20 Facts About Oz Clarke

Oz Clarke is of Irish descent and was brought up Roman Catholic.

Oz Clarke was brought up near Canterbury with a brother and a sister.

Oz Clarke became a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral and subsequently won a choral scholarship to The King's School, Canterbury.

Oz Clarke later attended Pembroke College, Oxford where he studied theology and psychology and became Common Room President.

Oz Clarke played University hockey, was University punting champion, sang with Schola Cantorum, and acted with the dramatic society and the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival.

Oz Clarke's goal was to educate British people about making wine approachable to the British public, and introduce them to the high quality wines that Australians and most of the Western World enjoys.

Oz Clarke can be seen wearing a Gillingham scarf in Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas, broadcast prior to Christmas 2009 and James May's Man Lab Christmas Special, broadcast prior to Christmas 2011, both on BBC Two.

Oz Clarke then worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Old Vic and Chichester.

Oz Clarke played one of the first criminals apprehended by Superman in the 1978 film Superman, a terrorist in Superman II, a Special Branch man in Who Dares Wins and Balthasar in Stuart Burge's 1984 film of Much Ado About Nothing.

In December 2011, Oz Clarke was one of the team in the BBC Two programme James May's Man Lab Christmas Special.

Oz Clarke then became wine correspondent of The Daily Telegraph.

In 1982, Oz Clarke won the last World Wine Tasting Championship, a wine tasting event that has not been repeated since then.

Oz Clarke has written several award-winning books, and is generally regarded as the New World champion who led Britain's wine revolution in the 1990s and 2000s, but he is a passionate supporter of the Old World classics, in particular Bordeaux wine.

Oz Clarke has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows, including Food and Drink, the long-running BBC Food show, for which he became well known in the UK for his stint as the wine expert alongside Jilly Goolden, and A Question of Taste and The Wine Programme for BBC Radio 4.

Oz Clarke stated in Oz and James's Big Wine Adventure that he was banned from the Champagne region of France in the 1990s for having made statements suggesting that champagne was deteriorating in value while rising in price.

Results show that Oz Clarke was the most recognised wine critic in the UK.

Oz Clarke was awarded an Officier de l'Ordre du Merite Agricole by the French Government.

Oz Clarke's writing is published by Pavilion Books, an imprint of Anova Books.

Oz Clarke is a cousin of Irish journalist and broadcaster Olivia O'Leary.

Oz Clarke was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting and journalism.