THEAKSTON
James

• 1. Life and career
• 1.1. Radio
• 1.2. Television
• 1.3. Acting

James Paul Theakston is an English television presenter, producer, and actor. He co-presented the former Saturday morning BBC One children's show Live & Kicking, alongside Zoe Ball between 1996 and 1999. He co-hosted BBC One's former music programme Top of the Pops between 1998 and 2003. He currently co-hosts the national breakfast show with Amanda Holden on Heart Radio. He narrated the BBC documentary series Traffic Cops from 2003 to 2015, and on Channel 5 from 2016 onwards. He has hosted several television programmes for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He has won a BAFTA award for Live & Kicking and numerous awards for his radio work including a Sony Gold, 3 Silver Awards and 4 Bronze awards, 2 Arqiva awards, 3 TRIC awards and 2 New York Radio Festival Awards.

Life and career

Radio

Before embarking on a broadcasting career, he worked for auctioneers Christie's, and planned to study art history at the Courtauld Institute. However, after undertaking football and cricket reports for GLR and Radio 5 Live, he was spotted by the BBC's head of sport and hired to present GLR's Saturday Sport Show at the age of 23. He then presented numerous shows for Radio 5 Live including Sportscall, The Jamie Theakston Cricket Show and Sport on Wednesday. Theakston joined Radio 1 in April 1999 to present the Sunday Lunch show. He fronted the 'One Big Sunday' events during 2000. He moved to a Saturday morning slot in 2001.

He left Radio 1 in 2002 to pursue an acting career, his last show being broadcast on 28 September. He joined London radio station Heart 106.2 in May 2005, replacing Jonathan Coleman on Heart Breakfast with Harriet Scott, which won Gold for Best Music Personality Show at the New York Festivals and the Silver Entertainment Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, both in 2007. Theakston (along with Scott) won the Radio Presenter of the Year award at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards in June 2009. Scott left Heart Breakfast in 2013; she was replaced by Spice Girl Emma Bunton, who already had a show on the Heart network. Bunton left in 2018.

On 3 June 2019, Heart Breakfast went national across the UK, following a decision by the UK radio regulator OFCOM to reduce local programming requirements. Theakston currently hosts the show alongside Amanda Holden.

Between Bunton’s departure and Holden’s arrival, Heart DJ Lucy Horobin was brought in as a temporary co host for Theakston.

Television

On television, after presenting The O Zone with Jayne Middlemiss, he has most notably hosted Top of the Pops (1998–2003), Live & Kicking (1996–1999) and The Priory. The latter two shows he co-presented alongside Zoë Ball. Theakston featured beside Zoë Ball once again in Channel 5's Britain's Best Brain series, which aired in October 2009.

He has also hosted a number of other shows, including the Channel 4 reality TV show The Games alongside Kirsty Gallacher; game show, Beg Borrow or Steal (2004); prime-time Saturday night show The People's Quiz; Channel 4's The Search; and ITV Saturday night show With A Little Help From My Friends. From July–August 2013, Theakston and Emma Bunton presented ITV's This Morning Summer on Friday mornings.

Theakston's other presenting work includes fronting the Glastonbury Festival coverage for the BBC, the Oscars, the Grammys, A Question of Pop, UK Music Hall of Fame and Guinness World Records. He narrated all episodes of Traffic Cops and its spin-off show Motorway Cops, and since 2015 has narrated episodes of Caught on Camera.

He also played himself in the mock-interview series Rock Profile in which he interviewed "celebrities" impersonated by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, and in the episode "Video Killed the Radio Star" of the TV series FM in March 2009.

Acting

As an actor, Theakston has appeared in shows such as Agatha Christie's Marple and Little Britain. Theakston has acted with Amanda Holden in Mad About Alice (2004) and worked with Adam Faith on the series Murder in Mind in 2003, shortly before Faith's death. He has also starred in the West End in the plays Art and Home and Beauty at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue. In 2004, he appeared in Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: Body in the Library.