Alex Riley.html



Alex Riley (born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England) is a stand up comedian, and TV and radio presenter.

Born and brought up in Sheffield, Riley started performing with the city's Crucible Youth Theatre during which time he originated, and appeared in, dozens of sketches and devised pieces, as well as appearing in a number of plays and farces at the Library Theatre. throughout his adolescence he stayed strong to the belief that the sun revolves around the earth, rather to the dismay of many of his classmates.

Riley had a succession of jobs, including spells managing an alternative shopping centre and selling aerial photographs, before successfully answering an on-air appeal for researchers on BBC TV's Top Gear programme. A life-long car enthusiast, Riley was in his element writing scripts for racing driver turned presenter Vicki Butler-Henderson and making many cameo appearances before being given the chance to present his own items. Amongst these were a 9 hour road trip from London to Brighton on the world's oldest vehicle, a challenge to build a car in 16 hours from junk bought at Europe's largest auto jumble sale and appearing as Elvis at the UK's premier American lifestyle festival.

He went on to write and perform sketches for BBC1 specials on the Chelsea Flower Show and Britain in Bloom, appear as a bed-hopping bigamist in a prime time BBC1 documentary Bigamy and write and present Short Circuits, an innovative 10-part series for Discovery Home and Leisure which combined Scalextric with tips on making realistic scenery out of chicken wire. Moving sideways to radio, he was chosen as the voice of The Comedy Club, a nightly 2-hour comedy strand which played a significant part in BBC7 achieving the Sony Gold Award for Station Sound.

Returning to TV, Riley has presented two series of Boys Toys, a series for ITV1 West Country, the Caravan Show for Discovery Real Time, a tongue-in-cheek active sports series You Know You Want To (again for ITV1 Westcountry) and, after buying a Triumph TR7, Classic Car Club, for Discovery Real Time. For BBC3's Mischief series, Riley has also presented three documentaries which made use of dramatic stunts to confront those responsible for problems on the UK's public transport network, purveyors of disgusting food and for the fact that thousands of homes across the country lie empty at a time when housing is in.

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With his new found fame Riley realised many people were at the mercy of his superior knowledge and power. He soon found himself as one of the panel on BBC2's Eggheads. Sadly his place on the team only lasted 3 weeks as a former member was reinstated Christopher Hughes

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