| Peter John Day | |
| Birth Date: | 17 February 1947 |
| Birth Place: | Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk, England |
| Education: | University of Oxford |
| Occupation: | Business correspondent for BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service |
| Nationality: | British |
Peter John Day (17 February 1947 – 15 March 2023) was a British broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.[1] [2] [3] [4]
His parents John Day and Lily Plummer married in 1939 in Norfolk.
Day was educated at Lincoln School, at the time a boys-only grammar school, from 1957 to 1964 as a boarder. His father was a manager with Midland Bank (which became HSBC in 1999) in Lincolnshire (Horncastle and Gainsborough).
His brother, Timothy, was born in 1950 in Gainsborough. His brother attended Gainsborough grammar school, and learned the piano and organ, and sang in the local parish All Saints church choir.[5] [6] From 1974-76, his brother was the organist at St Matthew's Church, Northampton.[7] His brother has worked with the British Library Sound Archive.
He studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford from October 1964, when only 17.[8]
Day was trained on the International Publishing Corporation (Daily Mirror Group) newspaper training scheme in south Devon. He worked at the Daily Record from 1970 to 1974 in Glasgow.
Day joined BBC Radio News in 1974 in London, working on the business news in 1975.
In 1983, he left the BBC to join TV-am as their economics and industrial correspondent, appearing as a reporter on the first day of broadcast - 1 February 1983.
Day returned to the BBC to become a presenter and producer for the Financial World Tonight, which became part of The World Tonight.
Day presented In Business from 1988. On the World Service he presented its sister programme, Global Business, on weekends from 2000. He became Business Correspondent of the BBC in 1990, and in 1997 provided the business section for the Today programme.[9] [10] [11] [12]
On 1 September 2016 Peter Day presented his last ever In Business programme after 28 years.[13] He wrote his last article for the BBC website on 26 May 2016.[14]
Day died on 15 March 2023, at the age of 76.[15] [16]
Day won the Harold Wincott Award for broadcast business journalism three times, in 1989, 2000 and 2002. He received the Work Foundation lifetime achievement award in 2006. In 2007, it was revealed that In Business had become a surprise podcast hit, beating The Best of The Chris Moyles Show, the Today programme and In Our Time as the BBC's most downloaded podcast.