Peter Donaldson

Peter Donaldson is a main newsreader on BBC Radio 4.

He was born in Cairo, Egypt on 23 August 1945 and moved to Cyprus in 1952 at the time of the overthrow of King Farouk. He was a frequent listener to the BBC World Service and the BFBS.

He boarded at Woolverstone Hall in Suffolk from the age of 14. He left after taking O-levels at 16 and joined Sadler's-Wells London in a backstage role. After working with the New Shakespeare Company at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park London, and appearing on stage at the Aldwych Theatre London with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he went to Sri Lanka for a film.

In 1968, his father, who was still living in Cyprus, heard an on-air vacancy for announcers with BFBS and Peter applied. He passed the audition and subsequently worked in Cyprus, Aden, Libya and Malta.

He joined BBC Radio 2 in 1970 as a presenter and newsreader but switched to Radio 4 in 1973 and was promoted to Chief Announcer in 1988. In 1992 whilst reading the Six O'Clock News on Black Wednesday, he famously mispronounced the words preceding the city figures - instead of "In the city, shares..." he mistakenly said "In the shi- city". Listeners were said to have written in saying how right he was. He gave up the post of Chief Announcer and Head of Continuity in 2003 and was retired in July 2005, against his will. However, he returned to the station on 28 August 2005 on a freelance basis.

Over the years, he has been involved in many disagreements with management. When the then Director-General Greg Dyke announced a plan to "cut the crap" from the BBC and sent plentiful publicity material to all members of staff, Donaldson famously threw his in the bin, before writing to Dyke informing him that he has "Taken your [Dyke's] advice - and cut the crap". One morning he criticised a then-running Radio 4 programme on air, naming himself "Donald Peterson", very nearly being sacked for it. He has stressed in interview the importance, in his view, of "understanding and being interested in the material in front of you in order to involve the listener". He comments that there are some newsreaders (unspecified; but not within Radio 4) who "clearly have no understanding of what they are reading" and the quality of the broadcast suffers. He has a distinctive form of Received Pronunciation "BBC Accent" - one of the few left on radio in the 21st century - and his delivery incorporates idiosyncratic pauses in the middle of sentences. In the 1980s, his voice was used on the pre-recorded warning that a nuclear attack had been launched on the British Isles during the Cold War, which would have been transmitted on television and radio from a studio in Broadcasting House in such a case.

More recently, in 2000 he played the resentful and sarcastic butler Theremin, homicidal manservant to the celebrated occult investigator Lord Zimbabwe, in the BBC Radio 4 comedy "Ectoplasm", and he also featured in a series of short Radio 4 programmes on the end of World War II, reading news reports of the time. He appears to remain at loggerheads with BBC management, and in 2006 it was reported that he would no longer read the news on the Today programme, in opposition to the changes made by management to start that shift earlier and include an extra "News Briefing" programme.

His interests include gardening, current affairs, drama, walking and swimming.

ee also

*Four minute warning
*Ectoplasm (radio show)

External links

* [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14934-1667888,00.html Peter Donaldson retires]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/presenters/peter_donaldson.shtml BBC Radio 4] - Presenter Peter Donaldson (with picture)
* [http://www.rocketfm.org.uk/news/donaldson.html Peter Donaldson's links to a community radio station in Lewes, Sussex.]