1. Joy Angela Swift MBE was born on 2 October 1956 and is a businesswoman, writer and events organiser from Liverpool, who is best known as the inventor of the murder mystery weekend.
14 Facts About Joy Swift
1. 2.
Swift was born in Blundellsands, Liverpool, to Norman and Thelma, Swift is the youngest of three children.
3.
Joy Swift went to college to study graphic design but she left to take up full-time employment at the Liverpool Echo.
4.
Joy Swift left three years later to join a small chain of hotels.
5.
Joy Swift hired local actors to play the main characters and on 30 October 1981, she staged her first murder mystery weekend.
6.
In 1983, Joy Swift staged her first murder mystery weekend outside of the UK in New York.
7.
In 1989, Michael Aspel hosted a televised interactive murder mystery set at a wedding called Murder Weekend, devised and written by Joy Swift, which invited viewers to solve a whodunnit to win a prize.
8.
In November 2007 as part of Liverpool's 800th birthday celebrations, Joy Swift created a solvable whodunnit for her local newspaper entitled The Great Echo Murder Mystery.
9.
Joy Swift wrote an historical plot that was printed each day as a two-page police evidence board of clues.
10.
Two years later, Joy Swift wrote and co-directed a 90-minute interactive murder mystery for NHK, which screened on the channel over three nights.
11.
In 2020 during the global Covid-19 pandemic, Joy Swift created a unique realistic online whodunnit for sleuths around the world, Murder Mystery Investigation.
12.
Joy Swift collected her MBE from Prince Charles at an investiture on 2 May 2002.
13.
In 2006, Joy Swift collected a Prestige Award for Excellence in Tourism and Leisure Services at a ceremony hosted by Sefton Chamber of Commerce.
14.
At the inaugural Independent Travel Awards, announced on 25 September 2015, Joy Swift was nominated for the Reader's Choice Award with David Attenborough, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Michael Palin.