Robert Elms (born 12 June 1959) is an English writer and broadcaster. Elms was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s, and has a self-confessed love of clothes and fashion. His book The Way We Wore, charts the changing fashions of his own youth, linking them with the social history of the times.[1][2]
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Elms was born in Hendon and educated at Orange Hill Grammar School after passing the eleven plus.[3] From there Elms studied at the London School of Economics, and became immersed in the club scene which was coalescing in London suburbs.[3] He became a columnist for both The Face and NME, writing on both music and fashion.[4] He championed the band Spandau Ballet, having suggested their name, and used to introduce the group at early concerts, performing poetry readings.[4][5] Elms also worked as a DJ at clubs including Palladium in New York.[6] Elms was a chronicler of the New Romantic movement of the early 1980s,[3] which saw him become a popular interview choice for the broadcast media. Elms then developed a broadcasting career of his own, working in both radio and television. He was a contributor to Loose Ends (BBC Radio 4) and presented the Channel 4 travel series Travelog during the 1990s.[7] In 1989 his first novel was published, In Search Of The Crack by Penguin Books.
Elms served as a patron for the Arts Council's Architecture Week until the demise of the event in 2007.[8]
Elms, as of August 2010, broadcasts a long running radio show on BBC London 94.9 (formerly GLR), in 1999 being referred to as "its top presenter".[9] The show features reports, discussions, and call-ins about Greater London, the history, architecture, geography, city planning, language of London, in short, the minutiae of London. Guests who are acknowledged experts in their fields of study appear on a regular basis. An extract of the shows is published as a podcast every week.
In the 1980s he squatted with Sade Adu in Tottenham.[10] In around 1996, Elms moved to Camden, an area of London he promotes,[11] and where he has renovated a Georgian house. He lives there with his wife Christina, who is British-born Chinese, and their children Alice, Alfie and Maude.[12] Elms is a Queens Park Rangers F.C fan.