Kirsten O'Brien

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**Kirsten O'Brien**

Born:	February 23, 1972 (age 35) Middlesbrough
Occupation:	Radio and TV Presenter

Kirsten O'Brien (born 23 February 1972) is a CBBC presenter, originally from Middlesbrough.

She presents SMart alongside Mark Speight, and Smile alongside Barney Harwood.

She will be presenting the second series of Totally Doctor Who alongside Barney Harwood from March 2007, alongside the second David Tennant series of Doctor Who.

O'Brien performed a stand up show during the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2006, entitled, Lesley's Lunch Hour - Not During Lunch, And Not Quite An Hour, meaning that she will not be presenting Smile for that month.

As a result of her father's work - he was a civil engineer - she spent her childhood moving from country-to-country, including spells in Algeria, Kuwait, Nigeria, Singapore and the UK (Middlesbrough). She is half-British, half-Norwegian.

She got her first broadcast experience on the student radio station at Birmingham Polytechnic, which led to her first proper job at Tyne Tees Television, where in 1995 she made her presenting debut on a children's science programme.

Her big break came in 1996 when she joined the team of presenters on the BBC's children's strand CBBC. She stayed there for three-and-a-half years, during which time she became best-known for her partnership with smart-talking puppet Otis the aardvark. Both Kirsten and Otis also co-presented with other people (and sometimes solo), but they really shone as a double-act, so much so that the 1997 Saturday morning spin-off, Saturday Aardvark, was entirely built around them. Puppeteer Dave Chapman would often reduce O'Brien to helpless laughter with his ad-libs, but her tendency to "corpse" on air just endeared her to viewers even more.

Kirsten left the CBBC presenting team in 1999, but is still a regular on children's TV and radio. Her artistic skills have been put to good use as co-host of SMart and its spin-offs SMart On The Road and SMarteenies (for the pre-school Cbeebies channel), and she is one of the presenters of BBC7's Little Toe Radio Show.

As well as being arty, Kirsten is quite sporty - she plays tennis, and has taken part in swimming, abseiling and netball events for charity. Last year she played Peter Pan in pantomime, and she even dicovered a previously unsuspected talent when challenged to take part in a lumberjack competition for the BBC series Bring It On.

She also claims to hold the world record for wearing 46 socks on one foot. ^[1]

She was a guest on Stephen Merchant's The Steve Show on 6music and Through the keyhole.