David Prest

"Hippo" shouted Barry as I gripped his hips. It was what you might call an uninterrupted view. There was nothing between us and the hippo but 300 feet of Zimbabwean airspace and a thin metal rail.

The founder and Managing Director of Whistledown started his career in BBC Local Radio, working as a reporter and presenter. He moved to BBC Radio 4 in 1990, where he produced the travel programme Breakaway, created the much-loved Friday night treat Going Places and produced numerous other programmes and strands.

Among his champagne broadcasting moments are a micro-light flight over Victoria Falls and an "on air" eviction from Buckingham Palace in 1998. He also worked with the legendary oral historian Studs Terkel, and forged a long working relationship with the veteran journalist Charles Wheeler with three landmark documentary series (The Evacuation, The Peacetime Conscripts, and The Child Migrants).

He has over 600 features and documentaries under his belt on subjects as diverse as Spam, the Dagenham Girl Pipers, Nazi hunters and the sinking of the Bismarck, and in 2001 he established The Reunion presented by Sue MacGregor. He has won numerous awards and accolades including the coveted 'Gold Sony Speech Award' in 2000, and the British Guild of Travel Writers award for radio. He was mysteriously nominated as the 'Best Radio Producer' of 2007 by the readers of X-Trax magazine, and led Whistledown's march on that year's Sony awards with two Gold awards.