David Stafford is a writer, broadcaster and occasional musician born 1949 in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Stafford began his career in fringe

Fringe theatre

Fringe theatre is theatre that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which name comes from Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival as a ‘fringe’, writing: ‘Round the fringe...

 and community theatre

Community theatre

Community theatre refers to theatrical performance made in relation to particular communities—its usage includes theatre made by, with, and for a community...

 in the 1970s. In the early eighties, he collaborated and toured with Alexei Sayle

Alexei Sayle

Alexei David Sayle is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007...

, which resulted in two series for Capital Radio

Capital Radio

Capital London is a London based radio station which launched on 16 October 1973 and is owned by Global Radio. On 3 January 2011 it formed part of the nine station Capital radio network.- Pre-launch :...

, two plays for TV, a book, Great Bus Journeys of the World, and various songs and recordings including Doctor Marten's Boots. At the same time he was a presenter on the Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 consumer programme 4 What It’s Worth, contributed to many arts programmes and documentaries including The Media Show (Channel 4) and extensively to The Late Show (BBC2). His TV plays include Dread Poets Society (BBC2) co-written with the poet Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is an English writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature, and was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008....

. For ten years he also wrote a weekly column for the Saturday Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, eventually called Staffordshire Bull.

During the nineties

1990s

File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...

 he presented Tracks for BBC2, Going Places for BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 and was a regular panellist on Radio 4’s literary parody game, Booked. More recently he has collaborated with his wife Caroline, writing comedies and dramas, mostly for radio, including Man of Soup, The Brothers, Hazelbeach, The True and Inspirational Life Of St Nicholas,The Day The Planes Came and Norman Birkett and the Case of the Coleford Poisoner. They are currently collaborating on a biography of Lionel Bart

Lionel Bart

Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

. He took over from Pete McCarthy

Pete McCarthy

Pete McCarthy , was a British broadcaster and successful travel writer, noted for his books McCarthy's Bar and The Road to McCarthy.-Biography:...

 as host of the Radio 4 panel game X Marks the Spot, and frequently stood in for John Peel

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

 as the presenter of Home Truths

Home Truths

Home Truths was a weekly BBC Radio 4 programme which began on 11 April 1998 and was usually hosted by the DJ John Peel until his death in October 2004. In the Saturday 9-10am slot, it gradually became one of Radio 4's most successful programmes....

. After Peel's death he became first one of the pool of presenters and later sole presenter of the programme. He is regular presenter on BBC West's Inside Out.

He lives in North London

North London

North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...

with his wife Caroline and their three children.