No Off Switch
Andy Kershaw


One year Andy Kershaw was Billy Bragg's roadie, the next he was presenting Live Aid on TV to 400 million people: the new voice of youth. A passionate enthusiast for music, he is a man with an obsessive curiosity about the world. Over a 25-year career, he has worked for the Rolling Stones, shared an office with John Peel, and introduced world and roots music to Radio 1 (and later Radio 3). He has also filed numerous reports for Radio 4, majoring in the Axis of Evil, and for a time was the only BBC journalist present during the Rwanda genocide. In 2007, his relationship disastrously broke down and he was denied access to his kids, which led to a month in prison on the Isle of Man for a non-violent transgression of a restraining order. This year, he returns to BBC radio as the voice of the key autumn series, Human Planet.