Police have launched a desperate search for a missing Channel 4 star, with officers saying they are ‘increasingly concerned for her welfare’.
Katherine Watson, often known as Katie, became a recognisable community figure after appearing in the TV series Geordie Hospital, which focused on her work as a chaplain at the RVI and Freeman.
The 50-year-old has been missing from the Newcastle area since early Thursday afternoon.
Thousands have shared the initial police appeal to find her, with many who experienced her care and support at Newcastle Hospitals expressing heartfelt messages of hope that she is found safe soon.
One retired doctor who worked with her at the hospital said on social media: ‘For many of us at Newcastle Hospitals she was our rock during the worst parts of the Covid Pandemic.’
Another described her as ‘one of the most wonderful women I have had the pleasure of knowing’.
A Royal Military Police veteran who served in conflict zones such as in the Balkans and Northern Ireland, she charmed viewers across the North East and beyond during the television programme – and many of those viewers have also expressed their sadness that she is missing and hope she is found safely.
Ahead of the first series of Channel 4’s Geordie Hospital in 2022, she spoke movingly about the role of hospital chaplains.
She said: ‘We try to help in so many ways, from helping get hold of food bank vouchers for someone or baptising a baby which might be likely to die in a few hours or moving a little one down to the chapel of rest – there really is so much in our remit.’
Her family and the police continue to be concerned for her welfare and searches to find her remain underway. Katherine, 50, is a white woman, around 5ft 6ins in height, of slim build, and has short light grey hair.
She was last seen in the Heaton Road area of Newcastle at around 1pm on Thursday September 19. She has links to Heaton and Jesmond but may have travelled further afield.
Northumbria Police has appealed police to the public for information on her whereabouts to ensure she is safe and well.
Katherine was last seen wearing a green hat, a back pack, with dark trousers and a dark hooded top. She has a number of tattoos on her arms, as well as a military tattoo on her chest.
In the leadup to hear appearance on Geordie Hospital, Katherine told The Church of England: ‘Our department motto is “for everything else there’s a chaplain”.
‘We only have two things to offer, the gifts of time and presence, but we give them whole heartedly.
‘We provide chaplaincy 24/7, 365 days a year, and during the pandemic we never went away.’
Her team included chaplains from various world views and beliefs including Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, and Humanists.
‘This role isn’t for everyone, and people would need to spend time with us to understand the complexity and diversity of what we are called to do,’ she added.
‘Healthcare Chaplaincy is a very specific calling and requires a great deal of resilience and life experience.’
She certainly has life experience and served in Bosnia in the 1990s, as part of the Royal Military Police.
‘Once you have seen genocide first hand on the streets of a European country,’ she explained.
‘There is nothing left in the world that can faze you after that.
‘I have seen the worst of humanity and I have seen, and continue to see, the very best of it.’
The Channel 4 documentary was a six-part series, which began on 17 January, and followed the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s staff through a shift, featuring a cast from porters to surgeons, to dental nurses to chaplains.
‘The show reflects some of what we do, but not all of it,’ she said.
‘So much of what we do is so sensitive and so very private to the people we serve that it was not possible to show all of what we do day in day out.
‘The work we do is often very distressing and disturbing and that was not appropriate to show on television in this show.’
Work for the chaplaincy team includes everything from running a clothes bank and distributing foodbank vouchers, to involvement in police identification on the deceased, and sitting on ethics committees.
After 14 years in the job, there has never been a typical day. Katherine joked: ‘Write a plan and then rip it up!’
Katherine, or anyone who knows her whereabouts, is asked to contact police by sending a direct message on social media, using the live chat function or report forms on our website, or by calling 101 quoting reference: NP-20240919-0717.
