Stephen Wrench, known professionally as Nigel Wrench, is a British radio presenter and reporter. He's the only journalist known to have interviewed both the South African activist Winnie Mandela and the British artist Banksy in a long and varied career. Wrench's first radio job was with

Capital Radio 604 Capital Radio 604 was a radio station that broadcast to listeners in South Africa from transmitters located in the Transkei using Medium Wave (AM) on 603 kHz. Founded by Martin Rattle, the station started transmitting on 26 December 1979 a ...

, which provided the first independent source of broadcast news in South Africa. At Turnstyle News, an independent Johannesburg-based radio news agency, Wrench reported for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the UK-based Independent Radio News and London Broadcasting Company. In December 1985, he was among those detained briefly by police when reporting the illegal return of

Winnie Mandela Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela; 26 September 1936 – 2 April 2018), also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She serv ...

to Soweto. Reporting on demonstrations in Windhoek, Namibia, in September 1988, he was among those beaten up by police. Wrench was also a pop music columnist for the '' Mail & Guardian'' and reported on Johannesburg's thriving underground nightlife. In 1989 Wrench joined the BBC as a London-based reporter for the '' Today'' programme. In 1990, he was among the reporters at the prison gates when

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

walked free. Wrench reported from a wide variety of other locations for BBC Radio including Jerusalem,

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Bucharest,

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

and

Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...

. Wrench was a founding co-host of '' Out This Week'', the pioneering LGBT+ news programme on

BBC Radio 5 Live BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcast ...

for which he won a Sony Radio Award. He later won a New York Radio Award for his 1998 Radio 4 documentary ''Aids and Me'', while also regularly co-presenting the Radio 4 programme '' PM''. Wrench's spell as culture reporter for '' PM'', saw him interviewing leading artists, performers, playwrights and novelists as well as reporting regularly from the Edinburgh Festival. Wrench interviewed Banksy on ''PM'' at the opening of "Turf War", the first Banksy exhibition in London in 2003. Among Wrench's many radio documentaries was a major

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

series ''Pills, Patients and Profits'' which examined the global pharmaceutical industry. Wrench publicly announced his status as HIV-positive in 1994, in a speech while accepting his Sony Radio Award. He wrote extensively about living with HIV and AIDS, including a regular column for the '' Pink Paper'' and made a television documentary called ''From Russia With Love'' for BBC3 in 2003. In February 2015 Wrench released ''ZA86'', a limited-edition cassette, through specialist label The Tapeworm. A sleeve note describes it as: "apartheid South Africa, 1986, through the headphones of a young radio reporter". A review in The Quietus took the opportunity to sum up his career: "Few journalists have quite so intimately captured the essence of their era's great moral panics as Nigel Wrench". Wrench's second cassette for Tapeworm, ''ZA87'', a piece of audio verité documenting a political funeral in Soweto in 1987, was released in March 2021. Wrench was for many years a voluntary director of Duckie Ltd, the award-winning LGBT+ performance group. Nigel Wrench now uses the name he was born with, Stephen Wrench, and has contributed, among others, an interview with Lloyd Russell-Moyle for Brighton's Gscene magazine. In April 2022, Wrench released a field recording called
Disco/Football
recorded at non league alt-football outfit Whitehawk FC.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wrench, Nigel Living people BBC newsreaders and journalists BBC radio presenters English gay writers English LGBT broadcasters English LGBT journalists People from Birmingham, West Midlands People with HIV/AIDS Gay journalists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century English LGBT people