Fi Glover

In 1993, Glover began her BBC career as a filing clerk on various local radio stations including BBC Somerset Sound, Humberside and Northampton. She joined GLR in London, as a junior reporter and went on to present the Breakfast Show with Gideon Coe three years later, winning a silver Sony Award in 1995.[20]

In 1996, she moved to BBC Radio 5 Live, where she spent seven years as a key broadcaster in news and political coverage, presenting shows such as Sunday Service, with Charlie Whelan and Andrew Pierce, Late Night Live, the Afternoon Show and the mid-morning phone in programme.[15]

In 2004, Glover took over from Eddie Mair as host of Sunday morning news analysis programme Broadcasting House, winning a Silver Sony Award in the same year.[15]

She became the host of BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live from its inception in 2006 until 2011.[20] In May 2008, Saturday Live won Best UK Speech Programme at the Sony Awards.[21] In 2010 Radio Times readers voted Glover 9th Most Powerful Voice on Radio.[19]

In a press release of 17 March 2011, it was announced that Glover had decided to leave Saturday Live and that her replacement host would be Richard Coles.[22] Her last programme was scheduled for 2 April 2011[22] but as she lost her voice owing to a throat infection on that day, her actual last programme was on 19 March 2011 (Suzy Klein presented the programme on 26 March 2011).

Glover returned to Radio 4 with The Listening Project, a joint initiative by the British Library and the BBC, which started on 29 March 2012, aiming "to capture the nation in conversation".[2] In 2013 The Listening Project won a Bronze Sony Award in the Best Speech Programme category. [23] In 2014 she was made a Fellow of the Radio Academy.[24]

In 2015 Glover presented a series on Radio Four called Shared Experience, a programme which interviews people who have had similar, and frequently traumatic, experiences, such as being bullied at school, coping with addiction or being held hostage. A second series of Shared Experience was broadcast in 2016. [25]

In Autumn 2015, she also launched My Perfect Country on the BBC World Service, a current affairs show made in partnership with the Institute of Global Prosperity at UCL. Co-presented with Martha Lane Fox and Henrietta Moore, it became the first ever radio show to be recorded during a sitting session of the UN. It opened the UN ECOSOC session of 2016 in New York City at the invitation of the UN Secretary General.[26] My Perfect Country ran for 3 series and was followed by My Perfect City, presented with Ellie Cosgrave and Greg Clark. My Perfect City returns for a second series in autumn 2020. [3]

During 2015 and 2016 Glover also hosted Two Rooms for BBC Radio 4, a discussion programme using the notion of the focus group. It puts two different groups of people in separate rooms to discuss the same topic e.g. Brexit or immigration and then brings them together to see if they have changed their positions.[27]

On 29 March 2017, Glover, together with broadcaster Jane Garvey started a weekly podcast series on BBC Radio 4, Fortunately: A frank look behind the scenes with broadcasters Jane Garvey and Fi Glover as guests from Radio, TV and podcasting share stories they probably shouldn’t.[28] Fortunately, which has been downloaded 4.5 million times,[11] is currently No.5 in the BBC’s most popular podcasts and has been No.1 in the Apple podcast charts. From Jan 2021, it will be broadcast in a regular slot on BBC Radio 4.[14]

In addition to winning silver at the 2017 British Podcast awards, Fortunately also won Funniest Show at the 2018 ARIAS, and Bronze in the Spotlight Award at the British Podcast Awards 2019. [12] Guests on the show include Ian Wright, Anne Tyler, Monty Don, Ruth Jones, Will Young, Sara Cox, Claudia Winkleman, Miriam Margolyes, Will Self, Jeremy Vine, Ken Bruce, Tracey Thorn, Emily Maitlis, and Kirsty Wark.[29]

In April 2017, Glover launched a new series on BBC Radio Four called Glass Half Full, chairing debates between optimists and pessimists on key issues, such as health care, population growth and gender equality.[30] Glover has also made a series of occasional documentaries on different aspects of parenting, for BBC Radio 4 with producer Sarah Cuddon: Listen Without Mother in July 2014, [31] The Great Egg Freeze July 2014, [32]The Expressing Room March 2018 [33] and Dads and The Delivery Room in December 2019. [34]

Between 1997 and 2000 Glover presented The Travel Show on BBC Two.[18] In 2012 she was a participant in the BBC’s Sport Relief Does Bake Off [35] and in 2014 she hosted BBC One's six part reality history show, 24 Hours in the Past where celebrities travel back in time to try living like Victorians. [36]

Glover has also presented several editions of Newsnight and two films for the programme in 2013; The Rise of Digital Feminism, [17] and Legal Highs. [37]

In 2000, Glover travelled the world visiting notable radio stations, which resulted in the book Travels with my Radio: I am an Oil Tanker (ISBN 0-09-188274-5).[38] The title reflected the hazards of live broadcasting with Dickie Arbiter's opening statement "I am an oil tanker, Dickie Arbiter is on fire in the Gulf." The radio stations documented in the book include a temporary BBC station for the Euro 2000 football tournament, run from a café in Belgium, an English-language station in Geneva, a station run by Irish UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, and Montserrat Radio which broadcast throughout the 1996 Soufrière Hills volcano eruption.

Glover has written a weekly column for Waitrose Weekend since 2012. It went online in 2020. [39]