Adrian Chiles

Adrian Chiles (born 21 March 1967) is a British writer and television and radio presenter.

He has since created, scripted and fronted a variety of other programmes for the BBC including, for BBC Two, the 2003 series So What Do You Do All Day? – a look at the lives of the rich and famous – and Asian Millionaires.

For BBC One he created and fronted Royal Millions, an investigation of the Queen's finances, as well as reports for Panorama and various documentaries.

From 2006 until 2009, Chiles presented the spin-off series of the popular UK television show The Apprentice called The Apprentice: You're Fired! in which he interviews the latest candidate to be fired.

During August 2006 Chiles co-presented a pilot of a new BBC One early-evening magazine programme, The One Show.

In the run-up to the 2006 World Cup, he was an integral part of BBC Three's African Cup of Nations coverage.

He was also a member of the BBC's World Cup team, often bringing viewers late night highlights.

He has co-presented both The One Show (2007–2010) and Daybreak (2010–2011) with Christine Lampard.

The programme was re-commissioned for 2007 with Chiles returning as host, leaving Working Lunch.

In April 2007, Chiles was a guest host of BBC One's satirical news quiz, Have I Got News for You.

He was a main presenter of the BBC's Euro 2008 coverage and was one of the anchors of the morning 2008 Olympics coverage from Beijing.

After news media speculation suggesting that the BBC wished to increase the popularity of The One Show on Fridays by introducing Chris Evans alongside Christine Lampard in an extended one-hour format, Chiles was said to be discussing a contract with ITV.

He left the BBC in 2009, and was replaced by Dara Ó Briain.

He was also the chief presenter for football coverage on ITV Sport from 2010 until 2015.

His journalistic training and love of football resulted in his presenting business programmes such as Working Lunch and The Money Programme as well as sports programmes like Match of the Day 2.

He currently works for BBC Radio 5 Live.

Chiles was born in Quinton, Birmingham, to an English father and Croatian mother, and moved a few miles away to Hagley, Worcestershire at the age of four.

His Birmingham accent is a feature of his presentations.

He also speaks Croatian, despite having a self-confessed imperfect understanding of the language's verbs, declensions, and cases.

Chiles started his education at Haybridge High School, and then worked in his father's scaffolding business, before graduating with a degree in English literature from the University of London (studying at Westfield College, now part of Queen Mary, University of London).

Before going to university he was a keen amateur actor, appearing in the Crescent Theatre's musical production of Mary O'Malley's Once A Catholic and Sandy Wilson's The Cheese.

After university, while waiting for his broken leg to heal from an amateur football incident, he applied for and failed both Civil Service exams, before being asked to apply for MI5 — he failed the second interview.

He studied journalism at Cardiff and then worked as a sports reporter for the News of the World.

Chiles joined the BBC, originally for work experience on Business Breakfast.

Chiles' experience from Financial World Tonight led to him fronting the BBC Two business show Working Lunch, where he came to popular notice.

Chiles' last appearance on The One Show was on 30 April 2010 and his favourite guest from the programme, rock singer Robert Plant, appeared again.

His final show also saw video tributes to an emotional Chiles from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and political leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

In January 2016, Chiles returned to BBC television, where he fronted a 2-part religion/travel series My Mediterranean with Adrian Chiles for BBC Two.

In July 2016, he presented a special edition of Panorama called "Why We Voted to Leave: Britain Speaks" for BBC One.

In November 2016, he fronted one-off documentary Whites v Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation for BBC Two.

Chiles co-presented Christine and Adrian's Friendship Test, a three-part documentary series with Christine Lampard.

The series was broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland in November 2017.

In August 2018, Chiles presented a BBC Two documentary entitled Drinkers Like Me in which he admitted to regularly drinking in excess of 100 units of alcohol per week and investigated why alcohol had become such a big part of his life.

As part of the programme, a doctor carried out a Fibroscan liver test on him, which produced a score of 8.9, indicating mild/moderate fibrosis of the liver and significant hepatic steatosis.

In December 2018, Chiles participated with four other celebrities, in series one, episode five of I'll Get This, for BBC Two which involved part quiz, part peer vote, with the losing celebrity paying the entire restaurant bill for their table.

In December 2023, Chiles presented the second series of My Life At Christmas (the first series was presented by Sally Phillips).

The programme was commissioned by the BBC's Religious department, and saw him interviewing Oti Mabuse, John Simpson, and Martin and Shirlie Kemp.''

When the BBC won back the rights to Premier League football, Chiles became the host of Match of the Day 2 on Sundays.

On 1 January 2019, he hosted a follow-up programme on BBC Radio 4 called "Brexit: bewitched, bothered or bewildered?"

in which he spoke again to the same people – more than two years on – on how they now felt about Brexit.