He joined ITN in 1963 as a foreign correspondent. He was the first ITN journalist to report the Vietnam War when the United States Marines landed on 8 March 1965. He returned to Vietnam several times until 1975 when Saigon fell and he was forcibly removed from the country by the communist authorities. During this time he also reported from Cambodia, China, Afghanistan, and Africa. He also covered the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In 1972 he was arrested with his Reuters colleague Nicholas Moore in Uganda and held for three days in the Makindye police camp. He was one of the original staff on "News at Ten" on 3 July 1967 and became one of its senior presenters.