He attended Lincoln School, at the time a boys-only grammar school, from 1957-64 as a boarder. His father was a manager with Midland Bank (became HSBC in 1999) in Lincolnshire (Horncastle and Gainsborough). He studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

He was trained on the International Publishing Corporation (Daily Mirror Group) newspaper training scheme in south Devon. He worked at the Daily Record from 1970-4 in Glasgow.

He joined the BBC Radio News in 1974 in London, joining business news in 1975. In 1983, he left the BBC to join TV-am as their economics and industrial correspondent. He returned to the BBC to become a presenter and producer for the Financial World Tonight (became part of The World Tonight).

He has presented In Business since 1988. On the World Service has presented its sister programme, Global Business on weekends since 2000. He became Business Correspondent of the BBC in 1990, and in 1997 provided the business section for the Today programme.

He is fascinated by the changes in industry and business from adaptations and transformations to the internet and the potential it offers to companies; being a journalist, he is also concerned at the effect it is having on local newspapers.

Recognition

He has won the Harold Wincott Award for broadcast business journalism three times, in 1989, 2000 and 2002. He received The Work Foundation lifetime achievement award in 2006. In 2007 it was revealed that In Business had become a surprise podcast hit, beating The Best of Moyles, Today and In Our Time as the BBC's most downloaded podcast.

On 8 September 2009, he received an honorary DBA from the University of Lincoln.

He is married with two sons and two daughters. He lives in Islington.

News articles

• Daily Mail November 2007
• Insight into podcasting November 2007
• His early life

Audio clips

• Global Business archive