We are delighted to announce that Sandi Toksvig will be hosting the THE Awards 2023 ceremony.

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sandi was brought up around the world in Europe, Africa and the United States. She began her comedy career at Girton College, Cambridge where she found time to write and perform in the first all-woman show at the Footlights as well as achieve a first-class degree.

Sandi is well known to UK audiences as a broadcaster having begun her career in children’s television playing Ethel in the long-running Saturday-morning show Number 73. Since then, her television career has included celebrated series such as Call My Bluff (as regular team captain) and Whose Line Is It Anyway? She also hosted Antiques Master for BBC2 and 1001 Things You Should Know for Channel 4. In 2016, Sandi took over from Stephen Fry as host of QI, BBC2’s fiendishly difficult and hugely popular quiz. She also replaced William G. Stewart as the host of the popular teatime quiz Fifteen to One which made its comeback after 11 years in April 2014. In 2017 she and Noel Fielding became the new co-hosts of The Great British Bake Off and she did three seasons of the show. Most recently, Sandi explored the art of miniatures when presenting The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge and she travelled around the UK’s most captivating and unusual holiday hideaways in Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig which recently aired its third series in 2023.

For a decade Sandi was a familiar voice for BBC Radio 4 listeners as the chair of The News Quiz which led to her induction into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Sandi is passionate about live performance. She performed on the very first night of The Comedy Store in London and for many years was a member of The Comedy Store Players, an improvisational comedy team. Sandi conceived Playhouse Live for Sky Arts, producing specially commissioned live drama for television and for three years was both a writer for the series and the executive producer. She regularly tours with solo shows, her most recent being a UK, Australian and New Zealand Tour entitled Next Slide Please where she explored reasons to be cheerful after a period of national gloom!

Much of Sandi’s time is devoted to writing and in 2019 she became president of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. She has more than 20 fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults to her credit. In 2020, she wrote and presented a podcast series called We Will Get Past This which aimed to provide "virtual chicken soup for the soul."

For the theatre, Sandi co-authored the musical Big Night Out at the Little Sands Picture Palace Theatre (with Dillie Keane), the Shakespeare deconstruction The Pocket Dream (with Elly Brewer), Charity Begins for Playhouse Live, Bully Boy and Silver Linings. Her adaptation of Treasure Island reopened the Leicester Haymarket Theatre in December 2018 and early in 2019 her adaptation of Mamma Mia! The Party opened at London’s 02. Sandi wrote the Globe Theatre’s family show Christmas at the (Snow) Globe with Jenifer Toksvig which opened in December 2019.

Sandi is an activist for gender equality. In 2014 she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party. Sandi was also elected a Bye Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge this year.