Dominic Byrne

Dominic Byrne
Dominic Byrne (right) outside BBC Radio 1 with Shipwrecked 09's Andrew Dearling, September 2010
Birth name	Dominic Anthony Byrne
Born	10 November 1972 (1972-11-10) (age 39) Norwich, England
Show	The Chris Moyles Show
Station(s)	BBC Radio 1
Time slot	6:30am - 10am
Style	Newscaster
Country	United Kingdom
Spouse(s)	Nicola Byrne
Children	Finton James Byrne Xanthe Rose Byrne Tilda Ruby Star Byrne
Website	Chris Moyles Folk Face Official Website

Dominic Anthony Byrne (born 10 November 1972) is a newsreader for BBC Radio 1 and a presenter on the BBC News Channel.

Biography

Born in Norwich, Norfolk,^[1] Byrne attended St Ivo School before attending Bournemouth University for two weeks. However, he dropped out to work at a local radio station. Byrne has been married to Nicola Byrne since March 2001 and has three children: son Finton James Byrne, born in July 2003, and daughter Xanthe Rose Byrne, born in November 2005 , The Chris Moyles Show Blog noted that on Friday 29 May 2009 'Dom is celebrating the birth of his baby daughter', Tilda Ruby Star Byrne, the two middle names chosen by his two other children. He currently reads the news on The Chris Moyles Show and on Fearne Cotton's show on BBC Radio 1. In addition, he also presents Newsbeat's Oddbox video clip show on BBC News and Dragon's Den Online, the online spin off from the Dragons' Den TV programme.^[2]

Career

Byrne's career began at Kiss 102 in Manchester, reading the breakfast show news. After moving to London he freelanced at Independent Radio News and Virgin Radio.

Byrne joined BBC Radio 1 in 1997 as a freelancer. A clip from 1997 was found and played on The Chris Moyles Show and Byrne was described as being "posh" as he used the phrase "frothy bevvy". The team also commented on his pronunciation of the word "brewerer" [sic] after Byrne himself commented a few days previously on a fellow team member's accent. In 2000 he was made full time staff. He initially started working as a reporter before eventually becoming a newsreader doing various slots until he joined the show in January 2004 (as part of the launch of Moyles' breakfast show).^[3]

As well as reading news, he also reads the weather and used to do a feature entitled "One Road Travel" which was a parody of many local radio stations' travel information, however they used just one road per day. The final "One Road Travel" was aired on 20 July 2007.

Byrne has also interviewed many celebrities for the show including Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Alan Sugar, David Schwimmer, Uma Thurman, Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain, and more recently Reese Witherspoon, William Shatner, Al Gore, Richard E. Grant, Daniel Craig, Bruce Willis, Bono, Adam Clayton, Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Downey Jr, Jedward, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz.

Byrne and his family are regular visitors to Whipsnade Zoo. In the past he has been a season ticket holder, publicising the zoo on air. This led to Byrne, and the rest of The Chris Moyles Show team, being ambushed by a pack of female lemurs at Whipsnade's new walk-through lemur experience "In with the Lemurs",^{[clarification needed]} on 28 March 2007. On 12 June 2007, Byrne's favourite sea lion, Barclay (Now sadly departed, lamented on the show in the usual caring way), fathered a new pup which was subsequently named Dominic.

On 27 April 2007, Dominic Byrne a manchester united fan and co-hosted BBC Radio Norfolk's The Chris and Nicky Show. Byrne says he has always been a fan of local radio and has always wanted to host a local radio phone in show. The Chris Moyles Show was also broadcast from BBC Radio Norfolk's building, The Forum, on the same day so that Byrne could continue his news reading duties. Byrne also provided the voice of an alien called Zorst in the CBeebies show Space Pirates.^[4] He does voice-overs for the entertainment channel Watch.

In 2010, Byrne also narrated children's storybooks for mobile phone applications, titles include "Invisible Alligators", "Inca Dink, the Great Houndini" (written, illustrated and also narrated by M. Nicole van Dam) and "Olivia the Octopus".

Byrne is also the voiceover on Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

Newsbeat's Oddbox

In 2007, Newsbeat's Oddbox was launched. A four minute video which looks at the week's strangest news, presented by Dominic Byrne and Tulip Mazumdar when he is away. It is available to watch at BBC Online, on the BBC Red Button and on the BBC News channel.

Bands

Dominic Byrne is part of comedy folk band Folk Face with Comedy Dave also from The Chris Moyles Show.

References

1. ^ "Reporter Profiles: Dominic Byrne", BBC, retrieved 2010-12-05
2. ^ Bearne, Suzanne (2009) "BBC launches online version of 'Dragons' Den'", New Media Age, 18 March 2009
3. ^ Christison, Greg (2010) "Radio One’s Moyles wakes up Perth", Perthshire Advertiser, 9 November 2010, retrieved 2010-12-05
4. ^ "Interview: Dominic Byrne", BBC, retrieved 2010-12-05

External links

• Dominic Byrne at the Internet Movie Database
• Dominic Byrne on Twitter

Persondata
Name	Byrne, Dominic
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	10 November 1972
Place of birth	Norwich,
Date of death
Place of death