Danny Baker

Danny Baker is an English comedy writer, journalist, radio DJ and screenwriter. Throughout his career he has largely presented for London's regional radio and television. Baker was born in Deptford to a working-class family and raised in Bermondsey. From 1977 he wrote for the punk zine Sniffin' Glue, and from there was hired by the New Musical Express, where he worked as a writer, reviewer, and interviewer. Moving into television in 1980, he began presenting London Weekend Television's Twentieth Century Box and reporting for The Six O'Clock Show. In 1989 he began radio presenting for BBC Radio London and in 1990 joined the newly established BBC Radio 5. In 1997 he was dismissed from the latter, accused of inciting threatening behaviour toward a football referee. That decade, he also began writing for television. From 2002 to 2012 Baker presented the daily morning radio show on BBC Radio London and in 2007 also presented the channel's all-day podcast, the All Day Breakfast Show. Between 2012 and 2017 he published a three-volume autobiography, which was used as the basis for the 2015 BBC sitcom Cradle to Grave. In 2019, the BBC dismissed Baker after he posted a tweet that featured a vintage photograph of a couple holding hands with a costumed chimpanzee. His accompanying text, "Royal baby leaves hospital," referred to the (at the time) recent announcement of the birth of Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, but was interpreted by many as Baker mocking The Duchess of Sussex's racial heritage. Baker denied any racial motivation for the tweet.