In profile: Sandi Toksvig

By Tom Burrows

As well as being frequently heard on the Radio 4’s The News Quiz and a regular on television shows such as Have I Got News For You, comedian Sandi Toksvig, 50, is also a keen author, having written fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults.

Sandi began her comedy career at Cambridge University, where she studied at the same time as some of her most well-known peers; Stephen Fry (Black Adder, Q.I.), Hugh Laurie, (House) and Emma Thompson (Love Actually).

It is while she was at Cambridge that she wrote and performed in the first all-woman show at the Cambridge Footlights, and later wrote some additional material for the Perrier award-winning Cambridge Footlights Revue. She was also a member of Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society while a student at Girton College, Cambridge, and moved via children's television onto the comedy circuit. She performed at the first night of The Comedy Store in London and was once part of The Comedy Store Players, an improvisational comedy team.

Her varied television appearances often included presenting panelist shows, such as Call My Bluff, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You, having appeared in the first episode in 1990.

She is a familiar voice for BBC Radio 4 listeners, as the chairman of The News Quiz, having replaced Simon Hoggart in September 2006, and continues to be the main presenter of the BBC Radio 4 travel programme Excess Baggage. She was also a frequent guest on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

She has written several fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults, starting in 1994 with Tales from the Norse's Mouth, a fiction tale for children. In 2003, she published her travel biography, Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey, about her travels in the USA, retracing her childhood. She also writes regular columns for Good Housekeeping and the Sunday Telegraph.

Commenting in an interview with The Times in December 2007, Sandi citied the book that changed her as being Rosalind Miles’ The Women's History of the World, of which she said: “I realised how much women had been written out of history”.

In October 2008 she published 'Girls Are Best', a history book for girls:

WHY IS IT HIS-STORY, NOT HER-STORY?
Girls have been around just as long as boys, haven't they? Yes! So why don't we hear more about great women from the past?


You might know of a few: JOAN OF ARC maybe, or BOADICEA or FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, but . . . did you know there were female GLADIATORS called Gladiatrices? Or that Nimkasi was the Sumerian GODDESS OF BEER? Or that it was Mary Jacob Phelps who INVENTED THE BRA?

Just because we don't hear about them doesn't mean they haven't achieved AMAZING THINGS, come up with WONDERFUL INVENTIONS or WON BATTLES!..