When the television journalist Bill Turnbull became a presenter of the BBC’s Breakfast programme in 2001, he had years of experience behind him as a reporter covering news from more than 30 countries.
That background gave Turnbull, who has died aged 66 after suffering from prostate cancer, the authority to step out of the studio on major news occasions and to anchor the programme from trouble spots in Britain and abroad – from King’s Cross railway station in London following the 7/7 bombings of 2005 to New Orleans and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the same year. He was also in Washington for the 2008 and 2012 US presidential elections, and travelled around the UK during the 2010 general election.
