Jeremy Guy Vine (born 17 May 1965) is an English television and radio personality, presenter, broadcaster and journalist. He is best known as the host of his BBC Radio 2 lunchtime programme which presents news, views, interviews with live guests and popular music, taking over from long time host Sir Jimmy Young in 2003. Vine is also the host of the Channel 5 (formerly BBC Two) quiz programme Eggheads, taking over from former host Dermot Murnaghan full-time in 2014. In 2015, he was a contestant on the 13th series of Strictly Come Dancing. Since September 2018, he has presented his own eponymous Channel 5 daily current affairs show called Jeremy Vine. Early life Jeremy Vine was born in Epsom, Surrey. He is the elder son of Guy Vine (1937-2018), lecturer in civil engineering at North East Surrey College of Technology, and Diana (née Tillett), who was a housewife and later a doctor's receptionist. Vine has two siblings; a sister called Sonya and a brother, Tim. Vine was educated at Lynton Preparatory School in Ewell, then Aberdour School in Burgh Heath, and then Epsom College. He played the drums in a band called The Flared Generation, of which his brother Tim was also a member; Smash Hits magazine described them as "the most unfashionable punk band in the country". At Durham University (Hatfield College), he graduated with a 2:2 undergraduate degree in English. He was a member of the sketch comedy group, The Durham Revue, and was an editor of the student newspaper, Palatinate. Jeremy cut his radio-teeth on Durham Hospitals Radio, as a volunteer. After a short stint on Metro Radio, Vine enrolled in a journalism training course with the Coventry Evening Telegraph, before joining the BBC in 1987. Broadcasting career Vine's career at the BBC included reading the news on the radio in Northern Ireland and working as a researcher on the BBC1 series Heart of the Matter. In 1989, he became a regular reporter on the BBC Radio 4 programme Today, filing reports from across Europe. While working for Today, he published two comic novels set amidst the modern Church of England, including Forget Heaven, Just Kiss Me (1992) and The Whole World in My Hands (1993). The novels were not successful and Vine now regards them as juvenilia. In the mid-1990s, Vine became familiar to BBC TV viewers as a political reporter, which included reporting on the