Jeremy Vine joined the BBC in 1987. The other day, while making some toast, he was struck by the terrifying realisation that he'd been in the corporation 19 years. By the time he'd got over it the toast was cold and had to be thrown away.

The day Jeremy arrived as a news trainee, John Birt walked into the building for the first time too. But while Birt went on to become Director General, get a knighthood and have the use of three offices, Jeremy's main ambition is still to be recognized by the staff who run the car park.

From the news traineeship Jeremy became a reporter on the Today programme, then moved to Westminster as a political correspondent. John Major once told him, 'You're a very impatient boy,' when he asked a question out of turn. Next came a posting in Johannesburg as Africa Correspondent, then the job of Newsnight presenter, and now Radio 2.

His years as a reporter took him to the Middle East, the US, all over Europe and all round Africa: as Africa Correspondent he reported on the border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, elections in Algeria, Aids in Mali, events in Zambia and Zimbabwe (doing one of Robert Mugabe's last interviews with the BBC), as well as Sudan, Angola (the war in both countries) and fifteen other African nations.

While on Today he was sent to Siberia to interview a redundant ballistics missiles expert, was ambushed in a cornfield in Croatia when war broke out in Yugoslavia, covered punishment beatings in Northern Ireland, neo-Nazis in Germany, and sheep racing in Dorset.

In 1999 Jeremy's exclusive on South African police brutality resulted in twenty-two officers being suspended and two convicted. In the run up to the general election in 2001 he travelled Britain in a 1976 Volkswagen camper van sprayed with the Newsnight logo. Peter Mandelson famously stormed out of it in Hartlepool. His show on Radio Two combines news with another love: music.

His all-time favorite record is This Year's Model by Elvis Costello. In a desperate bid for musical success at 18, he played drums in a band called The Flared Generation. But their attempt to release a Top Ten single backfired when their manager told them the vinyl had come off the presses shaped oval instead of circular.


Born in Epsom in May 1965, Jeremy loves Chelsea Football club, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the poems of WH Auden, and he is married to Rachel.

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