After Dinner Speakers: Phillip Schofield, John Cleese, Ray Winstone

Philip Scofield was born in Oldham, Manchester on April 1st, 1962. When he was two Phillip and his parents moved to Newquay in Cornwall. By the age of ten he had already decided that he would like to pursue a career in broadcasting and began to write to the BBC. He was finally offered a job in September 1979 at Broadcasting House, London, working for Radio Outside Broadcasts as a bookings clerk. At 19, Phillip left the BBC and emigrated with his family to New Zealand. On arrival he applied for jobs in broadcasting and was asked by TVNZ to front their new pop show Shazam. Within a year he began a regular Sunday morning radio programme for an Auckland station called Radio Hauraki and became a regular presenter of other television shows such as live concerts and music award ceremonies. After three and a half years he decided that it was time to return to Britain. Within four months, the BBC presentation department offered him the job of fronting Children’s BBC from the ‘Broom Cupboard’: the first time in 35 years that an ‘in-vision’ presenter had linked the weekday afternoon programmes. Philip accepted and stayed with presentation for two years. Since then he has presented four series of the BBC1 review programme ‘Take Two’, five series of the popular live Saturday morning show ‘Going Live’, three series of his own quiz show, ‘The Movie Game’, two series of the highly acclaimed travel show ‘Scofields Europe’ and a series of ‘Televisions’ Greatest Hits’ Phillip has also been awarded with the BBC/SOS Top Man on TV Award for three years running and TV Times Award for four consecutive years. 1993 also saw him awarded with the highly prestigious Show Business Personality of The Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain. Phillip married Stephanie Lowe in 1993 and they now have 2 daughters called Molly and Ruby. That year he also signed a two year contract with ITV and starred in Andrew Lloyd Webbers’s Joseph and The Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium until 2nd October. Phillip then toured the show from December 1993 until February 1995 around the UK and Eire. In December he took up the ‘DreamCoat’ again at the Oxford Apollo Theatre and in February moved to the Hammersmith Labbatts theatre through to the middle of 1996. In December 1993 Phillip also signed an exclusive contract with Carlton Television and presented a number of shows including Scofield’s Adventures in Hawaii (a one hour special), Scofield’s Quest, two series of Tenball and two Christmas specials Scofield’s Gold and Six Little Angels. Autumn 1996 saw Phillip presenting two series, One In A Million and Scofield’s TV Gold, followed by a one off Christmas special called Now We’re Talking. In autumn 1997 Talking Telephone Numbers returned for it’s fifth series and a further series of One In A Million ran through to July.The Summer of 1998 saw the launch of Phillip’s biggest project within his career to date. On the 14th July he returned to Labatts Apollo, Hammersmith to play ‘Doctor Dolittle’ in the four million pound stage production of the film ‘Doctor Dolittle’. Such has been the phenomenal success of this musical, that it was still going strong in 1999, with Phillip at the helm the show will be going out in a national tour later this year. In addition to this, he is currently in talks with the major networks about forthcoming TV projects, and at present is developing a one hour animal special with the BBC.