Matthew Wright

For six months between 2018 and 2019, he and his wife were stalked by Michelle Ranicar from Uxbridge. In October 2020 she pleaded guilty to the offence at Wood Green Crown Court.

On presenting the Progressive Music Awards in London in 2017, Wright wore a patterned velvet suit which, according to journalist Malcolm Dome, "stunned" everyone present. Dome quoted Steve Hogarth as saying: "It looks like something I scraped off the roof this morning".

He is a big fan of Frank Zappa, Sparklehorse, Grateful Dead and Giant Sand, in particular the Led Zeppelin songs "Going to California" and "The Battle of Evermore". He has also admitted to being a big fan of Haircut 100, once stating they "provided the soundtrack for the '80s, certainly for me". He is such a big fan of The Cure that he went to see them twice in one week in 2016, at Manchester Arena and Wembley Arena. He is also a big fan of George Ezra.

2011 was a particularly bad year for Wright.

He is a fan of psychedelic, progressive/art rock music. He is a fan of Gong and Here & Now (he claims that seeing Here & Now in concert in 2010 was one of the best shows he has been to). He described Peter Gabriel as a "god-like musical genius" in the Mirror in 1999. He went to see King Crimson in concert in Aylesbury in 2016.

While filling in for Richard Allinson on Radio 2 in 2004, he revealed that one of his all time favourite albums is "The Colour of Spring" by Talk Talk. Other favourites include "Siren" by Roxy Music and "Revolver" by The Beatles (which he considers their best album).

In 2002, he made news for all the wrong reasons when he accidentally named John Leslie on air as the man being linked to the alleged rape of Ulrika Jonsson.

In 2000, Wright was chosen to front a series for Channel 5, The Wright Stuff (2000), which included newspaper reviews and topical discussions. The series became a long-running success for Channel 5 in the mornings and Wright has proved a popular but controversial figure for the channel.

He attended the wedding of Phil Collins and Orianne Cevey in 1999.

In 1984, he attended the Stonehenge Free Festival and saw his favourite bands Hawkwind and Here and Now, an event he later said "changed my life". As a former child actor who graduated with a drama degree, Wright wanted to work in television, but he couldn't find a job there and became a journalist instead. Wright first gained fame on the Bizarre page of the UK's most popular tabloid, The Sun, and later achieved a showbusiness column in The Daily Mirror. He famously wrote a scathing review of a play starring David Soul which he had never actually seen, resulting in a successful libel action by Soul.

At the age of 14 he appeared in Big Wheels and Sailor (1979) for the Children's Film Foundation. Wright studied English and Drama at the University of Exeter. As a student, Wright was involved in left-wing politics and joined campaigns against nuclear weapons, apartheid in South Africa and serving prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Matthew Wright went to Catholic school. He was not good at school sports, so his mother encouraged him to go to the Croydon Youth Theatre. He developed a deep and abiding love of Hawkwind when a school friend played him their 1977 compilation album "Masters of the Universe".

He was a fan of the television series Doctor Who (1963) as a child. He claims the scariest story he saw was Doctor Who: The Green Death: Episode One (1973). His favourite Doctor, though, was Tom Baker.