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Johny Pitts is an English television presenter, writer and photographer from Firth Park, Sheffield.
He is of mixed-race heritage (his father Richie was from Bed–Stuy, New York and was in the 1970s soul band The Fantastics, who had a top 10 hit in 1971 with "Something Old, Something New"), while his mother is English with some Irish ancestry. [1] In 2015, Johny Pitts traced his roots in the 2015 BBC Radio 4 documentary Something Old, Something New, a programme written and presented by Pitts, which included an interview with his late father and saw Johny travelling to Bedford–Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Sullivan's Island in South Carolina to trace his father's family. [2] [3] [4] He holds US and UK passports and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. [5]
Pitts has written for Blues & Soul magazine, Straight No Chaser and The Observer , and won the Decibel Penguin Prize for new writers, with his short story "Audience" appearing in the anthology The Map of Me published by Penguin Books. He studied poetry under Debjani Chatterjee and has performed solo and alongside renowned poets John Agard and Valerie Bloom at venues such as the Albany Theatre, the Jazz Café, the Big Chill Festival, Notting Hill Arts Club and the Soho Theatre.
His book Afropean: Notes from Black Europe won the 2020 Jhalak Prize, the 2020 Bread and Roses Award and the 2021 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding. [6] It is a written documentary of the lives and culture of black communities throughout Europe, exploring the histories of the black diaspora and questioning the challenges and inequalities that black communities still experience in European countries.
He is a keen musician and member of the Bare Knuckle Soul collective, who have supported the likes of Omar, the Pharcyde, Plantlife and Alice Russell and garnered acclaim from Giles Peterson, Zane Lowe and Trevor Nelson, as well as appearing on the Norman Jay Good Times 7 compilation.
In 2002, Pitts participated in the Channel 4 reality television series Eden . [7]
He was previously presenter for Escape from Scorpion Island , Roar and All Over the Place , [8] He also had stints on CD:UK , hosting with Lauren Laverne and Myleene Klass, and on Blue Peter and MTV.
In 2019, Pitts lent his voice to Cyril in HISTORY's podcast Letters of Love in WW2 – a series based on the real-life letters of a couple separated by the Second World War. [9]
Pitts collaborated with the novelist Caryl Phillips and Art Angel on a photographic essay exploring immigration and the River Thames for the BBC/Arts Council's The Space, and founded the website www.afropean.com, which is part of the Guardian newspaper's "Africa Network", and the ENAR Foundation award-winning "Afropean Culture" page. [10]
His photography has been featured on The New York Times Lens Blog and the front covers of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Harvard University's Transition Magazine . A limited-edition photo book was published by Cafe Royal Books.
Craig Joseph Charles is an English actor, comedian, DJ, and television and radio presenter. He is best known for his roles as Dave Lister in the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf and Lloyd Mullaney in the soap opera Coronation Street (2005–2015). He presented the gladiator-style game show Robot Wars from 1998 to 2004, and narrated the comedy endurance show Takeshi's Castle. As a DJ, he appears on BBC Radio 6 Music.
Sir Anthony Robinson is an English actor, author, broadcaster, comedian, presenter, and political activist. He played Baldrick in the BBC television series Blackadder and has presented many historical documentaries, including the Channel 4 series Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History. He has written 16 children's books.
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Reginald Yates is a British television presenter, actor, writer and director with a career spanning three decades on screen as an actor, television presenter and radio DJ. Yates played Leo Jones in Doctor Who and has worked at the BBC in radio and television–presenting various shows for BBC Radio 1 for a decade as well as hosting the BBC One singing show The Voice UK, hosting the first two series with Holly Willoughby.
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Josie Isabel Long is an English comedian. She started performing as a stand-up at the age of 14 and won the BBC New Comedy Awards at 17.
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Joann Fletcher is an Egyptologist and an honorary visiting professor in the department of archaeology at the University of York. She has published a number of books and academic articles, including several on Cleopatra, and made numerous television and radio appearances. In 2003, she controversially claimed to have identified the mummy of Queen Nefertiti.
Martin Barry Kelner is a British journalist, author, comedian, singer, actor and TV presenter, whose primary career is in radio presenting. He has spent over 40 years hosting radio shows, mostly for the BBC, in particular Radio Leeds. He has been regularly accompanied throughout his career by comedy sidekick Edouard Lapaglie.
Roger John Bolton is a British television producer and TV and radio presenter.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Kermode and Mayo's Film Review was a radio programme with Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo, broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday afternoons. The show was self-described as the BBC's "flagship film programme" and featured film reviews from Kermode, interviews with actors and other guests, and listeners' emails. The programme's Twitter handle, "Wittertainment", was a nickname for the programme itself.
Elizabeth Day is an English novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She was a feature writer for The Observer from 2007 to 2016, and wrote for You magazine. Day has written six books, and is also the host of the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day.
Open Book is a BBC Radio 4 book review programme. It has been presented by Humphrey Carpenter, Philippa Gregory, Nick Revell and Charlie Lee-Potter, with Mariella Frostrup as the regular presenter from 2003 until 2020. As of 2021, the show is hosted by Elizabeth Day and Johny Pitts.
The Velours were an American R&B vocal group. who had two minor pop hits in the US in the late 1950s, "Can I Come Over Tonight" and "Remember". They relocated to England in the late 1960s, changed their name to The Fantastics, and had a top ten hit in the UK in 1971 with "Something Old, Something New", followed by a minor US hit with "(Love Me) Love the Life I Lead".
Byron Vincent is a British writer, performer, broadcaster, DJ and social activist known predominantly for theatre, television and his work on BBC Radio 4. Byron has a diagnosis of Autism and is a campaigner for issues around mental health and poverty.
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