Peter Curran (presenter)

Last updated

Peter Curran
Born
Occupation(s)Audio producer, writer, broadcaster, documentary maker, actor

Peter Curran is a broadcaster, writer, audio producer and documentary maker. He grew up in Belfast, the eldest of six children and worked on funfairs in the USA before moving to London, playing drums in various bands and working as a site carpenter and office fitter for six years. Curran re-trained as a BBC reporter and in 1992 began DJing full-time for the London radio station BBC GLR. [1] He presented BBC London's movie programme The Big Picture for three years and reviewed films [2] for the magazine Sight and Sound .

Curran co-founded audio publisher Talking Music in 2012, publishing books on Eminem, Jimi Hendrix, Acid house, The Coasters, The Beatles, Glam rock, Adele, The Clash and others, written and read by authors such as Charles Shaar Murray, Jane Bussmann and Barney Hoskyns.

During 2017/18 he travelled across the USA for the Radio 4 series Litter From America [3] which featured "the scuffed and stained American dreams" of actor Richard Schiff, comedian Maysoon Zayid and director Kwame Kwei-Armah as their creative work and beliefs grappled with the Trump presidency. [4]

With co-host Patrick Marber, Curran created Bunk Bed (radio programme), a series of bizarre late-night conversations recorded in beds and in the dark, featuring music, archive speech and guests such as Cate Blanchett, Andi Oliver, Jane Horrocks and Kathy Burke. First broadcast in April 2014 on BBC Radio 4, [5] Series 10 began in July 2023.

In 2018, he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to explore the role of Ireland's borderland communities in the First World War for The Art of Border Living, featuring his essays, BBC documentaries and commissioned short story podcasts from Irish authors.

He has reported from South Africa, India and the USA for From Our Own Correspondent [6] and in 2020 for Spirit of the Midnight Sun, explored the effects of climate change on nomadic Sámi reindeer herders in Finnmark and the ancient sea Sámi community at Varangerfjord.

Curran produced and directed the 2022 Radio 4 Christmas Drama Love Pants about the turbulent relationship between actor Jane Horrocks and the singer and songwriter Ian Dury featuring Dury's letters, Horrocks' diaries, and accompanying music by Mick Gallagher. [7]

Career

His presenting career began in the 1990s when he hosted a daily show on BBC GLR featuring live music sessions and interviews with artists such as Radiohead, The Staple Singers, Foo Fighters, Wu Tang Clan and Dr John alongside record reviews and profile interviews with authors, film makers and comedians. [8] The Peter Curran Show ran for six years until 1999, when BBC London adopted a News/Phone-in format for the 4pm-6pm slot.

Curran is an independent documentary maker and radio producer, [9] [10] . He persuaded Nick Leeson and his former boss Peter Norris and colleagues to face each other for the first time since Leeson precipitated the collapse of Barings Bank, for a famously tense edition of The Reunion on BBC Radio 4. [11] [12] He created the online TV series The Teaching Challenge for Brook Lapping and directed five series of the show from 2007 to 2011. [13]

In 1998, with producer Stephen Wilkinson, he began work on the first UK television programmes to feature streaming video and an interactive website. [14] The shows featured news about internet developments, technology and culture. They were recorded in London's Cybercafe for broadcast on BBC2.

Curran has written and presented documentaries and shows for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2 including a year as presenter of Loose Ends, Pick of the Week and Spinal Tap: Back From the Dead, [15] a faux-documentary [16] which Curran produced with the original cast of the movie This Is Spinal Tap . He presented The Tribes of Science series for Radio 4 [17] and The Arts Show for Radio 2. Other examples of his work include The Foghorn: A Celebration [18] and The Electric Ride [19] series for Radio 4 and BBC Online, for which he drove an electric car five thousand miles through seven European countries asking local people to recharge the battery every 100 miles. [20]

For television, Curran has scripted and/or presented numerous Arts and culture programmes, such as Personal Passions, [21] When Art Went Pop and Edinburgh Nights for BBC2. He presented Channel 4's Wired World, Discovery Channel's architecture and engineering series Building The Best, Restoration Nation and a 40-part Arts education series for BBC Knowledge Culture Fix. [22]

His TV and radio journalism about Northern Ireland include the television essays Maiden City Voyage, billed as a social and cultural audit of Derry during its City of Culture role, Slack Sabbath, a wry TV journey into how religious observance has changed since 1970's, and for BBC Radio 4 Collecting the Troubles At The Ulster Museum , the series One To One and in 2022 The Past Is a Foreign Country . [23] In 2020 he produced the radio documentary series The Hidden History of Place Names [24] exploring the entwined history of Unionist and Nationalist communities in the north of Ireland across seven hundred years. It was broadcast in Irish and English and featured new research on language and locations from historians and linguists at Queen's University, Belfast.

Curran wrote and presented Radio 4's documentary appreciation of John Hersey's 1946 Hiroshima article for The New Yorker magazine [25] followed by a repeat of the harrowing 1948 BBC broadcast of the entire text, which had graphically described the true aftermath and effects of atomic bomb radiation for the first time. [26] Following the UK Govt announcement of an end to sales of new petrol and diesel engines cars by 2030, he drove a range of electric cars throughout England, Scotland and Wales for the Radio 4 series Electric Ride UK with scientists and technologists demonstrating latest developments in commercial and domestic energy storage as the series explored the potential social impact of a changing transport landscape. [27] [28] In April 2023, Curran joined the co-host roster of the long-running BBC Radio programme Saturday Live (radio series)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Two</span> Television channel operated by the BBC

BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Radio</span> Division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation

BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the state media outlet British Broadcasting Corporation. The service provides national radio stations covering the majority of musical genres, as well as local radio stations covering local news, affairs and interests. It also oversees online audio content.

Michael Terence Aspel is a retired English television newsreader and host of programmes such as Crackerjack, Ask Aspel, Aspel & Company, Give Us a Clue, This is Your Life, Strange but True? and Antiques Roadshow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Hamilton</span> British comedian and writer

Andrew Neil Hamilton is a British comedian, game show panellist, television director, comedy screenwriter, radio dramatist, novelist and actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moira Stuart</span> British newsreader (born 1949)

Moira Clare Ruby Stuart, is a British presenter and broadcaster. She was the first female newsreader of Caribbean heritage to appear on British national television, having worked on BBC News since 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Radio London</span> BBC Local Radio station for London

BBC Radio London is the BBC's local radio station serving Greater London.

Emma Vallencey Freud is an English broadcaster and cultural commentator.

This is a timeline of the history of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Robert Russell Davies is a British journalist and broadcaster.

<i>Comedy Playhouse</i> 1961–1975 British television series

Comedy Playhouse is a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 128 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Meet the Wife, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, Up Pompeii!, Not in Front of the Children, Me Mammy, That's Your Funeral, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and particularly Last of the Summer Wine, which is the world's longest running sitcom, having run from January 1973 to August 2010. In all, 27 sitcoms started from a pilot in the Comedy Playhouse strand.

Annie Avril Nightingale is an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970, and has remained a broadcaster there ever since. Nightingale has specialised in championing new and underground music, she has also led the movement and encouraged other women to become DJs and broadcasters. She is BBC Radio 1's longest serving broadcaster and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a female radio presenter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fi Glover</span> British journalist and presenter (born 1969)

Fiona Susannah Grace "Fi" Glover is a British journalist and presenter who currently hosts a two hour show for Times Radio and the Off Air podcast, for The Times. Before joining The Times in October 2022, Glover worked for the BBC for almost thirty years, most recently presenting the Fortunately podcast, The Listening Project for BBC Radio 4 and My Perfect Country for the BBC World Service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Harris (radio presenter)</span> British broadcaster

Robert Brinley Joseph Harris, popularly known as "Whispering Bob" Harris, is an English music presenter. He is well known for being a host of the BBC2 music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test and as a co-founder of the listings magazine Time Out. He currently presents Bob Harris Country on Thursdays on BBC Radio 2 at 9 pm.

<i>Coast</i> (TV series) BBC documentary television series

Coast is a BBC documentary series first broadcast on BBC Two television in 2005. It covers various subjects relating to both the natural and social history of the British coastline and also more recently, that of Britain's near neighbours. The seventh series followed a different format from previous series. In 2016, reports from the show were repackaged as Coast: The Great Guide, an eight part series on BBC Two.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Dann</span> British writer and broadcaster

Trevor John Dann is an English writer and broadcaster best known for his radio and print journalism with BBC Radio, Q magazine, Mojo, and The Guardian, and his critically praised 2006 "Darker Than the Deepest Sea" biography of Nick Drake.

This is a list of British television related events from 1997.

This is a list of British television related events from 1992.

This is a list of British television related events from 1991.

This is a timeline of BBC Radio London, a BBC Local Radio station broadcasting to London.

This is a timeline of the history of BBC Two.

References

  1. Perrone, Pierre (19 October 1998). "The radio presenters' nursery" . The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
  2. "BFI – Sight & Sound – Buena Vista Social Club (1998)". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 3 August 2012.
  3. "BBC Radio 4 - Litter from America". BBC.
  4. "BBC Radio 4 - Litter from America, Series 1, Kwame Kwei Armah". BBC.
  5. "Distant voices | The Spectator".
  6. "BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Dec 11, 2010". BBC.
  7. "Drama". Radio Times. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  8. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : The Peter Curran Show - record reviews with Jake Shillingford and Stewart Lee (GLR, June 1996) via YouTube.
  9. "BBC Radio 4 – The Reunion, Doctor Who". BBC. 12 April 2013. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  10. https://radiotoday.co.uk/2017/10/audio-production-awards-2017-the-shortlist/hdj0le3j0b [ dead link ]
  11. "BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Barings Bank Collapse". BBC.
  12. Reynolds, Gillian (9 August 2011). "The Reunion, RP RIP, radio 4, radio review". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  13. "recognitiation.store". proteachersvideo.com.
  14. Vanbuel, Mathy; Boonen, Annemie (2000). Towards a learning organisation. ISBN   9789058670724.
  15. Maume, Chris (21 June 2009). "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Radio 4 Spinal Tap: Back from the Dead, Radio 2" . The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
  16. "BBC Radio 2 - Back from the Dead: The Return of Spinal Tap". BBC.
  17. "BBC Radio 4 – The Tribes of Science, The Mathematicians". BBC.
  18. "BBC Radio 4 Extra - The Foghorn: A Celebration". BBC.
  19. "BBC Radio 4 Extra - Electric Ride". BBC.
  20. journey, Select any point on the map to reveal details of the. "BBC - Radio 4 - Electric Ride - Electric Ride Map". BBC.
  21. "Open Eye: Your complete guide to Open University broadcasts and other Learning Zone programmes on BBC2" . The Independent. London. 1 April 1999. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
  22. BBC 'Culture Fix Episodes'
  23. "The week in audio: Fear of Missing Out; The Past Is a Foreign Country, With Peter Curran; Patrick Kielty". The Guardian. 10 September 2022. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  24. "Audio Content Fund". audiocontentfund.org.uk.
  25. Chisholm, Kate. "Distant voices | The Spectator". spectator.co.uk.
  26. "BBC Radio 4 - Hersey's Hiroshima". BBC.
  27. "BBC Radio 4 - Electric Ride UK, Episode 1". BBC.
  28. "Government takes historic step towards net-zero with end of sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030". GOV.UK.