User:Voxpops333/sandbox

Andrew Crawford is a continuity announcer and newsreader for BBC Radio 4.

Career
He joined the BBC as a Studio Manage r in 1985 and became one of the first announcers of the BBC 648 service to Europe when it launched in 1986, alongside Catriona Young and Corrie Corfield. He spent time in 1987 as a BBC World Service announcer, before joining BBC Radio 4 as an announcer and newsreader in 1988.

In 1992, The Daily Telegraph featured an article about Crawford working on Christmas Day that year.

The radio critic Paul Donovan mentions Crawford, who was reading the news on the morning Donovan visited the studio while writing his book on the history of the Today Programme ”. Donovan says that "...like all Radio 4 announcers, he has a mellifluous voice and perfect diction". In 1998, in his Radio Waves column in The Sunday Times magazine, Donovan wrote: "Peter Donaldson, Brian Perkins, Charlotte Green and Andrew Crawford are all impeccable announcers.”

On the morning of 30 August, 1997, Crawford broke the news to the combined BBC UK Radio audience that Diana, Princess of Wales had died, as newsreader on the special programme hosted by James Naughtie and Peter Allen.

Crawford has long been the announcer of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. He appeared live to announce the 50th anniversary editions of the show at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2022. Earlier, he provided manic announcements for Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris’s early nineties news pastiche, ‘On The Hour. In 2006, he was part of the cast of ‘One’, David Quantick’s series of comedy radio monologues.

When Test Match Special transferred to Radio 4 Longwave in the 1990’s, Crawford was one of the announcers who manned the studio in London that kept TMS on air, filling the lunch and teatime gaps and sometimes joining in with the practical jokes. The commentator Jonathon Agnew recalls Crawford faxing a spoof shipping forecast i ntended only for private consumption to the commentary box. It ended up in the hands of Henry Blofeld and had to be snatched away when he started to read it out on air, unaware of the NSFW content he was about to broadcast.

In 2000, Crawford left Radio 4 but stayed at the BBC, working behind the scenes on projects and moving into management. He retired in 2021 as Head of Business for BBC News. He returned to Radio 4 in early 2022 as a freelance announcer and newsreader.