Hugh Nailon, son of a publican, grew up in various hotels in Western Victoria where, as a kid picking up glasses, he first encountered the wonders of good storytelling.
He attended Monivae College, a catholic co-ed boarding school in Hamilton, before moving to the "big smoke" and embarking on a journalism degree at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
After graduating in 1997, Hugh applied for a job as a researcher with the Melbourne office of A Current Affair, brazenly ignoring the ad's stipulation "TV experience essential".
Hugh didn't get the job, but was invited to spend the summer at GTV 9 "answering the phones". There was a rumour going around that he was actually being paid out of the petty cash tin during this time, but he hung around long enough to get a full-time job with the program.
You'd struggle to find a better place than ACA to learn television from the ground up. The variety of working on late same-day stories, outside broadcasts and investigations, combined with the fierce competition of the 6.30pm timeslot, provided a unique opportunity to work in one of television's most powerful and cutthroat environments.
In 2003, Hugh took a year's leave from the program and ventured around the world, taking in Australia's cricket tour of the West Indies before settling in London, where he found work in the ITV newsroom and took every opportunity to travel through Europe.
After returning to ACA as a producer, Hugh was given the opportunity to cover the biggest story of his life, the Asian tsunami. For four weeks at the start of 2005, Hugh and reporter Ray Martin worked from Northwest Sumatra, broadcasting ACA live from the ruined streets of Banda Aceh.
A proud Victorian, Hugh moved to Sydney and started work with 60 Minutes in 2006, where he's had the privilege to work with some of the most experienced and talented cameramen, sound recordists, editors and reporters in the business. He's very much the new kid on the 60 Minutes block, but is looking forward to telling stories that even the blokes back at those Western Victorian pubs would enjoy.
