ANTHEA Turner
Presenter of POSTCARDS FROM PARADISE
Anthea Turner began her broadcasting career in BBC local radio presenting road traffic reports and later worked for Signal Radio in Stoke as promotions manager and outside broadcast producer.
Anthea's move into television was through Sky Channel presenting live music programmes from July 1986 - 1989. Her debut on national television was with the BBC on But First This which led to Anthea fronting two series for the BBC on the Saturday morning show Up2U. She then spent 3 years as the only non-Radio One DJ to regularly present Britain's most successful TV music show Top of the Pops. Her first adult TV show was Best of Magic which she co-hosted with Simon Mayo.
On 14th September 1992 Anthea became the 19th presenters of the award winning BBC 1 flagship children’s programme, Blue Peter. During her two years with the programme until 1994 she launched the most successful ‘make’ in the history of Blue Peter with in excess of 100,000 viewers writing in for details on Tracy Island.
In May 1994, Anthea was invited to introduce the Children’s Royal Variety Performance for the BBC in the presence of HRH Princess Margaret. Later that year Anthea was selected by the BBC as one of the three presenters to present the historic live opening of the Channel Tunnel.
In June 1994 Anthea joined the network broadcaster GMTV alongside Eamonn Holmes where she anchored the 7.00am - 9.00am time slot 5 days a week.
On 19 November 1994 Anthea became the first presenters of BBC 1’s National Lottery Live programme, which quickly became BBC television’s highest rated entertainment programme. She presented her last Lottery programme on April 20th 1996.
Anthea has also successfully presented a selection of videos with her Y Plan Fitness Videos selling in excess of one million units, leading to further successful releases including Body Basics and Tone, Lift & Condition. In 1995 she won the award for Best Dressed Woman on Television and signed a 2 year deal with Carlton Television to present a number of major light entertainment shows on network ITV.
In February 1996 Anthea won the prestigious Showbusiness Personality of the Year awarded by The Variety Club of Great Britain and was then voted ‘BBC Personality of the Year’ by the television industry the following month.
Anthea presented her last GMTV in December 1996 and early ‘97 saw her presenting a highly successful six part series called Pet Power; this was followed by a major one-off special entitled Change Your Life Forever. Anthea then went on to present the critically acclaimed Turner Round The World before hosting a new series of Wish You Were Here which she signed to in summer 1997. In addition to these programmes, she managed to find time to front the National Lottery Live 3rd Birthday show in the November of that year. March 1998 saw Anthea resume her association once again with the Lottery when she presented The National Lottery Big Ticket Show with Patrick Kielty for a 16 week series.
1999 saw Anthea complete her second, and final, series of Wish You Were Here. July 2000 saw Anthea and her sister front a brand new Saturday night show for the BBC called Your Kids Are In Charge and October saw the release of her autobiography ‘Fools Rush In’ published by Little Brown Publishers.
March 2001 saw Anthea take part in the most talked about show of the year so far ‘Celebrity Big Brother’.
Anthea currently is involved in property development in the UK.