Sainty entered the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1989, beginning his career as a
diplomat. On 25 April 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, he won the appreciation of the Portuguese people with online videos of his playing on the piano the two songs that had been used on the radio by the revolutionaries to secretly signal the beginning of the 1974
Carnation Revolution,
Paulo de Carvalho's
E Depois do Adeus (Portugal's entry in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest) and
Grândola, Vila Morena, a song by
Zeca Afonso, a singer who was largely banned from Portuguese radio at the time. The Revolution overthrew the
Estado Novo dictatorship. Sainty said that he decided to film himself playing these songs "for fun" and didn't expect the reaction he received, which was thousands of messages of thanks. Sainty left his ambassadorial post at the end of 2023. At the beginning of May 2024 it was announced that he was to become the Chief Executive Officer of the English-language newspaper,
The Portugal News, with the aim of expanding the paper's coverage from the
Algarve to
Lisbon and
Porto. ==Personal life==