“QUOTE ... UNQUOTE”
JUST SO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH ...
NIGEL REES is a broadcaster and writer, probably best-known as deviser
and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s long-running Quote
... Unquote programme.
Born near Liverpool on 5 June 1944, Nigel went to the Merchant Taylors’
School, Crosby, and then took a degree in English at Oxford. He went straight into television with Granada
in Manchester and made his first TV appearances on local programmes in 1967
before moving to London as a freelance.
He reported for ITN’s News at Ten
and then became involved in a wide range of programmes for BBC Radio – news,
current affairs, arts and entertainment – including two years as co-presenter
of the breakfast-time Today programme
on Radio 4 (1976-78).
Unusually, he has combined his broadcast presentation work with appearances in
comedy shows, notably BBC Radio’s Week
Ending (with David Jason and Bill Wallis), The Betty Witherspoon Show (with Ted Ray, Kenneth Williams and
Miriam Margolyes) and The Burkiss Way (with Chris Emmett and
Fred Harris), and in Harry Enfield and Chums on BBC TV.
Nigel Rees in the BBC Radio 4 garden at The Pleasance during the 2003
Edinburgh Festival
Among other radio shows he has presented are: Twenty-Four Hours (BBC World Service 1972-9), Kaleidoscope (BBC Radio 4, 1973-5), Where Were You in ’62? (BBC Radio 2, 1983-4, also devised it) and Stop Press (BBC Radio 4, 1984-6).
He is the author of more than fifty books. Titles include Brewer’s Famous Quotations and A
Word In Your Shell-Like: 6,000 Curious & Everyday Phrases
Explained. Twenty titles are
available as e-books from the Kindle Store at Amazon, including an
autobiography my radio times.
Nigel has been the President of the Johnson Society of Lichfield (2006/7) and
is a patron of the P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK).
He lives with his wife, Sue Bates, in
‘Nigel Rees is