Clive Coleman

About

Clive Coleman

Clive is the BBC’s Legal Correspondent, a role he arrived at via a career as a barrister, Principal Lecturer in Law, and then one of the country’s leading comedy writers.

Clive covers a broad range of domestic and international legal stories and issues.  He works across television and radio news, appearing regularly on the Today programme, Five Live, Breakfast, The News Channel and BBC news bulletins.  For six years from 2004 –2010 he presented the BBC’s flagship legal analysis programme ‘Law In Action’ on Radio 4, a role for which, in 2009, he won the Bar Council’s Legal Broadcasting Award.  Clive has presented many other television and radio programmes for the BBC including Panorama (BBC1), Profile (R4), Pick of the Week (R4), The Cases That Changed Our World (R4). He has also been a columnist on legal issues on ‘The Times’ comment pages and written for ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Independent’.

Clive began his career as a barrister in 1986 at the chambers of Robin Stewart QC at 2 Harcourt Buildings, Temple. Working in both crime and civil law, for prosecution and defence, his career started in spectacular fashion when he managed to get his first client off with a mere six-month prison sentence. That was for a parking offence, though, to be fair, he had just parked on top of his social worker! So, it’s perhaps not surprising that he saw the funny side of life in court and wanted to write about it.  His television credits include: ‘Dead Ringers’, ‘Spitting Image’, ‘Smith and Jones’, and ‘Chambers’ his hit BBC1 sit-com about barristers, starring John Bird, James Fleet and Sarah Lancashire. He has also written a huge amount of comedy for Radio with credits including, ‘Weekending’, ‘The News Huddlines’ and his sit-com ‘Spending My Inheritance’, starring Kris Marshall. Clive also wrote television drama on the ITV series ‘The Bill’ (for whom he has also acted as a legal consultant on court based storylines).

In 1992, he won the prestigious BBC Radio Light Entertainment Contract Writers Award. In 1998 he won the BBC’s inaugural ‘Frank Muir Award’, for outstanding comedy writing.

Clive has delivered keynote and after dinner speeches to a broad range of UK based and multi-national companies, trade and professional bodies. As a conference chair, he has hosted numerous conferences and awards ceremonies where his combination of analytical, broadcasting and writing skills have enabled him to write and deliver talks, links and chair debates which ensure that the focus is always sharp, intelligent and witty.