- Presenters & Awards Hosts
Topics:
- TV/Radio Presenter
- Women In The World
Michaela Strachen
As one of television’s best-loved wildlife presenters, MICHAELA STRACHEN’S list of credits is extensive. Credits include the BBC’s Shark Encounters and Elephant Diaries, as well as Channel Five’s Michaela’s Challenge – for which she won a Bafta. Also, she filmed in Borneo for BBC2's Orang-utan Diaries. Some of Michaela’s other presenting highlights include the BBC’s longest running wildlife series, Really Wild Show, and Countryfile as well as Discovery’s Postcards from the Wild and Adopt a Wild Animal.
Starting out and Children's television
Michaela trained at the Arts Educational School specialising in musical theatre. She started her career in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on national tour, in the West End and at the Alexandra Theatre, Toronto.
Michaela then moved into television to begin a successful presenting career. She fronted a number of programmes on TV-AM including three years on the award winning Saturday morning show The Wide Awake Club with Tommy Boyd, Wacaday with Timmy Mallett, Wac 90, Wac Extra and subsequently her own Saturday and Sunday morning programmes, Hey Hey It's Saturday and Michaela.
Other children's shows include Cool Cube, But Can You Do It On TV?, Go Getters, Beetle Drive, I Want To Do That and, for the Children's Channel, Electric String Vest, Ratkan II, Michaela's Map and The Summer Crunch.
To older viewers Michaela will be known for her four years as "Her" in the late night music programme The Hitman And Her which she presented with Pete Waterman. Michaela's guest appearances are too numerous to mention but do include Visions (a religious exploratory programme) and Naruhodo - The World, which she filmed in Japan as part of the Japanese season on Channel 4. She has both introduced and guest starred in the Children's Royal Variety Show.
Wildlife Presenter
Since 1990 Michaela has become more familiar to audiences for presenting wildlife programmes - Owl TV for HTV and Channel 4 (four years), the award-winning Really Wild Show (nine series), The Really Wild Guide (two series), The Web and The Animal Zone, all for the BBC's Natural History Unit, plus Wildlife Rescue II for Anglia.
Michaela has also presented programmes in the BBC's Science Zone series including Postcards from the Wild, Big 5, and Little 5 with Chris Packham, with a yearly special, Adopt a Wild Animal. She has also hosted: programmes on the Animal Planet and Discovery Channels; five Disneytime programmes for the BBC; two series of the family show Can You Keep A Secret? on HTV; and Club Vegetarian for Granada Cable.
Pantomine and Singing
Michaela regularly does pantomime, appearing in Cinderella, Goldilocks, Aladdin and Jack & The Beanstalk. She has played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and has played Peter in Peter Pan several times. Michaela has also recorded two singles, and contributed to various albums.
