Profile of Sandi Toksvig on Famous Like Me

Sandi Toksvig (born May 3, 1958, in Copenhagen, Denmark) is a Danish-British comedian and radio presenter.

Her father, Claus Toksvig, was a foreign correspondent for Danish television, and was sent on assignments to several countries around the world, and so Sandi Toksvig was brought up in Europe, Africa, and the United States. Her mother was Julie Toksvig who late in life took Open University degrees and graduated in textiles from Chelsea School of Art.

Sandi Toksvig spent six years at Mamoroneck High School in New York State. While there she was part of a group of thirteen friends who called themselves 'The Gladys Society'. She also went to a boarding school in Guildford, Britain.

She went to Girton College, Cambridge to study law and archaeology and anthropology. She also studied Muslim law as part of her extra studies. She hoped to become a human rights lawyer. She won the Theresa Montefiore Memorial Award for outstanding academic achievement and the Raemakers Prize for Archaeology. While at Girton she was threatened with expulsion after she had another woman staying in her rooms. She had to go before a committee but she believed that she was allowed to remain at her college because of her academic record.

She took a year off her studies to work as a lighting technician on Jesus Christ, Superstar at the Palace Theatre, London. While at Cambridge University she wrote and starred in the first all-woman show for the Footlights review. She graduated from the university with a first class degree in law.

She then went to work on various productions for Nottingham Playhouse, including Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. She went on to work with the New Shakespeare Company in Regents Park, London.

She then worked in children's television, including the Saturday morning show No. 73 for which she was a writer and in which she appeared in dungarees and primary colour jumpers.

She moved into the comedy circuit, radio, and mainstream television. She first performed on the improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. She became a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 spoof game show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and the BBC 2 Television word game Call My Bluff. She co-presented Island Race with John McCarthy.

Peta, her partner of 12 years, provided three children conceived with the help of a syringe and a male friend. The children are Jessie (born 1989), Megan (born 1991), and Teddy (born 1995).

Sandi Toksvig came out as a lesbian to her parents in her early 20s and they accepted it without any problems. However, in the mid 1990s her sexuality was made public by the British tabloids and they also revealed that she had impregnated her girlfriend with a ten-pence plastic syringe and sperm donated by a close friend. She believed that she lost work through this exposure. The charity Save the Children for which she was working as a fundraiser dropped her until the outcry resulted in them re-instating her. During this time her relationship was under strain and she contacted Angela Mason at Stonewall because she was afraid that she might lose contact with her children. However, although the relationship ended she stayed friends with the biological mother of her children and continues to act as a parent to them.

Sandi Toksvig acquired a new partner, Alice Arnold, an actor and reader of the BBC Radio 4 Shipping Forecast, and they moved into a converted barn in Surrey round the corner from Peta and the three children.

You can listen to Sandi Toksvig every weekday from midday on London's LBC 97.3FM on SKY Channel 927 and on the web at LBC or download podcasts of show highlights (Now one of the UK's top podcasts) so you can listen to Sandi anywhere.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Sandi Toksvig