Muriel Gray
| Muriel Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 August 1958 East Kilbride, Scotland |
| Education |
High School of Glasgow (ind) Glasgow School of Art |
| Occupation | Author, broadcaster, journalist. |
| Spouse(s) | Hamish Barbour |
Muriel Gray (born 30 August 1958) is a Scottish author, broadcaster and journalist. She came to public notice as an interviewer on Channel 4’s alternative pop show The Tube and then appeared as a regular presenter on BBC radio. Gray has written for Time Out, the Sunday Herald and The Guardian, among other publications, as well as publishing successful horror-novels. She is the only woman to have been Rector of the University of Edinburgh and is the first female chair of the board of governors at Glasgow School of Art.
Born in East Kilbride, Gray is of partly Jewish ancestry. She presented a documentary for Channel 4 tracing her Jewish roots on her mother's side, entitled The Wondering Jew (1996), in which she discovered her maternal line descended from what is now Moldova. She is married to television producer Hamish Barbour and they have three children. In 1997 their daughter nearly drowned in a garden pond, which left her permanently brain damaged. 31 January 2016 saw Gray thanking the British Airways pilot for successfully landing the plane in which her husband Hamish Barbour was a passenger, on three wheels instead of the usual five.
A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, she worked as a professional illustrator and then as assistant head of design in the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh.
After playing in punk band, The Family Von Trapp, she became an interviewer on the early Channel 4 alternative pop show The Tube from 1982, presented Frocks on the Box (1987–88) and The Media Show (1987–89) for the same channel. She was briefly a DJ for Edinburgh's Radio Forth in 1983 and 1984. She was a regular stand-in presenter on BBC Radio 1 during most of the eighties, including for John Peel. She also presented regularly on BBC Radio 4, for Start the Week in Russell Harty's absence and also during Jeremy Paxman's leave.
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