Jon Holmes

Early life

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Holmes was raised in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. He attended Canterbury Christ Church College, where he graduated with a joint degree in English with Radio, Film and Television. While at university he became involved with its radio station C4 Radio, and also wrote, directed and performed in various student revue shows; he was also a presenter on Canterbury's local radio station KMFM Canterbury (then CTFM).

Career

After graduation, Holmes's first foray into BBC radio comedy was for BBC Radio 4 with his debut comedy series Grievous Bodily Radio in 1997. He also had a show on Power FM on Sunday nights. The Jon & Andy Show (with Andy Hurst), which Holmes presented during 1998–2000, won him a gold Sony Radio Academy Award for entertainment. This was where Holmes began to acquire his reputation for controversy with on air interactive listener games such as 'I'm Standing On...' (a time trial in which listeners were encouraged to stand on their neighbour's car or wheelie bin, etc. and shout "I'm Standing On....' whatever it was until their angry neighbour came out and shouted abuse).

In 2001 Holmes co-created the Radio 4 show Dead Ringers, for which he jointly won his second gold Sony, and the show transferred to BBC Two.

He then moved to XFM London "for approximately an hour" before being fired for going to the toilet on air in fellow presenter Dermot O'Leary's desk drawer. Subsequently signed by Virgin radio, the late-night Jon Holmes show on Virgin Radio ran from 2001 to 2002, but Holmes was fired after several controversial stunts. Virgin were fined a record £75,000 for Holmes' feature "Swearing Radio Hangman for the Under-12s", in which he persuaded a nine-year-old girl to spell out and then repeat the phrase "soapy tit wank". Unrepentant, Holmes’ official website boasts: "Jon still holds the record for 'largest fine ever for taste and decency offences in British broadcasting'. Sadly he didn’t get a certificate or anything."

Meanwhile, on BBC Radio 4, Holmes was writing and appearing on The Now Show and The 99p Challenge, where he first worked with Armando Iannucci. Since then he has worked with Iannucci on Gash (Channel 4, 2003) and Time Trumpet (BBC2, 2006), and in 2006 he received his sixth Sony Award for his work on Radio 4's Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive.

He also hosted a spin-off BBC Radio 7 radio series and official podcast of the American drama series Heroes, featuring on BBC Two in the UK.

Throughout 2007, Holmes presented the Friday afternoon drivetime show on London talk station LBC, leaving in January 2008 when the station's new owners made the station more news-based.

In November 2007 he began a new Radio 4 series, Listen Against, which he co-presents with newsreader Alice Arnold. The show "takes the programmes out of the radio, fiddles around with them and then puts them back together the wrong way round". The programme was well received, The Daily Telegraph calling the show "beautifully crafted" and "sharp". The Guardian described it as "the mischievous offspring of Radio 4's Feedback and The Day Today. Series 2 began on Radio 4 in November 2008 and Series 3 was broadcast in the summer of 2010. "Were the Python team starting out today, they might conceivably come up with something like the utterly fabulous Listen Against." – Independent on Sunday. "Sly, satirical, smart and very funny. Natural successor to on the Hour and The Day Today." - Sunday Telegraph. The show was listed in the Telegraph's 'Top 10 Programmes of 2010' and was nominated for The Independent's 2010 'Why I Pay My Licence Fee' Award.

A BBC Radio 2 film panel show, I'm Spartacus, aired on the network in April 2009 while also on Radio 2. Holmes co-writes and presents The Day the Music Died alongside Andrew Collins. He has also fronted his own BBC Radio 1 show and from 2006 to 2012 had his own weekend show on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Holmes is a regular contributor to the Radio 4 programme Loose Ends where he interviews a variety of big-name guests, while on BBC Radio 5Live he produces the quirky magazine show Men's Hour and presents Mobo Rule with Jon Holmes, described as 'points of view for nutters".

On 19 December 2012, it was announced that Holmes would be taking over from Danny Wallace as presenter of the XFM London breakfast show from 7 January 2013. A podcast to accompany the show was released on 11 January 2013, charting at number 13 in the UK iTunes Podcast chart. The show runs on weekdays between 6 and 10am. Holmes made the headlines again after a controversial joke about the Irish at the Winter Olympics. Holmes was nominated for 'Presenter of the Year' at the 2015 Commercial Radio Awards.

In 2016, Holmes' contract for The Now Show was not renewed after 18 years, according to the performer because of the BBC's obligation to increase the proportion of women and ethnic minorities featured in their programmes. Holmes has stated that he was informed of this reason for the non-renewal of his contract in a telephone call from a BBC manager. After tweeting the quote, the BBC said the reason was solely creative and a spokesman for the corporation said "we always hire presenters on merit".

BBC Radio 6 Music

Between 2007 and 2017 Holmes presented a BBC Radio 6 Music show every Saturday at 2pm, where he "plays some music and messes around in the gaps" alongside his friend and sidekick, David Whitehead, and producer Adam Hudson. The format of the show was similar to satirist Chris Morris's radio shows from the late 80s and early 90s. Heavily inspired themes include spoof news items, voiceovers and contributions from children, spoken words from various broadcasters and politicians cut up and re-edited into nonsense and a general subversive edginess very much in the Morris style.

BBC Radio 2

Holmes occasionally replaces holidaying presenters on Radio 2, with co-presenter Miranda Hart. In October 2011 he attracted criticism after co-hosting The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Hart while Chris Evans was on holiday. The website Digital Spy reported that some listeners were unhappy with the quality of the programme. The BBC issued a statement in response saying, "Miranda Hart is one of the UK's best-loved comedians and BBC Radio 2 felt it appropriate to bring her warmth to its audience for a week. Jon Holmes is a highly experienced presenter from BBC Radio 6 Music [...] BBC Radio 2 appreciates if their presentation wasn't to everyone's liking, but feels it's important to be able to bring new talent to its output and hopes its audience understands the importance of maintaining a breadth of content on the network."

In the summer of 2012, Holmes stood in for comedian Graham Norton, presenting solo on Saturday mornings 10-1. The format was similar to Holmes's BBC 6 Music show but extra features included guests and live music in "His Busker's Voice' which was a live music session from buskers that Jon had literally "dragged in from the street".

XFM and Radio X

Holmes hosted The XFM London Daily Breakfast Show, alongside Matt Dyson, Dave Masterman and a series of interns from 7 January 2013. He was nominated for Best Radio Presenter in the 2015 Commercial Radio Awards.

On 7 September 2015, after a summer of press rumours that he was being axed from XFM in favour of former Radio 1 Breakfast DJ Chris Moyles it was announced that Holmes would be moving from the daily breakfast show to its weekend counterpart, as part of the relaunch of the station as Radio X. It was also confirmed that Moyles would run the new station's breakfast show in direct competition with his Radio 1 successor Nick Grimshaw.

In a tweet to his fans Holmes said: "Thanks for all kind twitters. Am indeed going be on the all new shiny #RadioX for weekend breakfast. Starts 26th September."

Holmes left the station in 2016, in order to host a show on talkRADIO.

talkRADIO

On Monday 7 March 2016, Holmes was revealed to be the afternoon presenter on the newly launched talkRADIO.

Jon often refers to the TV show B. J. and the Bear. He is amazed that Bear is a chimpanzee rather than a bear. His sidekicks (often described as disappointing) appear not to agree with his fondness of the show.

Television

Holmes co-wrote and appeared in 2009 Unwrapped, a review of the year for BBC Two but with entirely fabricated news stories with judicious use of re-edited news footage and video archive not dissimilar to Holmes's own Listen Against on Radio 4. The show aired at Christmas 2009 to favourable reviews.

He co-writes BBC1's The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson. The show was a big hit for Saturday nights and a second series was scheduled to air in autumn 2010. Holmes also co-writes Horrible Histories for BBC One, for which he won two BAFTAs in 2010 as part of the writing team.

Apart from the transfer of Radio 4's Dead Ringers, in 2002 Holmes co-presented the fifth series of The Eleven O'Clock Show on Channel 4 television with Sarah Alexander. He wrote for Graham Norton on his award-winning Channel 4 show V Graham Norton and co-presented BBC3's The State We're In, in which he was beaten up by the SAS. Holmes wrote and appeared in Gash, a nightly politics programme which was broadcast to coincide with the 2003 local elections and presented by Armando Iannucci. He also co-wrote Iannucci's Time Trumpet for BBC2.

In 2005, with Dead Ringers's Jon Culshaw, Holmes co-wrote and script edited ITV1's The Impressionable Jon Culshaw. He also played various roles in various sketches. The show was nominated for the Golden Rose of Montreux TV Award.

Selected other credits include Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week and The Harry Hill Show. He is also the voice of BBC Three's 7 Days and Crash Test Danny for the Discovery Channel.

He regularly appears on Sky News to preview the following morning's newspapers.

Other media

Holmes's first book, Status Quo and the Kangaroo, was published in hardback by Penguin May 2007 and has since been published in Australia, Canada, the US and India and has been translated into Russian. The paperback Rock Star Babylon was published in the UK in September 2008. 2009 saw the publication of another book, The Now Show Book of World Records, which Holmes co-wrote with Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. He also co-wrote (with Mitch Benn) The History of the World Through Twitter, described as "hundreds of characters from history tweeting each other in 140 characters or less – as if Twitter had existed since the dawn of time.". Both books were published in October 2009.

His new book, A Portrait of An Idiot As A Young Man - "part memoir, part explanation as to why men are so rubbish" - is due to be published in paperback in September 2016.

He has been a Sunday Times columnist and has written for The Guardian, The Times and the Radio Times, among others. He is now a travel writer for the Sunday Times.

Holmes also co-wrote Stephen Fry's script for the BAFTA Film Awards and has hosted the MOJO Awards and the Radio Production Awards.

He toured the UK in 2008/2009 reading from his book Rock Star Babylon (for which Stephen Fry voiced the footnotes) and in August 2009 played the Edinburgh Comedy Festival to nine star reviews, although these stars were fairly well split across various newspapers.

On 15 September 2010, Holmes, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.

Awards

Holmes has won two BAFTAs, eight Gold Sony Radio Awards, two British Comedy Awards, a Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Radio Show and was a nominee, for The Now Show, for a Channel 4 Political Award. He was also nominated for a Rose D'or for his work on The Impressionable Jon Culshaw, for ITV1.

He has been nominated for two more BAFTAS a Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award and was made a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.