Olly is a British writer and broadcaster, best known for co-hosting the Sony Award winning podcast ‘Answer Me This!’ with Helen Zaltzman. The show has been named ‘Critic’s Choice’ in publications including The Times, Time Out and Q Magazine, and, with three million downloads per year, is the most popular home-made podcast in the UK. Helen and Olly’s book of the show was published by Faber in November 2010. For more about the podcast, and to listen to clips, click here.
Olly appears regularly as a newspaper reviewer and commentator on shows including ‘Breakfast‘ (BBC 1), ‘Lorraine‘ (ITV1), ‘Jeremy Vine‘ (BBC R2), ‘Daybreak’ (ITV1), ‘The Alan Titchmarsh Show‘ (ITV1), ‘Sunrise‘ (Sky News), ‘James Max’ (LBC), ‘MacAulay and Co’ (Radio Scotland) and BBC News Channel, and as an internet and gadget expert on shows including ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon‘ (BBC R2), ‘This Morning‘ (ITV1), ‘Technology Unplugged‘ (Sky News), ‘Vanessa Feltz’ (BBC London) and ‘British Forces News‘ (BFBS). To see clips of his work on TV, click here .
In December 2009, Helen and Olly became the UK’s first podcasters to be given their own national radio show, when BBC 5 live commissioned them to write and present ‘Web 2009 with Helen and Olly‘, a ninety-minute special celebrating the year’s biggest online events in news, sport and entertainment. Following the success of the programme, Helen and Olly presented follow-up specials in 2010 and 2012, and became regular panelists on ‘Saturday Edition‘, 5 Live’s weekend magazine show presented by Chris Warburton. Each week at 8.15pm they present a fifteen minute review of the week on the web. In June 2012, Olly made his debut as a presenter on LBC 97.3FM, standing in for Cristo in the 1-5am slot. He has since presented over a dozen shows for the station and is a regular stand-in host. To hear clips, and find out more about Olly’s radio work, click here.
Olly has written gags and edited scripts for comedy shows including Celebrity Juice (ITV1), Animal Antics (BBC1), Keith’s LemonAid (ITV1), Britain Unzipped (BBC Three) and Sweat the Small Stuff (BBC Three). He is the gadget columnist for Reader’s Digest, and has written reviews and features for national newspapers including The Guardian, The Observer and The Daily Telegraph, as well as film reviews for Dale and Company. You can find out more about his writing work by clicking here, and see clips of him talking about gadgets and technology here.
Olly’s background is as a TV producer-director, with credits including BBC2′s ‘The Culture Show’, ITV’s ‘The London Programme’ and, for Yahoo! Video, the online comedy series ‘Get Your Island On‘. In 2006, Olly compiled the world’s first play to be based on real people’s blogs, Bloggers: Real Internet Diaries.
Olly read English at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Originally hailing from Stanmore, North London, Olly now lives in Highbury with his girlfriend and their pet cat.
