Michael Portillo - Media Career

Media Career

From 2002 onwards, Portillo has developed an active career in media, both as a commentator on public affairs and as a writer and/or presenter of TV and radio documentaries.

Since 2003, Portillo has appeared in the BBC weekly political discussion programme This Week with Andrew Neil and, until September 2010, Labour MP Diane Abbott. Portillo has known Abbott for many years: they both attended schools in the London Borough of Harrow, Portillo and Abbott were in a joint school production of Romeo and Juliet, though not in the title roles. Later, whilst still at school, Portillo cast Abbott in a film version of Macbeth, but the film was never completed. She played Lady Macduff to his Macduff The chemistry between Portillo and Abbott has been credited with ensuring the programme's popularity.

Portillo has featured in a number of television documentaries, including one on Richard Wagner, of whose music he is a notable fan, and two on Spain: Great Railway Journeys: From Granada to Salamanca for BBC Two (2002), and a programme on Spanish wildlife for BBC Two's The Natural World series (2006) - Portillo is a fluent Spanish speaker. He showed an unexpectedly warm and perceptive side of his nature when he took over for one week the life, family and income of a single mother living on benefits in Wallasey - When Michael Portillo became a Single Mum, (2003). He chose to present Queen Elizabeth I for the BBC's series of Great Britons in 2002.

Since 2002, he has presented his own discussion series, "Dinner with Portillo", on BBC Four, in which political and social questions are explored by Portillo and his seven guests, over a four-course meal. As of 2007, in its fifth series, his guests had included Bianca Jagger, Grayson Perry, Francis Wheen, Seymour Hersh, PD James, Baroness Williams, George Galloway, Benazir Bhutto and Germaine Greer.

He is a long-serving member of the panel in the BBC Radio Four series The Moral Maze.

In 2007, he participated in the BBC television project The Verdict, serving, with other well-known figures, as a jury member hearing a fictional rape case. He was elected the jury's foreman.

The documentary How To Kill A Human Being, in the Horizon series, featured Portillo carrying out a survey of capital punishment methods (including undertaking some near death experiences himself) in an attempt to find an 'acceptable' form. It was broadcast on BBC Two on 15 January 2008. He has since made a second Horizon documentary, entitled How Violent Are You?, which was broadcast on 12 May 2009.

Portillo was the Chairman of the committee choosing the 2008 Man Booker Prize. He also interviewed clients of the French corporation Capgemini in a video publicity series.

In 2008 Portillo made a documentary as part of the BBC Headroom campaign (which explores mental health issues). Portillo's documentary 'Death of a School Friend' explores how the suicide of Portillo's classmate Gary Findon affected Findon's parents, brother, music teachers, school teachers, classmates, and Portillo himself. The programme was originally broadcast on Friday 7 November 2008.

In 2009, Portillo appeared in the second episode of the second series of The Supersizers eat... to discuss medieval cuisine and Magna Carta. Filmed in 2009 but first broadcast 4 January 2010, Portillo presented Great British Railway Journeys in which he explored, with the aid of George Bradshaw's 1840 railway guidebook, how the railways had a profound influence on the social, economic and political history of Britain. A second series was broadcast on BBC2 during 2011 and the third series began on the same channel in January 2012. The series has been broadcast in August 2012 on BBC Four. The programme has also been broadcast on Yesterday_(TV_channel).

In September 2011 he presented a two-part series on BBC Radio 4 entitled Capitalism on Trial. He has also presented a series on BBC Radio Four called "The Things We Forgot to Remember", which is a historical series.

Portillo has written a regular column for The Sunday Times, contributes to other journals (he was a theatre critic for the New Statesman until May 2006), and is a regular radio broadcaster in the UK.