Muriel Gray FRSE | |
---|---|
Born | East Kilbride, Scotland | 30 August 1958
Education | High School of Glasgow Glasgow School of Art |
Occupation(s) | Broadcaster, journalist |
Spouse | Hamish Barbour |
Children | 3 |
Muriel Janet Gray FRSE (born 30 August 1958) is a Scottish author, broadcaster and journalist. She came to public notice as an interviewer on Channel 4's alternative pop-show The Tube, and then appeared as a regular presenter on BBC radio. Gray has written for Time Out , the Sunday Herald and The Guardian , among other publications, as well as publishing successful horror novels. She was the first woman to have been Rector of the University of Edinburgh and is the first female chair of the board of governors at Glasgow School of Art.
Born in East Kilbride, Gray is of partly Jewish ancestry. She presented a documentary for Channel 4 tracing her Jewish roots on her mother's side, entitled The Wondering Jew (1996), in which she discovered her maternal line descended from what is now Moldova. [1] She is married to television producer Hamish Barbour and they have three children. [2]
In 1997, their daughter nearly drowned in a garden pond, which left her permanently brain damaged. [3]
On 31 January 2016, Gray was seen thanking the British Airways pilot of the plane in which her husband, Hamish Barbour, was a passenger, for successfully landing on three wheels instead of the usual five. [4]
A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, she worked as a professional illustrator and then as assistant head of design in the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh. [5]
After playing in punk band The Family Von Trapp, she became an interviewer on the early Channel 4 alternative pop show The Tube from 1982; she was the main anchor on the short-lived ITV Border show Bliss [6] in 1985, she presented Frocks on the Box (1987–88) and The Media Show (1987–89) again for Channel 4. [7] She was briefly a DJ for Edinburgh's Radio Forth in 1983 and 1984. She was a regular stand-in presenter on BBC Radio 1 during most of the eighties, including for John Peel. She also presented regularly on BBC Radio 4, for Start the Week in Russell Harty's absence and also during Jeremy Paxman's leave.
Later she presented The Munro Show (which documented her climbing Scotland's highest hills, the Munros). She accompanied this with the book The First Fifty – Munro Bagging Without A Beard. She presented various other TV shows including Ride On, a motoring magazine show for Channel 4, The Design Awards, for BBC, and The Booker Prize awards for Channel 4.
Gray presented Art Is Dead – Long Live TV. This programme sparked a controversy when it was discovered that the series, covering the work of five artists, was a spoof. [8]
Gray presented the definitive documentary on The Glasgow Boys, a group of influential 19th-century painters, including Sir John Lavery and James Guthrie, who challenged the orthodox values of their day. The Glasgow Boys was shown on BBC2.
Gray co-presented Channel 4's coverage of the 2016 Turner Prize ceremony in Glasgow. [4]
Gray has been a columnist for many publications, including Time Out magazine, the Sunday Correspondent , the Sunday Mirror , and Bliss magazine, and now writes a regular column in the Sunday Herald . She won Columnist of the Year in the 2001 Scottish press awards. She writes regularly for The Guardian .
She became a best-selling horror novelist with the publication of her first novel The Trickster (1995), which was followed by two more, Furnace and The Ancient. Stephen King described The Ancient as "Scary and unputdownable." In 2004 a collection of short stories, "Scottish Girls About Town: And sixteen other Scottish women authors" was published. Gray was chosen with Jenny Colgan and Isla Dewar to feature on the cover. [9]
She wrote a history of Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to mark its re-opening in 2006. She appears on the BBC Two programme Grumpy Old Women .
In 2014 she contributed a new piece of writing for the 21 Revolutions project which had been inspired by the collection held in the Glasgow Women's Library. [10]
She started her own production company in 1989, originally named Gallus Besom (besom being a Scots or Northern English term of contempt for a surly or purposely awkward woman [11] [12] [13] and gallus bold or cheeky [13] in Scots), [14] then renamed to Ideal World in 1993. [15] It merged in 2004 with Wark Clements, the company co-owned by Kirsty Wark and her husband Alan Clements, to form IWC Media. The partners then sold the new company in 2005 to media company RDF Media for an estimated £12 million.
In 2005, she became Patron of the Scottish charity Trees for Life which is working to restore the Caledonian Forest. She is also a patron of the Craighalbert Centre, a conductive education school in Cumbernauld near Glasgow. She currently serves as a trustee on the following boards: the Glasgow Science Centre, the Scottish Maritime Museum, The Lighthouse and the Children's Parliament. She supports Action Earth. [24] In January 2009 she became the first patron of Scotland's Additional Support Needs Mediation Forum, RESOLVE:ASL.
Carol Patricia Smillie is a Scottish former television presenter, actress and model. Smillie became famous as a presenter on British TV during the 1990s and early 2000s. She was best known for assisting Nicky Campbell on the UK version of the game show Wheel of Fortune between 1989 and 1994. Between 1996 and 2003, she was the main presenter on the BBC One home makeover show Changing Rooms.
Helena Ann Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, is a Scottish barrister, broadcaster, and Labour member of the House of Lords. She was Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, from 2011 to 2018. A Bencher of Gray's Inn, an Honorary Writer to the Signet and the recipient of 42 Honorary Degrees from many universities including those of Glasgow and Edinburgh in recognition of work on women and the law and on widening participation in higher education. She is President of Justice, the law reform think tank, and is also director of the International Bar Association's Institute of Human Rights.
Kelvingrove Park is a public park located on the River Kelvin in the West End of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, containing the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
John Patrick Byrne was a Scottish playwright, screenwriter, artist and designer. He wrote The Slab Boys Trilogy, plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne was also a painter, printmaker and scenic designer.
Liz Lochhead Hon FRSE is a Scottish poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster. Between 2011 and 2016 she was the Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, and served as Poet Laureate for Glasgow between 2005 and 2011.
Rona Munro is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television. Her film work includes Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird (1994), Oranges and Sunshine (2010) for Jim Loach and Aimée & Jaguar (1999), co-authored by German director Max Färberböck. Munro is the second cousin of Scottish author Angus MacVicar.
Karen Dunbar is a Scottish comedian, actress and writer. She first appeared on television on the BBC Scotland sketch comedy series Chewin' the Fat (1999–2002) and was subsequently given her own show by the channel, The Karen Dunbar Show (2003–2006).
Nicola Joy Nadia Benedetti is an Italian-Scottish classical solo violinist and festival director. Her ability was recognised when she was a child, including the award of BBC Young Musician of the Year when she was 16. She works with orchestras in Europe and America as well as with Alexei Grynyuk, her regular pianist. Since 2012, she has played the Gariel Stradivarius violin.
Lesley Anne Riddoch is a Scottish radio broadcaster, activist and journalist who lives in Fife. During the 1990s, she was a contributing editor of the Sunday Herald and an assistant editor of The Scotsman. Since 2004, she has run her own independent radio and podcast company, Feisty Ltd. In 2006, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
Heather Margaret Murray Reid, also known as "Heather the Weather", is a Scottish meteorologist, physicist, science communicator and educator. She was formerly a broadcaster and weather presenter for BBC Scotland.
John Martin Munro Kerr was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1927 to 1934. A scholar and surgeon of international acclaim he won both the Katherine Bishop Harman Prize in 1934 for his book Maternal Mortality and Morbidity (1933) and was the first recipient of the Blair Bell Medal for obstetrics and gynaecology.
Cameron McNeish FRSGS is a Scottish wilderness hiker, backpacker and mountaineer who is an authority on outdoor pursuits. In this field he is best known as an author and broadcaster although he is also a magazine editor, lecturer and after dinner speaker as well as being an adviser to various outdoor organisations.
Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
Norah Neilson Gray was a Scottish artist of the Glasgow School. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy while still a student and then showed works regularly at the Paris Salon and with the Royal Academy of Scotland. She was a member of The Glasgow Girls whose paintings were exhibited in Kirkcudbright during July and August 2010.
The Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry was held in Glasgow in 1911. It was the third of 4 international exhibitions held in Glasgow, Scotland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Events from the year 1958 in Scotland.
Events from the year 1952 in Scotland.
Elizabeth MacNicol was a Scottish painter and member of the Glasgow Girls group of artists affiliated with the Glasgow School of artists.
Alison Cornwall Geissler MBE, née McDonald, was one of the foremost glass engravers in Scotland during the mid-twentieth century.
Joyce Laing OBE, art therapist was a 'pioneer of art therapy'.