Moss, Allis

Allis was born in London.  She is a freelance journalist and BBC broadcaster. She had a spell as a BBC Radio 4 announcer (1997), where she read the Shipping Forecast. She was also a network BBC TV announcer (1998 – 2000).  For more than a decade, she was a regular voice on the BBC World Service, working in news, continuity and promotions.

Allis presented on LBC, and she was a news presenter/sidekick on Danny Baker’s BBC Radio 5 award-winning breakfast show. When Baker took over DLT’s BBC Radio 1 weekend morning slot, Allis joined the show in October 1993.  She has contributed to both BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and Loose Ends.  In 2016 and 2017, she was the official announcer at the AELTC Wimbledon tennis championships. She missed 2018 due to illness but will return to Wimbledon in 2019.

Correspondence

In May 2019, Paul R. Jackson spoke to Allis about her career: “I studied art in Brighton, was an arts and drama under-graduate at Lancaster, before studying history at Oxford. I am currently a White Rose scholar doing a history doctorate at Leeds University. I went to the job centre in Brighton and said I wanted to be a singer, journalist or broadcaster. A job came up at BBC Radio Sussex reporting on the jobs, which I did for a year and also worked on hospital radio at Southlands Hospital, where Simon Mayo had worked previously. I worked at Viking Radio in Hull (as late-night presenter/newsreader), Marcha Sound and at BBC Radio Beds/Bucks and Herts.

“I then applied to BBC Radio 5 as they were looking for a ‘warm voice’ for the network. The breakfast show was shaken up and I joined Danny Baker as a newsreader on his show for three years. It was an invigorating journey of discovery in this new role. Danny’s irreverence or his love of nonsense and the absurd, would get me into trouble. One morning – not the one where I turned up with a coat thrown over my pyjamas to read the 6am news, after an alarm clock malfunction in our pre-web cam studio – he told me to announce on air that planet earth had shifted fractionally on its rotational axis. When I was dismissed from my role on the show, it was Baker who stuck up for me. As a result of his intervention, I was reinstated without missing a day.

“I was a regular freelance newsreader for 10 years on the BBC World Service and a presenter on BBC Radio Kent, BFBS, Viva and worked with Gareth Jones on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Big Byte (1995). Next was a year announcing on BBC Radio 4, where, when I started doing the Shipping Forecast, I was always apprehensive about crashing the pips. I also made appearances on BBC One’s Countryfile with John Craven and BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends – my first programme was with David Cassidy and my second was with Danny De Vito.

“I then took a staff job at BBC Presentation, when they were taking on more regional accents and looking to have a more relaxed and informal style of announcing. I joined in January 1998 and left at the end of 2000 and one of my memories of working then was the hell in getting from Greenwich, where I lived, to BBC TV Centre and always arriving frazzled before a 12-hour shift. I was great friends with Manju Malhi – she worked on BBC Two and I was on BBC One. We would have chats during the shift in-between junctions. In her spare time, she was working on her cookery ideas and I suggested the title of her first book Brit Spice (published in 2002 by Penguin Books). Peter Brook was a lovely man – he adopted three Russian children and recall his BBC log-in was one of the children’s names. Arlene Fleming trained me, but left soon after to train in aromatherapy. I attended Corie Brown’s wedding and still keep in touch with former colleague Liz Robinson.

“During this period, I did a bit of moonlighting for Radio Netherlands Worldwide. I then gave up my rolling staff job and moved to Paris where I lived for 5 years from 2000. I worked as a stringer for various French outlets, as well as for the BBC, including reports for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. In 2007, I injured myself and returned to the UK. I wrote The Jigsaw Journey about walking along the seafront at Littlehampton, where I learned to walk again. I know that Ford Open Prison even has a copy!

“I worked at BBC World Service as a set-up producer for World Today. Also reporter/producer for Heart and Soul and Witness History on the centenary of British nurse Edith Cavell’s execution, among a number of other programmes for BBC networks. Writing and presenting history and arts is my favourite thing. In Paris, I did this kind of content for BBC World TV (e.g., on the ‘man in the iron mask’ incarcerated in the Bastille, and another on Napoleon).

“I worked on local radio in Chichester and was a UK correspondent for Radio Netherlands for four years at this time. I began writing for the local press, including a column for three years for the defunct Chichester Herald. I auditioned for Wimbledon, and, after an illness last year, I will be back at the championships this summer.”

Personal information

Clips of Allis on The TV Room

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Online presence

Acknowledgements