Ferne Corrigan is a wildlife and children’s television presenter and has been a regular face on the CBeebies channel for the last five years for the BAFTA nominated series My Pet and Me . With a love of wildlife, she is keen to promote a passion for the natural world to broad audiences.
Ferne studied zoology at her hometown of Dublin and went straight on to undertake a masters in wildlife documentary production. Her studies and work have brought her to incredible places, from the Galapagos to Malawi and in between presenter work, Ferne is working her way up to producer level with the hope of making films about her passions: wildlife and conservation.
Ferne has a fresh and engaging presenting style which combined with her natural history knowledge, makes her one of the new generation of presenters to watch out for.
Most recently, Ben featured in the Natural World documentary Red Ape: Saving the Orangutans on BBC Two.
Ben has also recently presented Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots on BBC Four and The Day the Dinosaurs Died on BBC Two, as well as presenting his second UK theatre tour, So You Think You Know About Dinosaurs…?! in Spring 2018.
Ben has a BSc in Animal Behaviour from Anglia Ruskin University, an MSc in Wild Animal Biology from the Royal Veterinary College and a PhD, which looked at monkey evolution on tropical islands, entitled ‘Primates of the Caribbean’ with the University College London and the Zoological Society of London. In addition to his role as Teaching Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, he has presented a number of television programmes, including Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur with Sir David Attenborough on BBC One, in addition to his own award-winning six-part BBC Four series Secrets of Bones. He has also presented The Human Hive on Radio4, in addition to the series Bone Stories.
Throughout the last decade, Ben has lived and worked all over the world, mainly within great ape conservation – spending several years in central Africa developing and managing a leading chimpanzee conservation field site for the renowned chimpanzee scientist Dr Jane Goodall, where amongst other things was responsible for habituating wild chimps. He has also worked extensively across South East Asia for an orangutan conservation charity, researched animal artifacts from Imperial Chinese tombs, marine life in Madagascar and studied introduced monkeys throughout the Caribbean archipelago. He has also repeatedly traveled to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where he has helped lead wildlife watching tours. Ben is an accomplished public speaker and has spoken at a range of conferences, public debates and science festivals, including the Cheltenham Science Festival and for TEDx. He also writes science-based articles for The Guardian.
Ben grew up on coastal Norfolk and still likes nothing better than to get out on the beaches there to see which species (both dead and alive) he can find. He now lives in Bristol where despite not having any pets, he lives with Lola, an articulated howler monkey skeleton.
Ben is heavily involved in a wide range of charities and organisations. His affiliations include being a Trustee of the Jane Goodall Institute UK; an Ambassador for the Marine conservation Society; a Council member for the Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB); Ambassador for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust; Ambassador for Bristol Museum; Patron for National Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA); and a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
One of Britain’s most loved television presenters, BAFTA award-winning Michaela Strachan has been a regular face on our screens for over two decades.
Michaela is one of the regular presenting team on Springwatch and has recently been back on BBC Two for Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. Michaela has worked extensively as a presenter on the BBC, spending fifteen years presenting the hugely popular The Really Wild Show and ten years on Countryfile, as well as Orangutan Diaries, Elephant Diaries, Shark Encounters and Orangutan Rescue.
Michaela’s Wild Challenge (Channel 5) was a double BAFTA award-winning production; earning Michaela the BAFTA for Best Children’s Presenter and the programme the BAFTA for Best Children’s Factual. Other programmes for Channel 5 include Michaela’s Zoo Babies, Michaela’s Animal Road Trip, Animal Rescue Squad and Animal Families.
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For National Geographic, Michaela has fronted Safari Live, live from the Kruger National Park, Adopt a Wild Animal, Postcards from the Wild and Big 5 Little 5 which she presented alongside long-standing TV friend Chris Packham. For the Natural History Unit South Africa Michaela volunteered in a sea bird rescue centre for The Great Penguin Rescue. Michaela has also presented two series of Great British Ghosts (Yesterday TV), One Man and his Dog (BBC), The Fossil Roadshow (BBC), Full Bloom (BBC) and Club Vegetarian (Granda TV).
Michaela’s presenting career began on such programmes as TV-am, The Wide Awake Club with Timmy Mallett, Boogie Box, The Hitman and Her and The Really Wild Show.
Michaela is much in demand for personal appearances, award ceremonies and presentations. Her natural effervescence and engaging humour endear her to audiences, corporate and educational audiences alike. With her extensive experience of wildlife conservation all around the world and her gift for communication, Michaela is a popular choice to host wildlife festivals and to host natural history, environmental and ecologist events and present award ceremonies.
Michaela has also been touring zoos, wildlife parks and festivals with her children’s show Michaela Strachan’s Really Wild Adventures, a fun, factual, educational and interactive show which has been adapted from her book of the same name.
Michaela will be appearing in the arena spectacular Walking with Dinosaurs across UK theatres in Summer 2018.
This year, Danielle George has been on our screens presenting Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots on BBC Four, Search for a New Earth on BBC Two with Professor Stephen Hawking and Nation of Inventors on BBC One North West. In 2016, Danielle presented Televisions Opening Night: How the Box was Born on BBC Four and in 2014 The Royal Institution Christmas lectures ‘How to hack your Home’.
Danielle studied Astrophysics and worked at Jodrell Bank Observatory. She was awarded a Professorship at the age of 38 and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 Queen’s honours list for services to engineering through public engagement. In 2016 she received the Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke Medal for services to engineering and in 2017 received the Harold Hartley Medal for outstanding contribution to the field of Measurement and Control.
Danielle’s research is dedicated to solving one the 14 world engineering grand challenges of the 21st century; engineering the tools for scientific discovery. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors. To date her research has focused on delivering class-leading ultra-low noise receivers for Space and Aerospace applications. She has worked with agriculturists on the development of instrumentation to measure water usage and with a number of multi-national companies such as Rolls Royce where she worked on industrial gas turbine engines.
Her passion for raising public awareness of the positive impact engineering and science has on all aspects of our everyday lives, as well as highlighting to young people the immense depth and breadth of opportunities a career in science and engineering can offer, has led to Danielle’s numerous current high-profile Ambassadorial roles. Following on from the success of Danielle’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures she is the co-founder of the “Manchester Robot Orchestra” with huge success in many countries around the world and generated over 1m hits on social media. Her STEM ‘emoji’ recognizes her dedication to science and engineering stating her most notable fun achievement as ‘turning a sky scraper into a giant game of Tetris’. She has delivered TED and TEDx talks and her hometown of Newcastle recognised her as a ‘Great North Contemporary Great’ in the 2015 Great North Culture Exhibition.
One of the best known faces on Irish television, Colin has most recently announced his UK theatre tour and been on our screens presenting Wild UK on BBC One and Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World on BBC Two. Last year, Colin filmed and presented an eighth series of Living the Wildlife on BBC One in which he examines the richness and variety of Irish wildlife. He has also presented a six-part radio series Wild Lives for RTE. His recent documentary On a River in Ireland, based on his exploration by canoe of the flora and fauna of the river Shannon through four seasons, won the Grand Teton at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and the Golden Panda at Wildscreen. He also presented Bioblitz, a live TV event celebrating biodiversity for RTE. In 2013 he presented and filmed Meet the Monkeys, for BBC NHU Natural World.
Further afield and over the last two decades, Colin has been involved in many highly acclaimed wildlife productions. He has tracked and filmed animals all over the world including jaguars in the Amazon and birds of paradise in New Guinea and he won an Emmy for cinematography on the film Mississippi – Tales of the Last River Rat.
Many of his films focus on big cats and he spent many months filming the behaviour of wild tigers in India, producing memorable and definitive documentaries including BBC’s Natural World: Queen of Tigers and a series following the fortunes of a tiger called Broken Tail and his family. Broken Tail: a Tiger’s Last Journey, produced by Crossing the Line Films, reflects Colin’s personal quest to follow the fate of the young tiger who was killed 200k from his home in a supposedly well protected tiger reserve. This compelling documentary exposing the plight of India’s last surviving wild tigers, won top honours at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and at the International Wildlife Film Festival.
Liz had always been interested in biology and chemistry at school, and she went on to study Biochemistry at University. After graduating, she started a career as a TV presenter working on such shows as BBC One’s Top of the Pops, before returning to her first love, science, and completing a Masters in Wild Animal Biology and Conservation. Liz’s main interests during her studies were animal behaviour and intelligence and big cat conservation. She set up and carried out a research project on the diet of tigers in Bardia National Park, Nepal, which saw her come first in her class.
Liz’s TV career has drawn heavily on her academic expertise. In the latest series of Horizon on BBC Two, Liz presented new scientific research raising hard questions about zoos. This Autumn, Liz will be presenting Drowning in Plastic on BBC One and has most recently been on our screens presenting the BBC One series Galapagos and Wild Alaska Live following the hugely successful Big Blue Live series in Monterey, California for the BBC, and for PBS in the USA. Last year, Liz also presented a brand new wildlife series for BBC One about animal migrations called Nature’s Epic Journeys, which broadcast in May 2016. Other TV credits include wildlife and animal behaviour programmes Super Smart Animals, Animals in Love, Animals through the Night: Sleepover at the Zoo, Operation Snow Tiger and Animal Odd Couples; science series Horizon, Stargazing Live and Bang Goes the Theory; documentaries Egypt’s Lost Cities, Museum of Life and Science Friction; and ITV’s popular Countrywise. Liz will also be appearing in the soon to be broadcast new series of Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are? on BBC One.
In addition to her TV work, Liz is a conference facilitator and awards host, and has MC’d various events, including most recently, the UK’s National Science and Engineering Competition Awards and the Natural History Museum’s prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards
Alice has most recently been on our screens presenting Britain’s Most Historic Towns on Channel 4 and Digging for Britain on BBC Four. Last year, Alice completed her first UK Theatre Tour and presented programmes including The Day the Dinosaurs Died and Food Detectives on BBC Two. She also published her latest book Tamed: Ten Species That Changed The World. Other programmes included Uncovering the mysteries of ‘Britain’s Pompeii and The Greatest Tomb On Earth: Secrets of Ancient China on BBC Four with Dan Snow and Albert Lin, featuring groundbreaking archaeological discoveries in China. She also co-presented The Celts with Neil Oliver and appeared on Britain’s Lost Waterlands: Escape to Swallows and Amazons Country with fellow Coast-er, Dick Strawbridge (with whom she won Celebrity Pointless in 2014).
Alice is an anatomist and biological anthropologist, author and broadcaster, and Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. In the last decade of the twentieth century, she studied medicine and anatomy (MB BCh BSc) at Cardiff University, and worked as a junior doctor in South Wales. She went on to become a lecturer at Bristol University, where she taught anatomy – of humans and other animals – for eleven years. While at Bristol, she becaame interested in biological anthropology: studying ancient bones and looking for clues about evolution, life, death, and disease in past populations. Her PhD focused on comparing patterns of arthritis in the shoulders of humans and other apes. She also developed a strong interest in public engagement, becoming a television presenter, writing popular science books, and giving public talks. In 2012, Alice became the University of Birmingham’s first Professor of Public Engagement with Science, where she continues to teach anatomy and do some research, as well as encouraging other academics to engage with the public more widely. She has received four honorary doctorates.
Alice has presented a wide range of science and archaeology shows on television. Her television debut came in 2001, as a human bone specialist on Channel 4’s Time Team. She went on to become one of the team of presenters for Channel 4’s Extreme Archaeology, where climbing and caving skills were needed to access archaeological sites.
In 2005, she was part of the original team of presenters on the first series of Coast on BBC Two, and she went on to cover many science and archaeology stories in subsequent series of Coast. She also started to write and present her own series on BBC Two, including two series of Don’t Die Young on BBC Two, looking at the structure and function of the human body, organ by organ. She wrote her first book to accompany this series: Don’t Die Young: An anatomist’s guide to your organs and your health.
In 2009, she solo-presented her first landmark series on BBC Two: The Incredible Human Journey, exploring how clues from genetics, fossils and archaeology have helped us to understand how our Stone Age, hunter-gatherer forebears colonised the globe. She went on to solo-present other big budget, landmark series and programmes on BBC Two, looking at human evolution and palaeobiology more generally, including: Origins of Us, Prehistoric Autopsy, Wooly Mammoth and Ice Age Giants. She has also presented several Horizon programmes, looking at topics of evolution and human diversity and behaviour, tackling such questions as: Are we still evolving? What makes us human? and Is your brain male or female? She also presented the Horizon programme which launched the Longitude Prize 2014, and Sex: A Horizon Guide. She curated an online collection covering 50 Years of Horizon, to celebrate the birthday of this long-running science series in 2014.
In 2010, inspired by Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, and her own love of the great outdoors, Alice made Wild Swimming for BBC4. This lyrical film looked at wildlife, physiology, poetry and mythology – alongside the life-affirming, energising and sensuous experience of swimming ‘wild’ – in lakes, rivers and the sea.
Since 2009, Alice has been an occasional presenter of Radio 4’s environment programme, Costing the Earth. She has written seven popular science and archaeology books: Don’t Die Young, The Incredible Human Journey, The Complete Human Body, Evolution: The Human Story, Human Anatomy, The Incredible unlikeliness of Being (shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize in 2015) and The Celts.
Alice is an accomplished public speaker and regularly tours the country giving lectures related to her books and television programmes. She has conducted many panel debates and interviews. In May 2015, she interviewed Sir David Attenborough live on stage at the Science Museum, and later in the year, Richard Dawkins at the RI. As well as being rated the 2nd most influential woman-scientist-on-Twitter, Alice is also an experienced compere, and has hosted numerous awards ceremonies and launch events, including prestigious events at the Natural History Museum and the Royal Society. She has even been known to give after dinner speeches.
Sir William Robert Patrick “Robin” Knox-Johnston, CBE, RD and bar is an English sailor. In 1969, he became the first person to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe and was the second winner of the Jules Verne Trophy, together with Sir Peter Blake.
For this he was awarded with Blake the ISAF Yachtsman of the Year award. In 2007, he became, at 67, the oldest yachtsman to complete a round the world solo voyage in the Velux 5 Oceans Race.
Early Life
Knox-Johnston was born in Putney in London and was educated at the Berkhamsted boys’ school. From 1957 to 1965, he served in the Merchant Navy and the Royal Naval Reserve. In 1965, he sailed his William Atkins design ketch Suhaili from Bombay to England. Her design is based on the Norwegian sailing lifeboat designs of Colin Archer.
Due to a lack of money he had to interrupt his voyage for work in South Africa and was only able to complete it in 1967. In 1968, he was one of nine sailors who attempted to achieve the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world in the Sunday Times’s Golden Globe race. He was the third sailor to start the race, and the only one to complete the voyage.
Circumnavigation of the Earth
On 14 June 1968 Robin Knox-Johnston left Falmouth in his 32-foot (9.8-metre) boat Suhaili, one of the smallest boats to enter the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Despite losing his self-steering gear off Australia, he rounded Cape Horn on 17 January 1969, 20 days before his closest competitor Bernard Moitessier. Moitessier had sailed from Plymouth more than two months after Knox-Johnston, but he subsequently abandoned the race and instead sailed on to Tahiti. The other seven competitors dropped out at various stages, leaving Knox-Johnston to win the race and become officially the first person to circumnavigate the globe non-stop and single-handed on 22 April 1969, the day he returned to Falmouth. Knox-Johnston donated his prize money for fastest competitor, a sum of £5,000, to the family of Donald Crowhurst, who committed suicide after attempting to fake a round the world voyage.
In recognition of his achievement, he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Further exploits
In 1970 (with Leslie Williams) and in 1974 (with Gerry Boxall), Knox-Johnston won the two-handed Round Britain Race. Knox-Johnston, Williams and their crew, which included Peter Blake, took line honours of the 1971 Cape Town to Rio Race. Williams and Knox-Johnston jointly skippered (with Blake a crew member again) maxi yacht Heath’s Condor in the 1977 Whitbread Round the World Race. They took the line honours in the second and fourth leg, the ones which Knox-Johnston skippered.
Knox-Johnston and Blake (who acted as co-skippers) won the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest circumnavigation in 1994. Their time was 74 days 22 hours 18 minutes and 22 seconds. It was their second attempt to win this prize after their first one in 1992 had to be aborted when their catamaran Enza hit an object which tore a hole in the starboard hull.
From 1992 to 2001, Knox-Johnston was president of the Sail Training Association. During his tenure the money was collected to replace the STA’s vessels Sir Winston Churchill and Malcolm Miller with the new, larger brigs Prince William and Stavros S. Niarchos. He was trustee of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich from 1992 to 2002 and still is trustee of the National Maritime Museum – Cornwall at Falmouth, where Suhaili is berthed today. The yacht has been refitted and took part in the Round the Island Race in June 2005. He was created a knight bachelor in 1995.
In 1996, Knox-Johnston established the first Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and has since worked with the Clipper Ventures company as chairman to progress the race to higher levels every year. It is perhaps his greatest achievement to have introduced so many people to competitive sailing via their involvement in Clipper Ventures.
He completed his second solo circumnavigation of the world in the yacht Saga Insurance on 4 May 2007, finishing in fourth place in the Velux 5 Oceans Race. At 68 he was the oldest competitor in the race.
In late 2008 and early 2009, Knox-Johnston took part in a BBC programme called Top Dogs: Adventures in War, Sea and Ice. The programme saw him unite with fellow British legends Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the adventurer, and John Simpson, the BBC world affairs editor. The team went on three trips, each experiencing each other’s adventure field. The first episode, aired on 27 March 2009, saw Knox-Johnston, Fiennes and Simpson go on a potentially very dangerous news-gathering trip to Afghanistan. The team reported from the legendary Khyber Pass and infamous Tora Bora mountain complex. The three also undertook a voyage around Cape Horn and an expedition hauling sledges across the deep-frozen Frobisher Bay in the far north of Canada.
Having served two years as president of The Cruising Association, Knox-Johnston is now the association’s patron. He is also a past-president of the Little Ship Club.
In November 2014, Knox-Johnston, at age 75, finished the solo transatlantic race the Route du Rhum in third place in the Rhum class. He crossed the finish line on his Open 60 Grey Power at Pointe à Pitre at 16:52 hours local time/20:52 hours GMT after 20 days, 7 hours, 52 minutes and 22 seconds at sea.
Mark is the Washington correspondent for Sky News. He is a multi-award winning broadcast journalist who has spent 35 years reporting and presenting for ITV News and the BBC. In his three decades at ITV News, Austin presented both News at Ten and the Evening News at 6.30pm, often on location from places as far afield as the Antarctic, Iraq, the Israel/Gaza border, Libya, Haiti, Nepal, Mogadishu, Afghanistan and Washington. Along the way, Mark conducted numerous agenda-setting interviews with the likes of Prince William, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Gordon Brown, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Sir Jock Stirrup and Bob Geldof, among many others.
Previously Mark was Senior Correspondent for ITV News, covering major foreign and domestic stories. For fifteen years he was a foreign correspondent based in Africa and Asia and travelling all over the globe.
In 2011 and 2015, ITV News at Ten was named RTS Programme of the Year under Mark’s watch and he won Presenter of the Year at the 2014 and 2015 Royal Television Society for Journalism awards. Mark’s achievements include winning five BAFTA awards; an International Emmy in 2000 for his reporting of the devastating floods in Mozambique, a Golden Nymph in 1999 for covering the war in Kosovo, a Gold Medal at the 1996 Film & Television Festival of New York for his coverage of the Bosnian war and being named TRIC’s Newscaster of the Year in 2010.
Mark started his career in local newspapers before joining BBC News as a reporter, becoming one of the youngest national reporters ever appointed by the BBC.
In 2017, Mark presented several programmes for LBC.
Wasting Away: The Truth About Anorexia, a documentary he made with his daughter Maddy, tackling the subject of anorexia and how the NHS deals with this and other mental health issues was broadcast on Channel 4 last year.
Mark regularly hosts corporate events and also speaks on mental health issues.
Mark is currently writing his memoirs for Atlantic Books.
Louis Theroux’s documentaries follow his attempts to get to know the people at the heart of some of the world’s – and especially America’s – most controversial and fascinating lifestyles.
In a career spanning nearly two decades he has interrogated the engrained criminals at San Quentin prison; lived with the extreme believers of the Westboro Baptist Church; gambled with the high-rollers at a Las Vegas mega-casino, and stalked game with trophy hunters on South Africa’s wild animal farms.
Louis started out as a correspondent on Michael Moore’s TV Nation before being signed up by the BBC to make his own series, Weird Weekends, about unusual American subcultures. In 2000 he began a series of specials about intriguing British public figures, including one featuring disc jockey Sir Jimmy Savile and another which saw him live with the disgraced Tory minister Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine as they were falsely accused of rape and subjected to a media siege.
In 2011, he spent more than a month in Miami for a two-part series about the inmates at one of America’s most violent jails.
In 2012, Louis revisited his 1997 documentary about the world of male performers in Twilight of the Porn Stars. He also visited one of the best schools in America for autism in Extreme Love: Autism and travelled to Phoenix, Arizona, the US capital of dementia care Extreme Love: Dementia.
In March 2015, the BBC broadcast Louis’ LA Stories where he immersed himself in the world of Ohio’s State Psychiatric Hospitals in a two-part documentary; in the third, he travelled to a hospital in San Francisco to meet transgender children. Louis returned to BBC2 in spring 2016 with 2 films based in the UK, “Drinking to Oblivion” and “A Different Brain”, taking an immersive look at alcohol addiction and brain injury. In 2017, BBC2 broadcast his trilogy “Dark States”.
Louis’ feature-length documentary “My Scientology Movie” was released in the UK in Autumn 2016 and was the highest-grossing theatrical release documentary that year.
In September 2016, Louis undertook a sell-out tour of Australia, “Louis Live on Stage”.
Louis is currently filming his next documentaries for the BBC both here and in the US.
Louis’s programmes have won numerous accolades including two Baftas and an RTS award and are shown all over the world. He also writes for print publications. His 2005 travel book about some of his adventures, THE CALL OF THE WEIRD has just been re-published with some additional material. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.
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