Andy Kershaw

Andy Kershaw truly has no off switch. Already he's lived ten lives to everyone else's one. As a teenager, he was promoting major rock gigs. He was Billy Bragg's driver and roadie one day and presenting Whistle Test and Live Aid the next. A born rebel and a maverick, he's combined his passion for music with a lunatic curiosity and an instinct for frontline journalism, reporting for the BBC and the broadsheets from the world's most extreme countries – Iraq, North Korea (he's been four times), Haiti, Angola and Rwanda during the genocide.

Whether it applies to foreign adventures, romances, motorcycles, nervous breakdowns or relationships with a piece of music, Andy has always lived by his most reliable maxim: if you're going to have one, have a big one.