oakham in Rutland in central England, where he was trained to abseil by the Ministry of Defence's Lieutenant M.B. Rochester of the Combined Cadet Force (CCF), and won a Bronze Award in The Duke of Edinburgh Award in 1980.

Heap began his broadcasting career with Sky News as a sound mixer. He then joined a News Trainee scheme with BBC News and worked on the Today programme, the BBC News 24 channel and Panorama. He became a correspondent specialising in rural affairs, science and the environment and took on a newly created role as the Rural Affairs Correspondent for BBC News. In 2013 he reported for the BBC live from the Khumbu Icefall on Mount Everest with the broadcasting team covering the 50th anniversary of the conquest of the mountain. After making contributions to Countryfile, in April 2012 he took over the investigative reporter role on the programme from John Craven. In 2014 he interviewed Anne, Princess Royal in this role.

Tom Heap married Tammany Robin Stone in 1992, and lives in Napton-on-the-Hill near the market town of Southam in Warwickshire, south of the city of Coventry.

During an edition of Countryfile screened on 9 November 2014, it was revealed that Heap is the great nephew of Olympic medallist and soldier Thomas Gillespie (rower) who was killed in action at La Bassee, France in October, 1914 aged 21.