Ian Clayton

Ian Clayton presented his first television programme in 1988. It was for BBC 2's Open Space series, a half hour documentary called "On earth to make the numbers up." The programme looked at community based artwork in Yorkshire and featured local writers, painters, sculptors, actors and musicians. Ian scripted the piece as well and the resulting work was nominated in that years Bafta's.

He then wrote, presented and narrated a 40 minute special for the "Late Show" set in Wakefield's top security prison. Working alongside musicians performers and technicians from Opera North and teachers and life serving inmates from the jail, a piece of musical theatre was devised, scripted, rehearsed and performed within a fortnight. Tracy Mcleod introduced the show as "Wakefield Jailhouse Opera." It was directed by Ray Hough and commissioned by Alan Yentob.

In 1994 Ian became a presenter on Yorkshire Television's popular early evening magazine "Tonight". In nearly ten years he presented almost 500 five minute films covering a wide range of topics, from local food to follies and unusual buildings, from coastal journeys to disappearing crafts and trades as well as stories from markets, pubs, cafes, canals, churches and castles. Also in this period he presented a thirteen x half hour series for Discovery Home and Leisure about people who restore things, everything from tractors to windmills and steam trains to a second world war U boat!

Over the past four or five years Ian has presented documentary series and one off commissions. He became well known for a half hour programme called "My Yorkshire" which looks at the region through the eyes of various people from politicians to musicians and from artists to aristocrats.

Ian's career highlights include interviewing Prince Andrew in his private rooms at Buckingham Palace for a series about photography, embarking on a six week tour of America for a ten parter called "My Big Trip" and spending a week with the orphans of Belarus for a programme called "With a little help from our friends" about the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Ian has presented, light, heavy, comical and serious as it gets with a natural inquisitiveness that is rooted in his other parallel career as a storyteller and writer. He has also had published 44 books, the most recent of which are "Entertaining Angels" a book that has raised more than �70 000 for homeless people in Leeds and his own musical memoir "Bringing it all back home" which was described by "Record Collector" magazine as "One of the best books about popular music ever written" and by "the Independent on Sunday as "Flawless."

Ian was on a shortlist of three for "Presenter of the Year" 2007 in the Royal Television Society, Yorkshire Centre awards.

He lists his hobbies and interests as tap-room conversation, gentle subversion, finding out about the English music hall tradition and folklore. He is an internationally known authority on the life and works of the jazz singer Billie Holiday and has contributed to two BBC documentaries about her.