Robert Robinson (television presenter)

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This article is about British radio and television presenter. For other people of the same name, see Robert Robinson .

Robert Robinson (born 17 December 1927 in Liverpool) is a British radio and television presenter.

Contents

[edit] Biography and career

His father was an accountant and he was educated at Raynes Park Grammar School and Exeter College, Oxford. He then became a journalist for the Sunday Chronicle (TV columnist), the Sunday Graphic (film and theatre columnist), the Sunday Times (radio critic and editor of Atticus) and the Sunday Telegraph (film critic).

He began working on television as a journalist in 1955. During the 1960s and 1970s, he presented the series Open House, Picture Parade, Points of View, Ask the Family, BBC3 – including the discussion during which Kenneth Tynan became the first person to say "fuck" on British television – and Call My Bluff. He also presented Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news show, and Stop The Week, a fiercely competitive talking programme. Robinson fronted Brain of Britain on BBC Radio 4, but was replaced by Russell Davies during the 2004 series owing to illness. He returned to host the new series in 2005. In 2007, he was replaced as host by Peter Snow.

Private Eye used to lampoon Robinson under the nickname 'Smuggins'. In a sketch on the BBC's Not the Nine O'Clock News he was impersonated by an actor wearing a cricket box over his forehead. Robinson has also been the subject of a sketch by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the second series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and Fry frequently does an affectionate impression of Robinson when hosting the quiz show QI. He has also been lampooned by comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the second series of That Mitchell and Webb Look, where he was shown as the presenter of an early version of their fictional gameshow Numberwang.

[edit] Books

[edit] Collections of journalism

  • Inside Robert Robinson
  • The Dog Chairman
  • Prescriptions of a Pox Doctor's Clerk

[edit] Novels

  • Landscape with Dead Dons
  • The Conspiracy
  • Bad Dreams

[edit] Editor

  • The Everyman Book of Light Verse

[edit] Autobiography

  • Skip All That (1997)
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