Matt Baker MBE
Creative Director

As a familiar face on British TV, Matt is a go to presenter for family broadcasting. He was the long-standing host of BBC1’s evening chat show, The One Show, for 9 years and currently lead presents the top-rated and award-winning Countryfile on Sunday evenings. He regularly fronts primetime live Natural History Unit programmes broadcast from across the world and hosted the Big Night In fundraiser, the biggest TV event of lockdown. Other prime time shows include the emotive series The Gift, the adventure series Around the World in 80 Days and in 2010 Matt came second on Strictly Come Dancing.

Matt was born in Durham where he grew up on his family’s sheep farm. He was asked to join Countryfile over 10 years ago for the move to its prime time Sunday night slot. He helped to craft Countryfile into a family show and since then it’s become one of the biggest British TV hits of the last decade. As a farmer at heart, Matt is hugely passionate about nature and our environment. He owns sheep dogs, chickens, donkeys and goats to name but a few, and is all about bringing the natural world to a wider audience.

Eight years on Blue Peter established Matt as one of the best-loved and most versatile presenters in the show’s history, winning him two BAFTA awards for Best Presenter and a Royal Television Society Award. For Children's Television he also presented two series of the living history show Evacuation and documentary series The Stables as well as Jonny Wilkinson's Hotshots.

Matt was a British gymnastic and sports acrobatics champion and has been a key part of the BBC Sport Team, presenting and commentating for 15 years covering Olympic, Commonwealth, European and World Gymnastics. He also anchored the London 2012 Olympic Daily show and Tokyo will be Matt’s fourth Olympic Games. Matt has also covered the FA cup Draw, Horse Racing and the London Marathon. He’s interviewed some of the biggest sporting stars in the world from Usain Bolt to David Beckham and Dina Asha Smith to Simone Biles.

Matt has worked on many environmental shows. With the BBC Natural History Unit he hosted the BAFTA-winning Big Blue Live and the BAFTA-nominated Wild Alaska Live highlighting some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth. As well as being the current anchor of BBC 1's Countryfile Matt has also also presented Secret Britain and, Nature of Britain for the BBC and Countryfile : Summer Diaries. Matt has a huge array of animals, he’s the longest standing presenter of One Man and His Dog and hosted Crufts Live for many years. He’s also anchored BBC1s Animal Rescue Live from Battersea and the returning series of Animal Rescue Squad for Channel 5.

Matt has anchored large scale global live events including the Olympic and Paralympic Handover Concert for BBC, Live 8,  The Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant, Trooping of the Colour, Royal Wedding, Crufts, New Year Celebrations, major Natural History events and music concerts including - Proms in Hyde Park and many live Proms from the Royal Albert Hall. Matt also hosted returning series City Hospital, live from London’s operating theatres.

As well as presenting many Royal events for the BBC, Matt has made many programmes with the Royal Family. He's filmed with Prince Charles on numerous occasions and worked along side HRH as he guest edited Countryfile. Matt helped Prince Harry to launch the Invictus Games and covered the Commonwealth Youth Awards. Matt was chosen by the family to interview Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank to announce their engagement and Matt has filmed with Her Majesty the Queen a number of times. Matt Presented Royal Wedding Watch, a five part nightly series for US TV channel PBS, in the run up to Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s wedding and presented coverage of The Royal Wedding for Prince William and Kate Middleton. Matt interviewed the Prime Minister as part of the BBC's wedding coverage.

Through television Matt has helped to raise well over £100m for a huge range of projects. His passion for Fund Raising started on Blue Peter with BP Appeals engaging Children. In November 2011, Matt devised the BBC Children in Need Rickshaw Challenge, cycling a rickshaw from Edinburgh to London. He went on to create Team Rickshaw – mentoring and cycling alongside inspiring young people to raise awareness of their projects. Overall Matt’s Rickshaw rides have raised in excess of £36 million for Children in Need. As a board member of CIN for eight years, he was also instrumental in setting up and leading the Countryfile Ramble raising over £8 million to date. Matt’s most recent Television fundraiser was hosting the Big Night In which raised over 67 million for charities struggling under Covid19.

Matt originally studied for a BA (Hons) Acting at Queen Margaret’s in Edinburgh, but after 18 months was snapped up as the 28th Blue Peter presenter and went on to do many theatrical and acting performances on the show. Matt has played the lead role Caractacus Potts in the musical tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and took the male lead in Aladdin, Cinderella and most recently in Goldilocks and the Three Bears at the London Palladium Pantomime.

Matt was a long running presenter of Open Country on Radio 4, Making Tracks for Radio 3 and can be heard doing stints on both Classic FM and Magic FM Breakfast.