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| Liz Kershaw | |
|---|---|
 Godiva Festival 2007, Coventry. |
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| Born | 30 July 1958 Rochdale, Lancashire, England. |
| Occupation | Broadcaster and journalist |
| Relatives | Andy Kershaw (brother) |
Liz Kershaw (born 30 July 1958, Rochdale, Lancashire) is a UK radio broadcaster.
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Contents
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Early career
The elder sister of fellow broadcaster and world music exponent Andy Kershaw, she began her career as a pop journalist for the Yorkshire Post before joining Leeds station Radio Aire, where her brother also worked for a time.
While in Leeds, she recorded a version of The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" under the name of Dawn Chorus & The Blue Tits. Kershaw was Dawn Chorus and TV presenter Carol Vorderman was briefly one of The Blue Tits, along with friend Lindsay Forrest. Andy Kershaw was also an occasional member of the group, who recorded a session for John Peel in 1985.[1]
In the late 1980s Kershaw worked for British Telecom helping to produce the telephone music line service called Livewire. Kershaw helped produce Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith, who recorded introductions to the records in a similar fashion to Dial-a-disc from some years earlier.
Her next move was to the BBC and local station Radio Leeds before the call came from BBC Radio 1 to present a music magazine show called Backchat. After winning a number of awards, she progressed to the evening show and then her best known slot, the weekend breakfast show which she co-hosted with Bruno Brookes from 1989 to 1991. The two projected a 'love-hate' relationship on-air, and got their fair share of PR in the tabloids as a result, including Kershaw smashing a turntable live on air because she hated a Wet Wet Wet record being played on it; and the two pulling a stunt of getting married as an April Fools' Day joke. During this period they also made a charity record for the BBC's Children in Need campaign; a version of It Takes Two. They later made two more fundraising records featuring their Radio 1 colleagues and guest vocalists Frank Bruno and Samantha Fox, though only one charted.
She left Radio 1 in 1992 to present a weekly phone-in on BBC Radio 5 in its original form. She was part of the team which would later relaunch the station and give it its current name of BBC Radio 5 Live. At the same time she also went back to local radio for a spell, presenting BBC Radio Northampton's breakfast programme, and presented documentaries for the other 4 BBC national networks - Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio 4.
Recent career
In 2002, she was one of the original presenters on the newly launched, digital station BBC 6 Music where she presented the weekday afternoon show from 1-4pm, before moving to the weekend mid-morning slots in April 2004, from 10am-1pm.
In September 2005 Kershaw also became a weekday presenter on the BBC's BBC Coventry & Warwickshire radio station, where she took over the Drivetime show. She later presented the weekday Breakfast Show for the station and continued to present a show on BBC 6 Music, but on Saturdays only.
Kershaw and Bruno Brookes re-united for a one-off special on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire on Christmas Morning in 2006.
In July 2007, her show was cited in a BBC phone-in competition scandal, with pre-recorded shows being aired as live, and members of the production team pretending to be members of the public ringing in to a competition which did not exist.[2]
On 30 July 2008, the BBC was fined £400,000 (a record for the corporation) by media watchdog Ofcom. It was accused of 'misleading its audiences' by 'faking' telephone phone-ins. Amongst those affected were Kershaw's show on BBC 6 Music. Kershaw's programme had the biggest censure of £115,000 being penalised for seventeen cases of deception in seventeen months between May 2005 and January 2006.
Ofcom stated that the organisation 'deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly.
She can currently be heard on BBC 6 Music Saturday lunchtimes 1-4pm. She left the breakfast show at BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on Friday 17 July 2009 when the management decided to change the hosts, moving to a Sunday programme which she presented until April 2011.
On 2 October 2010, she reprised her performance of The Undertones Teenage Kicks at the celebration of the reprieve of BBC 6 Music, 6 Fest with Damian O'Neill of The Undertones, and Doyle & The Fourfathers, a charity gig in aid of Nordoff-Robbins and the Chilean Miners in the 2010 Copiapó mining accident.
References
- ^ BBC John Peel Sessions
- ^ Pierce, Andrew, "BBC staff suspended over phone-in scandal", The Telegraph (London), July 23, 2007
External links
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