Sandi Toksvig's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) Mock The Week (UK) Sandi Toksvig Whose Line Is It Anyway? (UK) Sandi Toksvig The Graham Norton Show (UK) Sandi Toksvig V Graham Norton (UK) Sandi Toksvig Antiques Master (UK) Presenter School's Out (UK) Sandi Toksvig Noel's Telly Years (UK) Sandi Toksvig The Bigger Picture (UK) Sandi Toksvig The Big One (UK) Deddie Tolb… The Great Antiques Hunt (UK) Sandi Toksvig TX (UK) Ethel

Main Movie Roles

BIOGRAPHY:

Toksvig began her comedy career at Girton College, Cambridge University, where she wrote and performed in the first all-woman show at the Footlights. She was there at the same time as fellow members Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and Emma Thompson, and wrote additional material for the Perrier award-winning Cambridge Footlights Revue. She was also a member of Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society, 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 television career included presenting the children's series No. 73 (1982–1986) as a character called Ethel Davis, also presenting the Sandwich Quiz, The Saturday Starship, Motormouth and Gilbert's Fridge, and on factual programmes such as the archaeological Channel 4 series Time Team, Island Race, and The Talking Show, produced by Open Media for Channel 4. She has appeared as a panellist in shows such as Call My Bluff (a regular as a team captain), I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mock the Week, QI and Have I Got News for You. She appeared in the very first episode of Have I Got News For You in 1990. She is the current host of What the Dickens, a Sky Arts quiz show which has included other comedians like Sue Perkins and Jackie Clune in the cast. She is the executive producer of Playhouse Live for Sky Arts, producing specially commissioned live drama for television, and the host of BBC2's Antiques Master.

In 1996, she narrated the Dragons! interactive CD-ROM, along with Harry Enfield. The software was primarily aimed at children and featured songs and poems about dragons.

She is a familiar voice for BBC Radio 4 listeners, as the chair of The News Quiz, having replaced Simon Hoggart in September 2006. She continues to be the main presenter of its travel programme Excess Baggage. For three years until December 2005 she presented a weekday lunchtime programme on London talk radio station LBC 97.3, featuring regular guests including Bonnie Langford, Alkarim Jivani, and Annie Caulfield.

In 2002, Toksvig and Dilly Keane co-wrote a musical Big Night Out, at the Little Palace Theatre, written for the Watford Palace Theatre, in which they appeared with Bonnie Langford. Toksvig and Elly Brewer wrote a Shakespeare deconstruction, The Pocket Dream, which Toksvig performed in at the Nottingham Playhouse and which transferred to the West End for a short run. The pair also wrote the 1992 TV series The Big One, which also starred Toksvig. She has appeared in a number of stage plays, including Androcles and the Lion, Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors. Most recently Toksvig wrote a play entitled Bully Boy which focused on post traumatic stress among British servicemen. The play premiered at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in May 2011 and starred Anthony Andrews.

She wrote 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 1995, she sailed around the coast of Britain with John McCarthy. In 2003, she published her travel biography, Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey, about her travels in the USA retracing her childhood. She writes regular columns for Good Housekeeping, the Sunday Telegraph and The Lady. In October 2008 she published Girls Are Best, a history book for girls. In 2009 her collected columns for the Sunday Telegraph were published in book form as The Chain of Curiosity.

She appeared in Doctor Who audio drama Red by Big Finish Productions, released in August 2006.

In December 2006, she hosted and sang at the London Gay Men's Chorus sold out Christmas show, Make the Yuletide Gay at the Barbican Centre.

In 2007 she was named Political Humorist of the Year at the Channel 4 Political Awards and Radio Broadcaster of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild. Over Christmas and New Year 2007/8 she played the narrator in the pantomime Cinderella at the Old Vic Theatre. In 2008 she was named Broadcaster of the Year at the Stonewall Awards. In 2009 she received the Voice of the Viewer and Listener Award for Individual Contribution to Radio. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary PhD by the University of Portsmouth.


TRIVIA:

• Has a First Class Honours Degree in Archaeology and Anthropology from Girton College, University of Cambridge.
• Journalist and comedienne daughter of fellow journalist 'Claus Toksvig' (qv).
• Although born in Denmark, she grew up in the USA until, at the age of 14, she moved to the UK, where she has lived ever since.
• In the Independent on Sunday [UK] 2006 Pink List, a list of the most influential gay men and women, Toksvig came #85, a new entry.