In 1952 Gall began his journalistic career as a trainee sub-editor at the
Aberdeen Press and Journal. Gall applied to work as a trainee foreign correspondent for the
Reuters international news agency and this was accepted in May 1953. He remained at the agency until 1963. In September 1960, along with the
BBC's Richard Williams and the
Daily Expresss
George Gale, he was arrested in
Bakwanga in the breakaway province of
Kasai whilst reporting on the
Congo Crisis on suspicion of being a Belgian spy and for not having official Congolese documentation. The three journalists were released into the custody of Tunisian soldiers attached to the
United Nations Operation in the Congo. and of the programme
Freeze in 1975, examining the aspects of freezers and the foods to store in them. In January 1976 he and a camera operator were briefly detained by the police in Madrid after filming outside a strike-affected
Chrysler car factory. Gall narrated the
ITV documentary ''Journey's End'' on the
Vietnamese boat people who had settled at the
Thorney Island camp near
Portsmouth in 1980. He reported on the
1980 United States presidential election from the
American Embassy in London, and the
Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer from
Knightsbridge Barracks in July 1981. In November 1982 he presented the one-hour documentary
Afghanistan: Behind Enemy Lines that took two months to produce as he and a film crew covered Afghanistan under the Soviet occupation. Gall was the subject of
This is Your Life on 30 March 1983. The following year, he was a contestant on the
Channel 4 travel-based quiz programme
Where in the World. Gall reported on the
Soviet–Afghan War in the documentary
Allah Against the Gunships that was broadcast that October. He was a team captain on the quiz show
Television Scrabble in 1985. In the year after, Gall narrated an ITN programme on
Sarah, Duchess of York, entitled
A Royal Romance, and spent three months filming the documentary
Afghanistan; Agony of a Nation that was broadcast in November 1986 because he believed the Soviet-Afghan war was not being reported on correctly. In 1988 he participated in
BBC2's International Pro-Celebrity Golf competition, and in the following year, presented the 1989 ITV documentary
George Adamson: Lord of the Lions in which he interviewed the conservationist
George Adamson. Gall made his final appearance as a newsreader on
News at Ten on 4 January 1991; he returned to a special reporting role in the same month, covering Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan. He made the decision to retire from ITN in late 1992. He continued working in a freelance capacity in television and writing from 1993 onwards. In 1995 Gall wrote and presented the ITV documentary
Network First: The Man Who Saved the Animals that profiled the conservationist
Richard Leakey. That same year, he signed up to present the BBC Radio 4 travel programme
Breakaway, and the following year, he presented the BBC2 programme
The Empty Quarter in which he toured the world's largest sand desert, the
Rub' al Khali. In late 2002, Gall was signed by
Channel 5 to present a week of special four-minute reports from Afghanistan on attempts to restore the
Buddhas of Bamiyan that were destroyed by the
Taliban. He presented a documentary examining the history of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great to the Taliban in the 2004
History Channel documentary
Afghanistan: War Without End. Gall was the
rector of the University of Aberdeen from 1978 to 1981, He became the World Affairs Expert on the London-based
LBC radio station in January 2003. == Personal life and death ==