Fi Glover
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Fi (Fiona) Glover (born 27 February 1970) is a BBC journalist and presenter. Her style is characterised by a mix of serious journalism and subtle satirical and sarcastic comment. She grew up in Hampshire, with her mother Priscilla and sister Isabella, whilst her father was in Hong Kong establishing a business. Her parents eventually separated. She attended St Swithun's, an independent girls' school in Winchester. She was Head of House for Caer Gwent in the Lower Sixth.
She studied Classical Civilisation and Philosophy at the University of Kent (1987-1990). In 1993 she started her BBC career as a reporter on various local radio stations including BBC Somerset Sound, Humberside, Northampton and GLR. She won a silver Sony Award from her GLR breakfast show (she won a bronze Sony with Five Live in 2002). In 1997, she joined BBC Radio Five Live, where she spent seven years as a key broadcaster in news and political coverage, and presenting the afternoon show, the mirthful late-night phone-in programme and the Sunday Service programme with Charlie Whelan.
She is the host of BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live, and former host of Sunday morning news analysis programme Broadcasting House, which she took over from Eddie Mair in 2004. In May 2008 Saturday Live won Best UK Speech Programme at the annual Sony Radio Academy Awards
She lives with Rick Jones, then a marketing executive with the UK's National Lottery operator Camelot but now an executive with John Lewis. Taking maternity leave in December 2005 and giving birth to a son, Hector, in January 2006, she returned to regular broadcasting to take over the Radio 4 Saturday 9.00am slot (which was formerly occupied by John Peel's Home Truths) with a new programme, Saturday Live and to present Traveller's Tree on Thursday afternoons.
In 2000 Glover travelled the world visiting notable radio stations, which resulted in the book I'm an Oil Tanker: Travels with my Radio (ISBN 0-09-188274-5), named after a Spooneresque mistake by a news reader. The radio stations documented in the book include a temporary BBC station for the Euro 2000 football tournament, run from a cafe in Belgium, an English language station in Geneva, a station run by Irish UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon and Montserrat Radio which broadcast throughout the 1996 Soufrière Hills volcano eruption.
She met her future husband, Mark Sandell, when he was the producer of Nicky Campbell's programme. They married in 2001 but divorced in 2002. He went on to form a relationship with Victoria Derbyshire, with whom he fathered a son in January 2004.
She has occasionally stood in for Jeremy Vine on his lunchtime show on Radio 2.
