After Dinner Speakers: Declan Currie, Nicholas Parsons, Billy Idol

Declan Curry is the front man for the BBC's business news from the moment you eat your cornflakes until the time you're ready to start lunch. Declan is the main Business Presenter on Breakfast. But, instead of going home after the show, he stays on the BBC's award-winning News 24 until noon, bringing us regular business updates and all the breaking news. He broadcasts on Breakfast each week day morning from the studios of the London Stock Exchange, covering a wide range of stories about business, work and money. And, of course, trying to extract news and views from chief executives, trade union leaders, stock market watchers, private investors and individual workers. Once Breakfast is off air, it's a dash through the rush hour traffic back to the BBC's Television Centre for those News 24 updates; then most afternoons, he goes back to the City for meetings and hush-hush gossiping in the wine bars. Each weekend, Declan also joins with Tanya Beckett and Sara Coburn to explain the basics of money management on News 24's personal finance programme, It's Your Money. Declan has been a business presenter with BBC News 24 since the channel's launch in 1997. He has also broadcast for the BBC's international news channel, BBC World, and has just completed a two-year stint as a daily business commentator in the United States for ABC News. Before that, he presented BBC Radio 5 Live's early morning business programme, Wake up to Money, and produced and reported for a range of programmes, including Radio 4's personal finance flagship Moneybox, Radio 5 Live's Financial World Tonight, and World Service Radio's World Business Report. He has also worked for the London-based commercial news station LBC, and writes for a wide range of newspapers, magazines and industry publications in the UK, the Irish Republic and the United States. He was born and raised in Northern Ireland, but moved to London 10 years ago to study chemistry. He lives in west London.