Your taste in music does not determine your superiority.

Darren’s radio career started in 1983, aged nine, making coffee, putting records away, and generally making a nuisance of himself at Inverness’s Moray Firth Radio. At the age of 18, when he’d been presenting for four years, he won his first New York Festivals Radio Broadcasting Award. While in Inverness, he also co-presented and produced a weekly bilingual chart show which was broadcast in China, to a measured audience of sixteen million people.

He moved to Edinburgh’s Radio Forth in 1993, and quickly progressed to presenting the flagship breakfast show on Forth One. During his time as presenter, the programme immediately doubled its audience and then went on to achieve what are still all-time high listening figures.

Darren stayed on this show until 2003, when he took the chance to broaden his broadcasting horizons by moving to sister station FORTH2. This allowed him to pursue his interest in speech radio and current affairs.

He regularly anchored and reported during Forth’s election coverage broadcasts, and in 2007 was stationed at Ingliston to report through the night on what became the chaos of the Scottish Parliamentary Election count. The programme subsequently picked up a Gold World Medal at the New York Festivals Radio Broadcasting Awards in 2008. Darren is also a regular winner there in the Best Personality categories, scoring victories there each year since 2004. Additionally, he collates, edits and assembles Radio Forth’s entries into various industry award forums, helping secure success for his colleagues at the likes of The Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards, The IRN Awards, and in other categories at The New York Festivals.

In 2006/7, Darren twice hosted Ask Jack – a Q&A session with then First Minister Jack McConnell in which questions were asked by a studio audience.

Darren hosts Forth’s Edinburgh International Festival coverage, live from city venue The Gilded Balloon, and in 2011 interviewed almost fifty guests live during the three week run. He also presents and produces simulcast coverage of the Princes Street Gardens Fireworks Concert, which concludes the festival.

Darren’s Mid-Morning show on FORTH2 successfully blended music presentation with intelligent and entertaining speech, a combination that regularly secured a market share more than twice that of the station average. Guests included Cherie Blair, Harry Shearer, John Smeaton, Roy Hattersley, Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, Paul Merton, and Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant. Until 2012 he broadcast across Scotland on stations including FORTH2, Clyde 2, Northsound 2 and West Sound, each weekday evening, securing large increases in the overall listening figures on those stations in that timeslot. Darren is the host of the FORTH2 Talk In - an hour of topical phone in, each Sunday morning at 11; the show has increased its audience in every survey since it started, and he also returns frequently to Forth One.

Darren is an accomplished voice-over artist, appearing as the voice of national and regional TV, radio and cinema campaigns for, amongst others, USC Clothing, Setanta Sports, City Of Edinburgh Council and The Scottish Government. He has hosted events for organisations including ConocoPhilips and internationally has narrated corporate video campaigns for the likes of Morgan Stanley.

In 2006, Darren managed Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter James Lowe, and secured him performances across the city and in Reykjavik, Iceland. From 2007 to late 2009, he also managed Edinburgh/Glasgow band Jakil, and now manages one of Edinburgh’s premier new rock bands Six Storeys High, securing and organising record releases, gigs (including two UK-wide tours), national radio play and interviews. He also created the Cav Live music night at Edinburgh’s Lava And Ignite, and organised the March 2012 MessFest charity event at the city’s largest rock venue, the HMV Picture House.

Darren has written for The Scotsman newspaper, contributing travel articles from destinations as varied as Cyprus, Greenland, Copenhagen and Loch Ness. He has also written for Icelandic newspaper The Reykjavik Grapevine,  contributed to news features on Sky News, CJME News Talk in Regina, Canada, and BBC Radio Scotland. Additionally, he has presented TV shows for Lanarkshire-based LTV, hosted podcasts for AudioGO, and is proficient in the use of Final Cut Pro, which he has used to make viral videos for Six Storeys High, Radio Forth, Jakil, and others. The videos for Radio Forth saw Darren also pick up nominations at the Promotions and Marketing Awards and inaugural European Radio Awards.

Darren has also recorded and released tracks as Þórsmörk and plans to release new recordings and remixes in the future.

Darren is comfortable using a variety of industry-standard playout and editing systems, including ENCO, Dalet, Peak, GarageBand and Adobe Audition, and has a full valid UK driving licence.

Riffs and Harmonies || New EP coming Spring 2014

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