Matt Chorley is a broadcaster, writer and political stand-up comedian with two decades of experience working in Westminster.

 

He hosts the daily afternoon politics show on BBC Radio 5 Live direct from Westminster, and presents BBC 2’s flagship Newsnight on Fridays.

 

A boy from the Somerset Levels, Matt shunned university for the glamour of a career as a reporter in his hometown on the Taunton Times, before moving to London 2004 to seek fame and fortune as a member of the sketch comedy group Big Day Out.

 

Instead the three members of Big Day Out got girlfriends and proper jobs: Matt broke into Westminster as a press gallery reporter for the Press Association, spending hours day and night watching the Commons chamber from a prime seat above the Speaker, reporting on everything that was said, and learning how politics really works. He has 100 words per minute shorthand. Or used to.

 

He later became London Editor of the Western Morning News in 2006, political correspondent of the Independent on Sunday in 2010, and the first political editor of MailOnline in 2012, before joining The Times in 2016. There he went from writing a daily political newsletter to presenting the mid-morning show on Times Radio.

 

He has interviewed the last eight people to be prime minister, either before, during or after their time in Number 10.

 

In September 2024, Matt joined the BBC where in addition to his radio and TV commitments he hosts Americanswers on the BBC podcast Americast and his own podcast, Matt Chorley’s Urgent Questions.

 

A sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005 with Big Day Out led to a small 14-year break from comedy before his debut stand-up tour, This Is Not Normal in 2019, during which somebody called an election. His second tour, Who Is In Charge Here?, only had to deal with a war and the collapse of the government. He managed to get through his third tour, Poll Dancer, in 2024 just before someone else called an election. Making A Meal Of It in 2025 his fourth tour, focussing on his two areas of expertise: politics and food.

 

In 2023 he wrote the award-winning book, Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics.

 

He has appeared as a panellist on BBC 1’s Have I Got News For You and ITV’s Lorraine.

Matt lives in Hampshire with his wife and daughter. They have a golden retriever called Poppy.