Cashman "Cash" Peters is a British author, television, and radio contibutor who writes on travel and show business.
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Peters was born in Stockport, England. By 15, he had written material for radio and TV shows including The Two Ronnies and The News Huddlines. After graduating from university with a law degree he worked at the High Court of Justice in London, and in his spare time worked as a reporter on Capital Radio's The Way It Is news magazine. He turned to journalism, full-time, winning several awards for travel reporting and presented "Wildfire", a series of travel specials on BBC Radio. In 1987 his series Around the World in Ninety Seconds won the Best Light Entertainment Writer Award at the New York Radio Festival. In 1997 he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his partner.
Peters appeared for two seasons in the Travel Channel TV show Stranded with Cash Peters,[1] and wrote the book Naked In Dangerous Places about his experiences.[2] In 2003 Peters wrote Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist.[3] He presents a short show business segment late night Wednesdays on BBC Radio Five Live's Up All Night, and appears as a commentator on American Public Media's Marketplace.[4]
In 1979, Peters staged an elaborate April Fool's joke on Capital Radio's Sunday Soapbox, posing as a concerned listener who claimed the government planned to cancel the following two Thursdays to correct errors that had occurred due to switching the clocks back and forth every year to account for British Summer Time. 48 hours had accumulated altogether, and under "Operation Parallax" the following two Thursdays would be cancelled and the calendar would jump from Wednesday to Friday. The hoax briefly fooled tens of thousands of Capital Radio's listeners. Theatres cancelled their shows, airlines pulled flights, and emergency lines at Capital Radio and across London were jammed. In 2007 Operation Parallax was subsequently nominated by The Sunday Times as one of the top ten April Fool's jokes of all time.[5][6]