Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth starred in the musical revue Zipp! at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End.

Founder and artistic director of PMT (the Pocket Musical Theatre Co, the Ryanair of musical theatre), and author of the award-winning Zipp! (One hundred musicals for less than the price of one), Gyles Brandreth's varied career has ranged from playing Baron Hardup in Cinderella (with Bonnie Langford, Barbara Windsor and Brian Conley) to being a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in John Major's Government. Once the MP for Chester, in 1997 he put politics behind him and returned to the worlds of entertainment, broadcasting and journalism.

He no longer wears the colourful jumpers for which he was best known in the 1980s, but still appears on TV, in programmes ranging from Countdown to Have I Got News for You. On Radio Four his recent credits include Broadcasting House, The Motion Show and Just A Minute. He is also editor-at-large of the Sunday Telegraph Review, and a London correspondent for CBS News in the US, where his mother and brother live and where his great-great-grandfather was a New York senator.

A former Oxford scholar, President of the Oxford Union and artistic director of the Oxford Theatre Festival, Gyles Brandreth has co-produced three plays in the West End, written a musical about A A Milne with Julian Slade (the creator of Salad Days), and scripted the TV series Dear Ladies with Hinge & Bracket. His books about the theatre include biographies of Dan Leno and Harry Houdini, a history of pantomime and an acclaimed memoir of Sir John Gielgud, now out in paperback (published by Sutton).

His best-selling political diaries, Breaking the Code ("Brilliant" Daily Telegraph; "Far more perceptive and revealing than Alan Clark's" The Times) are published by Phoenix, and his novels, romantic mysteries set in the world of theatre, Who Is Nick Saint? and Venice Midnight, are both published by Warner. Brief Encounters: Meetings with Remarkable People, a collection of his interviews with princes, prime ministers and stars of stage and screen, is published by Politico's.

Gyles Brandreth, a former Chairman and now Vice-President of the National Playing Fields association, is married to writer and publisher Michele Brown. They have two cats and three children and are the co-curators of the National Portrait Gallery's celebration of twentieth century children's writers currently touring the United Kingdom, and the co-founders of the award-winning Teddy Bear Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon.