Christian O'Connell

Christian O'Connell
O'Connell in August 2007
Born	Christian Liam O'Connell (1973-04-07) 7 April 1973 (age 43) Winchester, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation	Radio and television presenter
Years active	1999–present
Known for	Presenting the breakfast show on Absolute Radio
Website	Absolute Radio profile

Christian Liam O'Connell (born 7 April 1973 in Winchester, Hampshire) is a British radio DJ, who presents the The Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio weekday mornings. He makes use of irreverent features and sometimes mocks the music that he plays. He is well known for his frequent discussions of embarrassing real life situations, often discussing the gender differences between men and women, and what the role of the man should be in a given situation. In September 2008 he published a book The Men Commandments to this effect. In 2017 he published a children's book "Radio Boy"

O'Connell started out on 2CR Radio in Bournemouth in 1999. He later moved to Juice FM in Liverpool in 2000. He commented "It was a budget, tin-pot station. They didn't have a lot of money." He formerly hosted BBC Radio 5 Live's weekend sports game show Fighting Talk from 2004-2005 but will return to the show as one of 3 presenters from the 2013-14 season, the other presenters being BBC Football Commentator Jonathan Pearce and This Morning presenter Matt Johnson. He previously hosted the Breakfast Show on indie music station XFM London. O'Connell joined the Virgin Radio team making his first broadcast on 23 January 2006. He celebrated his 10th year at Virgin (now known as Absolute) by giving his listeners free tins of food.

He has long been a fan of Hollywood action man Steven Seagal, who he had mentioned several times on radio, and remarked that he would love to meet. However, when Seagal rang O'Connell the relationship and understanding between the two was quite difficult and left O'Connell feeling disappointed. Seagal did not understand O'Connell's ironic personality and sense of humour and much of the recorded interview had to be removed from the radio broadcast.The Observer described the interview as, "a spectacularly terrible interview in which O'Connell's questions dropped into a seemingly bottomless well of apathy." O'Connell described the interview remarking; "It was the single worst thing I've ever done on radio. And the other week I was having a go at Michael Parkinson, saying he used to be fantastic but sadly now he's become too fawning, and then I did the Seagal thing and I thought: I should just leave."