Gemma Cairney is an exciting, stylish and unique presenter whose infectious personality makes her one of a kind.
Gemma presents her own show on BBC Radio 1Xtra (weekdays 1pm-4pm), which focuses on fashion, entertainment and celebrity. She has also been the official roving reporter at Glastonbury Festival for BBC3, for three consecutive years. Prior to her own radio show, she presented BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Breakfast Show with Trevor Nelson, for which they picked up a Silver Sony award in 2010 for Best National Breakfast Show.
Gemma is also a guest presenter for the BBC Radio 1 Surgery alongside Aled, and is the official Radio 1 fashion expert, dishing out fashion advice to listeners.
In 2010, Gemma presented a one-hour TV special for Channel 4, covering the Snowbombing Festival in Austria and has presented two series of the T4 Show, Frock Me alongside Alexa Chung and Henry Holland. Gemma was the roving reporter for the BBC3 Coverage of 1Xtra Live and finished last year with a trip to Australia where she was a panelist on the show ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here Now!’ for ITV2.
Gemma is now a website columnist for Company Magazine and also featured in the magazine’s one’s to watch for 2009. She also made the top 100 hot list in Red Pages, the online media bible for the TV and Casting world.
Having styled the BRIT nominated artist, Florence and The Machine and working on a special fashion project with singer VV Brown, she certainly knows what to wear! Since the age of twenty, Gemma has been juggling various styling work, she can also include the names of Kate Nash and Pigeon Detectives in her own styling portfolio and in the past has taken the role of assistant stylist to some of the biggest acts in the country like the Sugababes.
With Gemma’s big personality, open-minded approach and tons of enthusiasm, she decided to ditch the “post shoot” cocktails in 2007 and took a free course in radio in Hoxton. Fresh from completing the course, she then pitched and eventually landed a show Festival Fever for Channel 4 Radio reporting and interviewing bands from all of the biggest summer festivals in the same year. Following this in 2008 she was the downright loud mouth voice of channel 4 radio’s Big Brother’s Big Ears with Iain Lee and was one of the presenters for Bite seen on Channel4.com reviewing Britain’s freshest trends with nothing more than a hand held camera. Before starting on BBC 1Xtra she covered two weeks hosting the Kiss 100 Breakfast Show during Summer 2008.
Gemma is a Brit School graduate alongside the likes of Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Adele and our very own MTV face Rickie Haywood-Williams. She is definitely destined for great things within the entertainment industry and ready to take on the challenge.
“Gemma’s surname is Cairney, although she has dropped it for the show. Perhaps she is aiming for one name recognition, à la Madonna. She may get it too.”
Miranda Sawyer- Observer Dec ’08
