Gyles Brandreth's varied career has ranged from playing Baron Hardup in Cinderella to being a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in John Major's government.

Known for the colourful jumpers he wore on countless game shows and on TV-am in the 1970s and 1980s, he became the MP for the City of Chester in 1992. In 1997, with politics behind him, he returned to a career in writing and broadcasting. He is the children's publisher with Andre Deutsch and editorial consultant to Whitaker's Almanack. With his wife Michele, he is the founder of the award-winning Teddy Bear Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is a former chairman and now vice-president of the National Playing Fields Association, the national trust of recreational space.

A member of Trevor McDonald's Better English campaign and the founder of the National Scrabble Championships in 1971, he has featured in the Guinness Book of Records for making the longest-ever after-dinner speech - lasting twelve and a half hours. He is also editor-at-large of the Sunday Telegraph Review. On Sundays, from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm, Gyles Brandreth presents LBC's weekly arts, entertainment and lifestyle review on LBC 1152. On Monday nights Gyles presents London Comment on Up to the Minute for CBS network TV in the US.

He has appeared on ITV with his Video Diaries and on Just a Minute, Call My Bluff and Have I Got News for You on BBC TV. His recent work Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries was described as "by far the best political diary of recent years, far more perceptive and revealing than Alan Clark's" - The Times.