Sandi Toksvig

About

Sandi Toksvig

Sandi Toksvig was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and brought up around the world in Europe, Africa and the United States. She began her comedy career at Girton College, Cambridge where she found time to write and perform in the first all-woman show at the Footlights as well as achieve a first class degree.

Sandi is well known to UK audiences as a broadcaster having begun her career in children’s television playing Ethel in the long running Saturday morning show Number 73. Since then her television career has included celebrated series such as Call My Bluff (as regular team captain) Whose Line Is It Anyway? and most recently host of Antiques Master for BBC2 and 1001 Things You Should Know for Channel 4. She is about to play Emmeline Pankhurst in a new drama for BBC 4. Sandi is also a familiar voice for BBC Radio 4 listeners as the chair of The News Quiz. She was recently inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Sandi is passionate about live performance. She performed at the very first night of The Comedy Store in London and for many years was a member of The Comedy Store Players, an improvisational comedy team. For two years she was the executive producer of Playhouse Live for Sky Arts, producing specially commissioned live drama for television and last year Executive Produced six new half hour films (one of which she wrote) produced by Sprout Pictures which she co-owns with Stephen Fry and Gina Carter.

Much of Sandi’s time is devoted to writing. Last year she published a new novel entitled Valentine Grey and a light-hearted book of women’s history, Heroines and Harridans. She has more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults to her credit. She has just completed a book on manners which will be published in October. She has written a monthly column for Good Housekeeping magazine for more years than she can remember. For the theatre Sandi co-authored the musical Big Night Out at the Little Palace Theatre (with Dillie Keane), the Shakespeare deconstruction, The Pocket Dream (with Elly Brewer) which transferred to the West End and Charity Begins for Playhouse Live. Her latest play Bully Boy starring Anthony Andrews was the opening production at the new St James’ Theatre in London last September.

Sandi is Chancellor of Portsmouth University.