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Peter Curran (presenter)

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Peter Curran
Co-hosting BBC's 'No Blacks, No Irish..' London 2025
Born
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Occupation(s)Radio/Podcast host, writer, documentary producer, narrator.

Peter Curran is a radio/podcast host, writer, documentary producer, tv presenter and performer. 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 five years, before re-training as a BBC Reporter in 1992.

Curran created Bunk Bed (radio programme) with co-host Patrick Marber, a long-running podcast for BBC Sounds featuring bizarre late-night conversations recorded in beds and in the dark, with archive audio and guests on a pull-out mattress, including Cate Blanchett, Harry Shearer, Jane Horrocks, Kathy Burke and Andi Oliver. First broadcast in April 2014 on BBC Radio 4,[1] Series 11 began in February 2025.

He is a regular presenter of Pick of the Week[2] on Radio 4, and produced and directed their 2022 drama Love Pants about the turbulent and abusive relationship between actor Jane Horrocks and bandleader Ian Dury, featuring Horrocks' diaries, Dury's letters and original music by Mick Gallagher[3]

In 2012, Curran co-founded audiobook publisher Talking Music, who acquired the rights to Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties by Ian McDonald and subsequently 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.

Curran's journalism about contemporary Irish history include the BBC TV essays Maiden City Voyage, billed as a social and cultural audit of Derry during its City of Culture role, and Slack Sabbath, a wry TV journey into how religious observance has changed since 1970's. 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.[4]

For the UK's World War One commemoration 14_18 NOW, he was commissioned to explore the role of Ireland's future borderland communities before and after WW1. The Art of Border Living, made with Verbal Arts Centre featured live events at Belfast Film Festival and Dublin, the BBC documentary Stories From The Home Front and podcasts of commissioned stories from authors Kamila Shamsie, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Paul McVeigh and others.

Curran wrote and presented Radio 4's documentary appreciation of John Hersey's 1946 Hiroshima article for The New Yorker magazine[5] 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.[6]

He has reported from South Africa, India and the USA for From Our Own Correspondent[7] and in 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, Norway.

Career

He re-trained as a BBC Reporter and in 1993 began DJ'ing full-time for the London radio station BBC GLR.[8] Curran hosted a daily drivetime show on BBC GLR featuring live music sessions with artists such as Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Wu Tang Clan and Nick Cave alongside record reviews and profile interviews with authors, film makers and comedians.[9] 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 hosted BBC London's movie programme The Big Picture and reviewed films[10] for the magazine Sight and Sound.

For television, Curran has presented numerous Arts and culture programmes, such as Personal Passions,[11] When Art Went Pop and Edinburgh Nights[12] on BBC2. He presented the Channel 4 media show Wired World, Discovery Channel's architecture and engineering series Building The Best, Restoration Nation and the groundbreaking 40-part BBC Arts education series for under-30's Culture Fix.[13]

As an independent documentary maker[14][15] 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.[16][17] He produced the celebrity online TV series Teaching Challenge for Brook Lapping and directed five series of the show from 2007 to 2011.[18]

During 2017/18 Curran travelled across the USA for his series Litter From America[19] featuring "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 first Trump presidency.[20]

His TV debut was presenting the first UK television programmes to feature streaming video and an interactive website.[21] in 1998. The shows featured news about internet developments, technology and culture. They were produced by Stephen Wilkinson for Open University and recorded in London's Cybercafe and broadcast on BBC2.

Curran has written and presented live shows and documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2 including a year as presenter of Loose Ends while Ned Sherrin was ill. He co-wrote Spinal Tap: Back From the Dead,[22] a faux-documentary[23] with the original cast of the movie This Is Spinal Tap, and presented The Tribes of Science for Radio 4[24] and The Arts Show on Radio 2.

Other examples of his work include The Foghorn: A Celebration[25] and The Electric Ride[26] 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.[27]

In April 2023, Curran joined the co-host roster of the long-running BBC Radio programme Saturday Live (radio series).

With producer Tony Phillips, he presented a 'fascinating and shocking' [28] audio history of Irish and African people in the Caribbean going back to the year 1543. 'No Blacks, No Irish..' also investigated the notorious 'No Blacks No Irish No Dogs' slogan displayed in the windows of some UK boarding houses, pubs and rental accommodation mid-20th century.[29]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Distant voices | The Spectator".
  2. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Pick of the Week, Peter Curran". BBC. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
  3. ^ "Drama". Radio Times. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  4. ^ "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.
  5. ^ Chisholm, Kate. "Distant voices | The Spectator". spectator.co.uk.
  6. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Hersey's Hiroshima". BBC.
  7. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Dec 11, 2010". BBC.
  8. ^ Perrone, Pierre (19 October 1998). "The radio presenters' nursery". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
  9. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: The Peter Curran Show - record reviews with Jake Shillingford and Stewart Lee (GLR, June 1996) – via YouTube.
  10. ^ "BFI – Sight & Sound – Buena Vista Social Club (1998)". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 3 August 2012.
  11. ^ "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.
  12. ^ "BBC Two - Edinburgh Nights, 1998, Episode 3". BBC. Retrieved 27 May 2025.
  13. ^ BBC 'Culture Fix Episodes'
  14. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – The Reunion, Doctor Who". BBC. 12 April 2013. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  15. ^ https://radiotoday.co.uk/2017/10/audio-production-awards-2017-the-shortlist/hdj0le3j0b [dead link]
  16. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Barings Bank Collapse". BBC.
  17. ^ Reynolds, Gillian (9 August 2011). "The Reunion, RP RIP, radio 4, radio review". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  18. ^ "recognitiation.store". proteachersvideo.com.
  19. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Litter from America". BBC.
  20. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Litter from America, Series 1, Kwame Kwei Armah". BBC.
  21. ^ Vanbuel, Mathy; Boonen, Annemie (2000). Towards a learning organisation. ISBN 9789058670724.
  22. ^ 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.
  23. ^ "BBC Radio 2 - Back from the Dead: The Return of Spinal Tap". BBC.
  24. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – The Tribes of Science, The Mathematicians". BBC.
  25. ^ "BBC Radio 4 Extra - The Foghorn: A Celebration". BBC.
  26. ^ "BBC Radio 4 Extra - Electric Ride". BBC.
  27. ^ journey, Select any point on the map to reveal details of the. "BBC - Radio 4 - Electric Ride - Electric Ride Map". BBC.
  28. ^ The Guardian
  29. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, No Blacks No Irish". BBC. Retrieved 26 May 2025.
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