PETER CURRAN

Peter Curran is an award-winning writer, DJ, presenter, documentary maker and failed drummer.

BBC Radio 4 listeners will have heard him as MC of Saturday night's cultural funfest Loose Ends and he occasionally has a go a presenting The Weekender on Radio2 and Saturday Live on Radio 4.

Peter has a wealth of hair-raising anecdotes involving his encounters with many cultural icons from Kingsley Amis and Peter Cook to people who are still alive such as Van Morrison and Tracey Emin.

He has chaired numerous high profile arts and culture conferences involving Cambridge University, The Royal Society,  Radio Academy, Royal College of Art. and the BBC Music Festival. But mainly, he enjoys making people laugh.

After briefly studying Politics and Theatre Studies he travelled the USA working on funfairs before moving to London to make bespoke office furniture for 10 years. After a recession in the building trade in the early 90's, he was reduced to presenting a much lauded drivetime show on BBC GLR.

He went on to write and present When Art Went Pop (BBC2) Wired World (C4) and fronted Culture Fix a 40-part arts and pop culture series for BBC Knowledge. He also presented the engineering and architecture series Building the Best for Discovery.

For three years on BBC London 94.9 he wrote and presented The Big Picture, which featured profile interviews with major Hollywood players and championed the burgeoning World Cinema scene.

The following year his own small production company, Yodelay, produced the BBC documentary Changing Colours.

'How have attitudes to the increasing multi-ethnic nature of British society changed? Peter Curran asked some of its leading lights.....This could have been a stodgy sociological exercise but Curran gave it just the right mix of welly and wisecracks' Sue Arnold

Peter's study of Austin, Texas this summer was described by the Radio Times as 'the most perfectly peculiar documentary of the year'

On Radio 4 is a regular presenter of Pick of the Week. He was a columnist on Home Truths, comparing tales of sexual and parental inadequacy with the great John Peel. On Radio 2 he wrote and presented 'Good Year for the Roses' the first network profile of Elvis Costello.

Like everyone else with a basic command of english, Peter is currently writing a musical.

'Peter Curran is a lovely radio presenter: warm, well-informed, a great interviewer with a witty turn of phrase' Observer July '08