Fridays 3pm
With Toby Creswell
Toby Creswell – My professional career is broadly described as journalism. Over the course of the last 20 years I have written a number of books, written and produced television, launched and edited magazines and web sites.
My career began when ink was still king. I wrote for various magazines and the broadsheet newspapers before becoming editor of Rolling Stone. Soon thereafter I formed a partnership to relaunch and publish the magazine in Australia. In 1993 I formed Terraplanet a media company that published 10 consumer magazines and a range of corporate titles.
Terraplanet’s magazines under my supervision as Editor in Chief have been awarded “Best Column”, “Best Feature Writing” and “Best Feature” at the Magazine Publishers Association Awards and “Magazine of the Year”, “Best Cover” “Best Feature” and numerous other awards by the Magazine Editors Association. Terraplanet was one of the first companies to embrace the internet but was destroyed in the tech crash.
My first book was Too Much Aint Enough, an authorised biography of Jimmy Barnes. Subsequent books have been:
Too Much Aint Enough (Random House) / The Real Thing (Random House) (with Martin Fabinyi / 1001 Songs (Hardie Grant) / 1001 Australians (Pluto Press) / Notorious Australians (ABC Books) / Love Is In the Air (ABC Books) / The Best 100 Australian Albums (with John O’Donnell & Craig Mathieson) (Hardie Grant) / We’re All Here For the Drowning (Shark Island) (i-Book) / The 100 Best Albums of All Time (Hardie Grant)
I began developing TV and film ideas in 1993. SBS commissioned The Natiuonal Karaoke Challenge from my concept and we produced one season of the variety show. Then we moved on to an 8 x 1-hour series Great Australian Albums – the most successful music series ever made in Australia; it’s been replayed ever since on SBS, STUDIO and MAX. Subsequent projects included two music films – Cannot Buy My Soul and Going My Way (with Paul Kelly and Neil Finn). In 2010 I made a film on the Vietnam War; All the Way which was highly acclaimed and nominated for a Walkley and Logie an won the United Nations Media Peace Prize. I have made a few other projects as well.
My interest is largely in Australian popular culture and Australian history. I’m interested in telling stories with whatever medium comes to hand.
In 2013 I became involved with Eastside FM and this year have shared the Arts Monday chair up to now. It’s the most fun you can have without getting arrested.
Email: lightedfools@eastsidefm.org