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.
The 50-year-old ex-Army officer 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.’
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
The 50-year-old ex-Army officer has been missing from the Newcastle area since early Thursday afternoon
Revd Capt Watson appearing on Channel 4’s Geordie Hospital in 2022
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.
As Head of Chaplaincy, she oversaw a team of 13 chaplains from a variety of religious beliefs – including Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Pastoral, Muslim and Christian faiths – to provide spiritual support and comfort to patients.
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.
Revd Capt Watson (left) with other cast members from Geordie Hospital. Pictured: (L-R) Katie Watson, Poppy the Welfare hound, Isma Iqbal, Abbie, Jeremy French, Sean Marshall Kellie & Allan
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.
After joining the Army at the age of 18 in 1992, Katherine completed basic training at Army Women’s Training Centre in Guilford before travelling to undertake trade training with the Royal Military Police at Chichester.
She completed 2 operational tours to Bosnia and Croatia during the genocide in 1994 and 1995 after which she was deployed as a searcher Corporal in Northern Ireland.
Having been selected to attend the commissioning course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Katie was commissioned in August 1997 and returned to the RMP.
In 2002 she left the Army and trained with Humberside Probation service prior to starting ordination training.
Katie joined the Newcastle team in 2007 on a long placement and in her own words ‘forgot to leave’ – she was appointed as head of chaplaincy for the trust in 2020.
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!’
When asked what she enjoyed most about her work in an interview with the NHS in September 2023, Katherine said: ‘No two days are ever the same which means I never know what a shift is going to bring.
‘I spend a lot of my time journeying alongside patients, relatives and the staff, be that on the wards or in the chapel of rest.
‘I have the privilege of being with people at the very best and the very worst of times.’
When asked what she does in her spare time, Katherine responded: ‘I qualified as an Inshore Rescue Boat Coxswain on leaving the military and enjoy ultra-distance trail running and fast packing.
‘My partner of 16 years is a GP and also a priest and we have two children.’
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.
