Background
Allen was born in Rochford, Essex and attended the independent Brentwood School.
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Peter Allen
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He has been with British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 5 Live since it started in 1994, and presented the Drive programme for 16 years from 1998 to 2014. At 18 he left school and started work with his local newspaper. He emigrated to Australia and worked for the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
In the 1970s Allen switched to working in radio, joining Independent Radio News, the newly-launched news service for United Kingdom commercial radio.
He eventually became the network"s political editor while working at Westminster. Allen then switched to television and was ITN political correspondent until 1992, when he was one of "a string of high-profile resignations" following the company"s budget cuts.
He then joined London News Network. On 1 March 1994 the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that Allen was to host its new Breakfast programme on British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 5 Live.
In 1997 Breakfast was extended by half an hour.
Also in 1997, The Times described the "witty repartee" of Allen and co-presenter Jane Garvey as the best illustration of the station"s tone, "friendly, informal, brisk, and mercifully, not terribly politically correct". On 31 August 1997 Allen and James Naughtie hosted the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio coverage of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales which saw Radios 2, 3, 4 and British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 5 Live taking a single programme. In 2007, newspapers including The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail cited unnamed sources which said that Allen had been rejected as John Humphrys" replacement on Radio 4"s Today programme because he was not "posh enough" and did not have an Oxbridge background.
A British Broadcasting Corporation spokesperson responded "The reason we are not commenting is that it is about whether or not someone went for a job that may or not exist.
Consequently, we cannot really get into lieutenant"
Allen currently presents British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 5 Live"s 5 Live Daily from 10am to 1pm three days a week (Wednesday to Friday). He has been with the network since 1994 and was the co-presenter of British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 5 Live"s Drive programme for more than 16 years, from September 1998 to October 2014.
He also chairs conferences and hosts events and award ceremonies, as well as performing as an after-dinner speaker. In July 2014 the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that he was moving to a morning slot for three days a week replacing Victoria Derbyshire who was leaving the station.
In August 2015 Peter presented a live programme from Hiroshima on the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, speaking to several survivors of the attack and an American physicist who helped to design the bombs in the Manhattan Project.
