Former ITV newsreader Andrea Catherwood liked her local so much, she bought it.

The Irish born broadcaster who lives locally acquired The Carpenters Arms in St Peter's Square, with two friends who are in the restaurant business.

Speaking at a charity event to mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she told The Belfast Telegraph "A pub round the corner from where I live had changed hands a couple of times. It's the old cliche: we enjoyed going there so much that we decided to buy it."

"I haven't actually been behind the bar to pull the pints yet - no-one has let me, but at some point hopefully they will."

"I've got a really good chef," she continued "I think I'm going to leave the cooking to him as he's pretty phenomenal. I thought I was quite a good cook until I saw what he can do."

The 39 year old mother of three, who once said that she "scarily relates to Lynette in 'Desperate Housewives'", presents ITV's weekend politics programme The Sunday Edition.

Best known for presenting ITV Weekend News, Andrea Catherwood was born and raised in Northern Ireland and has been a journalist since the age of 16, reporting from conflict areas including Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

She was the first British journalist into Mazari Sharif in 2001 after the Northern Alliance captured the city from Taliban forces and was injured whilst reporting from inside the prison at the beginning of the Taliban prisoners' uprising when one of them exploded a concealed grenade.

 

September 19, 2007