Paramdeep Singh Sehdev (Punjabi: ਪ੍ਮਦੇਵ ਸਿੰਘ ਸੇਧੇਵ) (born 1971, Hammersmith),[1] better known as Bobby Friction, is a DJ, television presenter and radio presenter from west London.
He studied Contemporary Arts at The Nottingham Trent University.
He is heavily involved in the British South Asian Club Scene.
Bobby joined BBC Radio 1 in 2002 co-hosting the Sony Gold award winning show, ‘Bobby Friction & Nihal’, and in 2005 joined the BBC Asian Network presenting the station’s Saturday afternoon ‘Album Chart Show’, before moving to ‘The Mix’, on Sunday afternoons. Bobby also won his second Gold Sony award in 2005 for his BBC documentary ‘Vote Friction’, and then in 2006 he started his weeknightly ‘Friction’ show on the Asian Network. The show, seen by many worldwide as ‘the definitive’ Asian music show, won Bobby his third Sony Gold in 2007 and in 2009 it won him "Best Radio Show" at the UK Asian Music Awards (UK AMA).[2] In 2011 it won Best Radio Show again at the UK AMA.[3]
Bobby has also made numerous documentaries for Radio 1, Radio 4 & the Asian Network over the years covering topics such as the Arabic Walt Disney, the boxer Amir Khan, Rock music in India and British Asians in prison. He has also done lots of TV work which included being the main focus for the BBC 1 documentary This England, fronting the Channel 4 TV show Bollywood Star, & co-hosting the BBC 1 Music Challenge programme Clash, as well as presenting documentaries like The Countryside Sucks & Generation 7/7 for Channel 4.
Bobby has also written for many publications in the UK on British Asian culture and music, and currently has a monthly column in Rolling Stone Magazine, India.
Over the years Bobby has represented the British Asian sound as a DJ all over the world and has built an international reputation as a genre-mixing turntabilist from Asia to the US, and from the Middle East to the whole of Europe. His gigs have included headlining his own outdoor New Year's Eve gig in Bangalore to ten thousand people, playing for Womad in the UK & Singapore, The World Music Festival in Chicago, The Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada as well as regular gigs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He is also a regular on the European Festival circuit including playing eight different Glastonbury festivals and every Bestival to date. He was one of the founder members of the band Ecostani and still works alongside The Infinite Scale, his production partner. They have been recording their own original material for the last nine years and they’ve worked on numerous remixes: from Electronica to Bhangra, House to Hip-Hop, through Bollywood and back again. Bobby has also recorded tracks with the Mercury Music Award nominated Black Star Liner. His British Asian Urban compilation ‘Friction’ sold a quarter of a million copies in the sub-continent and stayed at number 1 in the charts for 14 weeks. Friction 2 has been released and Bobby recently signed a three album deal with Sony BMG India.
A unique music professional with a legendary status within Desi music, Bobby is a world renowned specialist in British Asian music and Desi Beats worldwide – but is first and foremost, and will always be, a massive fan of music!
Whilst standing in for BBC 6 Music DJ Lauren Laverne on Saturday 14 November 2009, Friction revealed that his favourite record of all time was Primal Scream's 1991 album Screamadelica.
Bobby Friction is not to be confused with DJ Fricktion who specialises in Hip Hop and Rnb or DJ Friction of Drum N Bass fame.
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