Amol is part of the Today presenting team and host of University Challenge. Previously he was the BBC’s first Media Editor, leading its journalism on media and technology globally. Before joining the BBC, Amol was the Editor of The Independent, and a restaurant critic for several years, leading to occasional appearances on MasterChef.
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Amol Rajan is a presenter on Radio 4’s Today programme, and the host of University Challenge. He previously was the BBC’s first Media Editor covering the impact of the rapidly changing media landscape on politics, business, and culture. He was the youngest Editor of a broadsheet newspaper in Britain and the first from an ethnic minority in more than a century when he was appointed by The Independent at the age of twenty-nine.
Born in Calcutta, India, Amol moved to London when he was three and grew up in South London. He read English at Downing College, University of Cambridge, during which time he edited Varsity, the student newspaper. At the age of eighteen he spent a gap year in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Amol got his break into television on The Wright Stuff on Channel 5, before joining The Independent and filling a variety of roles as news reporter, sports correspondent, columnist, and comment editor. He also wrote a column in the Evening Standard and was restaurant critic for The Independent on Sunday. He was then appointed Editor of The Independent and stayed on as Editor -at-Large as the paper transformed from a printed paper to a digital only product.
Amol joined the BBC as its first ever Media Editor leading its journalism on media and technology globally. He has also regularly provided holiday cover for presenters on Radio 2, presented the Media Show on Radio 4, and has been an occasional presenter on The One Show.
Amol has presented The Imperial Inversion of Cricket, Archive on 4: Rivers of Blood, and The Decline of the West, as well as appearing on Question Time, MasterChef, Great British Menu, Newsnight, The Daily Politics, The Andrew Marr Show, and Celebrity Mastermind where he finished second with his specialist subject Shane Warne. He also presented a two-part TV documentary, and a ten-part podcast, on Britain's royal family.
As part of his show Amol Rajan Interviews, he has spoken to Greta Thunberg, Bill Gates, Nile Rodgers, Ian McKellen, Novak Djokovic, and Billie Jean King.
In his book Twirlymen: The Unlikely History of Cricket’s Greatest Spin Bowlers, Amol tells the story of the cerebral artists who mystify batsmen to conjure wickets out of thin air. Rethink: How We Can Make a Better World, is based on Amol’s podcast and has contributions from major international figures examining how public and private life can be improved post-pandemic.
