“QUOTE ... UNQUOTE”
JUST SO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH ...
NIGEL REES is a broadcaster, author, journalist and lecturer, and is
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 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, he
also devised it) and Stop Press (BBC
Radio 4, 1984-6).
He is the author of more than fifty books. Recent titles include, from Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Brewer’s Famous Quotations and from Collins, A Word In Your Shell-Like: 6,000 Curious & Everyday Phrases
Explained.
Nigel has been the President of the Johnson Society of Lichfield (2006/7) and
lives with his wife, Sue Bates, in
‘Nigel Rees is Britain’s most popular lexicographer –
the lineal successor to Eric Partridge and, like him, he makes etymology fun’ –
The Spectator