Keith Chegwin

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Keith "Cheggers" Chegwin

Keith Chegwin (born 17 January 1957) is a British television presenter and former sitcom actor. He is the twin brother of Jeffrey Chegwin and brother of radio disc-jockey Janice Long and for a period was married to fellow television presenter Maggie Philbin. For much of his career he has been known simply as "Cheggers" (an example of the Oxford '-er').

Chegwin was born in Liverpool. His early roles were in works of the Children's Film Foundation, appearing as Egghead Wentworth in The Troublesome Double and Egghead's Robot as a child and teenager. He also, as a 14-year-old, played Fleance in Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth in 1971. He moved into shows intended at adult audiences as minor characters in the first series of the BBC sitcom My Old Man (a vehicle for Clive Dunn) and in the ITV sitcom The Wackers (1975).

Shortly afterwards he moved into presenting, again for children's programmes, and became a household name. The live zoo format of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Cheggers Plays Pop and Saturday Superstore suited Chegwin's happy-go-lucky style, characterized by a seemingly permanent ear-to-ear grin.

The fickle nature of popular television turned against Chegwin for the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s, no doubt not helped by the serious alcohol problem that he had at the time, although he has now been sober for some years. He was no longer a 'cool' character to identify with, but regularly appeared on various talk shows, often as a figure of fun. However his star rose again for two years in the mid '90s when he presented the outdoor "on the doorstep" segment of The Big Breakfast. In 1999 he presented a revived version of the 1970s classic gameshow It's a Knockout!. The next year Chegwin caused tabloid glee by presenting a one-off edition of Naked Jungle - a gameshow where all the contestants and the presenter appeared naked. The show "plumbed new depths [of decency on television]" fulminated the conservative tabloid Daily Mail. Five, presumably delighted by the publicity, promptly repeated its show.

In April 2001 he presented Cheggers' Bedroom, an Internet-webcast show which ran from 8am to 6pm every day which Chegwin presented non-stop and live.

From 2004 Chegwin has presented an outdoor segment on GMTV similar to his earlier Big Breakfast role. He has also been seen on Live TV on House Invaders.

In August 2004, he was chosen to present I'm Famous and Frightened! on Living TV. The show included such luminaries as Handy Andy.

[edit] Trivia

Chegwin sponsors an internet bingo site, where he calls the numbers.
He appeared in episode one of the second series of the popular BBC sitcom Extras as an extremely bitter and bigoted version of himself.
In October 2006, he appeared on Challenge TV's Showbiz Darts. He reached the semi-final, losing to Johnny Vegas.
He was part of Dec's Boy Band on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and performed "It Only Takes a Minute" by Take That