Strolling towards one of the world’s most famous doors at 10 Downing Street in 2019, it was already a “bizarre” start to Peter Heneghan’s brand new job.
Greeted by angry protesters with placards as issues around Brexit rumbled on, daily demonstrations outside the office soon became the norm. Proud of his working-class dual Irish and Mancunian heritage, Heneghan was suddenly immersed into a completely different world.
“The headline ‘LADbible’s head of communications gets a job at Number 10’ sparked some interest – and eye rolls,” Heneghan tells Prolific North.
“Once you knew the depth of my career, you’d understand that actually, they were onto something. They needed someone to evolve their communications.”
Before taking on the role as head of digital communications for 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, he was head of communications at LADbible for two years, previously head of communications for UK and Europe at BuzzFeed and held publicity roles at Channel 4 and the BBC.
From overseeing BuzzFeed’s investigation into match-fixing in tennis to digging into the World Cup for BBC Panorama, he’s worked on “all sorts of weird, wonderful and important projects”.
“I was the person who convinced Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches to use Twitter and take the learnings from those early reality TV shows where content was instantly pushed on social media,” he says. “I know that’s commonplace now, but it certainly wasn’t back then!”
