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He joined the BBC as a reporter in Norwich in 1962 as a 24 year old, following his graduation from King's College, Cambridge with a first-class honours degree. He moved to London three years later, beginning a distinguished career as a foreign affairs correspondent with his first assignment in Ghana. Over the next 30 years he covered 11 conflicts and reported from 80 countries, making his name with coverage of the war in Vietnam, and also covering wars in the Middle East, Nigeria, Angola and Rwanda, as well as making many reports on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

He won the Royal Television Society's Reporter of the Year award in 1977 and 1993, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1992.

While covering the war in Bosnia he was seriously wounded by shrapnel while recording a report. What he saw while covering this war awoke a sense of injustice which was to influence his future career.

In 1997, just 24 days before the British General ElectionResults The election was fought under new boundaries, with an additional 8 seats across the UK. Changes listed here are from the notional 1992 result had it been fought on those boundaries. These notional results were used by all media organisations at th he announced that he was leaving the BBC to stand as an Independent candidate in the TattonTatton is a parliamentary constituency in Cheshire, north-west England. There is no place named Tatton in it — it is named for Tatton Park, a stately home. The constituency covers the towns of Knutsford and Wilmslow as well as a number of villages. For lo constituency in Cheshire, one of the safest Conservative seats in the country where the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament, Neil HamiltonThis page is about Neil Hamilton, former MP and media personality. See also: Neil Hamilton (lawyer) Neil Hamilton (actor) Mostyn Neil Hamilton (born 1949) is a former Conservative MP in the United Kingdom. Since his fall from grace and subsequent bankrupt, was embroiled in "sleaze" allegations. The LabourThe Labour Party is a centre- left or social democratic political party in Britain (see British politics), and one of the United Kingdom's three main political parties. Under its leader Tony Blair it won a landslide in the 1997 general election, and forme and Liberal DemocratThe Liberal Democrats ("Lib Dems") are a social liberal political party based in the United Kingdom. The party was formed in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the short lived Social Democratic Party (the two parties had already been in an allian Parties withdrew their candidates in Bell's favour, and Bell won with a majority of 11,000 votes (coming from a Conservative majority of over 20,000) becoming the first successful Independent candidate since the Second World War.

Bell was noted as an extremely effective constituency MP -- while not often speaking in the House of Commons (and when he did, mostly on matters of British policy in the former Yugoslavia and the third world), he very ably represented his constituency. Although urged by large numbers of people in Tatton to stand again in the 2001 General ElectionThe United Kingdom general election of 7 June 2001 was dubbed as "the quiet landslide" by the media. After a landslide victory of the Labour Party in the previous 1997 elections, they now had another major victory by managing to maintain their position., he had promised in the 1997 campaign that he would only represent Tatton for one term. He was however persuaded to stand as an Independent candidate against the Conservative MP Eric PicklesEric Jack Pickles (born 1952) is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He has been member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar since 1992, and previously was leader of Brentwood Council. In the 2001 general election, the Independent cand in the Essex constituency of Brentwood and Ongar where there were accusations of Pickles' local Conservative Association being infiltrated by a Pentecostal church. However Bell was not successful in the 2001 election. He then announced his retirement from politics, saying that "winning one and losing one is not a bad record for an amateur".

He now acts as an ambassador for UNICEF and as a critic on the state of journalism today, although he describes himself as "too old" for both journalism and politics.

He is standing for the European Parliament in the June 2004 elections, as an independent candidate in the UK's eastern region.