Tom Binns
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Tom Binns is a British writer, stand up comic and television and radio presenter. He was nominated for the If.comedy award 2007 as the Hosptial Radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury at the Edinburgh Festival. He was also one of the winners of The Spirit of the Fringe Award. Aside from his involvement in writing comedy sketches, his role as a radio presenter is often referred to, due to his behaviour on the radio programme, "The Tom Binns breakfast show" on London-based Xfm, which led to three complaints being filed to Ofcom and a £50,000 fine given to Xfm. At the time this was the largest fine award by the authority. The fine was due to the use of coarse sexual innuendo when discussing a bestial pornography video with a listener. The comments only led to complaints when the show was edited and rebroadcast by XFM in a weekend compilation show. [1]
Binns has received several accolades; in 1999, Melody Maker readers voted his show one of the best of the year -- followed in 2002, by More magazine readers, who voted him as the 25th sexiest man in the world. Aside from working at Xfm London, Binns has also worked at several other radio stations with similar positions on Radio 1, Virgin, BRMB and GLR, either as himself or his Hospital Radio Character, Ivan Brackenbury, as well as on Virgin Radio and has hosted talk shows on Talksport UK, Hallam FM, Sheffield and Key 103, Manchester.
As well as writing comedy for Jamie Theakston, Armando Iannucci, Lilly Savage, Binns has appeared on other Television shows, such as RI:SE, Bull Run, Oblivion and as a writer on Trigger Happy TV, which he gained recognition for as he earned "The best comedy moment" and "TV moment of 2001" awards. His first television appearances were Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (BBC2), Friday Night Armistice (BBC2) and Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun, and has gone on to further appear in the Channel 4-based late night sports talk show Under the Moon, with Danny Kelly and stage appearances at the Bloomsbury Theatre.
Tom has written a deeply ironic book How to Get Famous - a cynical guide. Although he has recorded many pilots for TV shows, including his own chat show on Channel 5 and the UK version of Hollywood Squares, Binns has failed to break through into the mainstream British media.
He's in the BBC Mi5 drama "Spooks" Episode 6 Series 6
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
- ^ BBC News (1999) -- Article describing the nature of complaints against Tom Binns on Xfm
[edit] News Items
- BBC News authors, et al. (1999) "Record fines for radio stations" -- Retrieved on 01 February 2007 from [1] London:British Broadcasting Corporation
