Jon Holmes (born 24 April 1973) is a double gold Sony Award-winning British comedy writer and broadcaster.
Career
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After Canterbury Christ Church University, Holmes began working for BBC Radio 4 as a writer on the satirical news show Weekending, and also for the ITV television series Spitting Image. The Power FM Jon & Andy show (with Andy Hurst) won him a gold Sony Radio Academy Award for entertainment. He later spent time co-presenting the fifth series of the 11 O'Clock Show on Channel 4 television with Sarah Alexander. Holmes has since written for The Now Show , on which he also performs, and Dead Ringers (for which he won—jointly—his second gold Sony). On The Now Show, Holmes is regularly mocked for his short stature (he claims to be 5ft 4in tall, although he has been reported to be unable to reach average door handles) by his co-presenters as a running joke (see heightism). He was also involved in Gash, a nightly politics programme (broadcast to coincide with the 2003 local elections) presented by Armando Iannucci. Also alongside Iannucci he appeared on Radio 4's The 99p Challenge which he also co-wrote. He also wrote on Iannucci's Time Trumpet on BBC2 and in 2006 got his sixth Sony Award for his work on Radio 4's Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive. The late-night Jon Holmes show on Virgin Radio ran from 2001–2002 but was discontinued after Virgin were fined £75,000 for the item "Swearing Radio Hangman for the Under-12s," in which a young girl spelled out the phrase "soapy tit wank". Holmes is currently writing and presenting for, among others, Radio 4's The Now Show and Radio 2's The Day the Music Died. He also recently fronted his own Radio 1 show and is the voice of BBC Three's The Comic Side of 7 Days and Crash Test Danny for The Discovery Channel. Since early 2006, Holmes has deputised for Iain Lee on London talk station LBC 97.3 when Iain is away. He has also moved into a full time slot every Friday afternoon in place of Paul Ross' drivetime show. In September 2006, Jon was recruited by BBC 6 Music to present a show on Saturday afternoons, 1-4pm (Later 2-4pm) [1] His first book, Status Quo and the Kangaroo, was published in May 2007, with the paperback version coming out in America and the UK in 2008. He also hosts the spin off radio series based on the American drama series 'Heroes' which is both broadcast on BBC7 and is the show's official podcast. In November 2007 he began his own Radio 4 series, Listen Against, which he co-presents with Alice Arnold. The show 'takes the programmes out of the radio, fiddles around with them and then puts them back together the wrong way round'. It has been well received with, among others, the Telegraph saying "beautifully crafted and sharp" and the Guardian who called it "the mischievous offspring of [Radio 4's] Feedback and The Day Today".
Notes
External links
- Holmes' official site
- Profile on his agent's site.
- BBC interview (scroll down)
- Cyberchat
