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Elizabeth Marguerita Mary Kershaw (born 30 July 1958) is an English radio broadcaster. She is one of the longest serving female national radio DJs in the UK, celebrating 30 years on national BBC Radio in 2017.
In 1986, Kershaw's day job with British Telecom saw her move to London to help set up "Livewire" (managing editor of Livewire was Chartcall system manager, formerly Virgin Records press officer, Gerald O'Connell), a dial-in pop service which superseded Dial-a-Disc. In running this she produced Radio 1 DJs Mike Smith, Janice Long and Dave Pearce before devising her own show for Radio 1 in 1987, Backchat, which won several awards.
This was followed by Kershaw presenting the Radio 1 Evening Show and then, with Bruno Brookes, Radio 1's Weekend Breakfast Show and the Radio 1 Roadshow from 1989 to 1992. During this period they also made three charity records for the BBC's Children in Need campaign.
Kershaw left Radio 1 in 1992 to present The Crunch, the UK's first national daily phone-in on BBC Radio 5 but continued to host occasional shows on the station.
In 1994, Kershaw was part of the team which relaunched the station as BBC Radio 5 Live. In 2000, she went back to BBC Local Radio as the first and only woman in the country to present a solo radio breakfast show. This was BBC Radio Northampton's breakfast programme, which was nominated for the Best Breakfast Show Award at the Sony Radio Awards in 2002 along with Radio 4's Today Programme and the 5 Live Breakfast Show.
In September 2005, Kershaw became a weekday presenter on the BBC CWR radio station, where she took over the Drivetime show. She later presented the weekday Breakfast Show for the station and continued to present a show on BBC Radio 6 Music, but on Saturdays only.
In July 2007, following a complaint from Buckingham Palace about the misrepresentation of the Elizabeth II in a BBC documentary, Mark Thompson, then-Director-General of the BBC, in a public purging exercise, singled out Kershaw's show in what became an infamous BBC scandal, announcing that some of the DJ's shows that were aired as live were in fact pre-recorded and that members of the production team had passed themselves off as listeners texting and emailing into competitions.
It was subsequently revealed by journalists and listeners that other shows presented by Russell Brand, Jo Whiley, Tony Blackburn and Dermot O'Leary were also involved in the same endemic production practices.
On 30 July 2008, the BBC was accused by media watchdog Ofcom of 'misleading its audiences' by 'faking' audience interaction. Ofcom stated that the BBC 'deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly and fined the corporation a record £400,000 of which Kershaw's BBC Radio 6 Music show was fined £115,000 for seventeen shows in 2005 and 2006.
Until June 2022, she could be heard on BBC Radio 6 Music Sunday lunchtimes 1.00pm-2.00pm. She left the breakfast show at BBC CWR on Friday 17 July 2009 when the management decided to change the hosts.
In October 2012, Kershaw told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that she had been routinely groped while working as a Radio1 DJ in the 1980s. She said the station had a culture that was very intimidating for a young woman.Cass Jones "DJ Liz Kershaw says she was 'routinely groped' at BBC", The Guardian, 6 October 2012.
In November 2012, Kershaw was named in a case involving the suicide of BBC journalist Russell Joslin, who had alleged that Kershaw had sexually harassed him.
In 2014, she released her autobiography, The Bird and the Beeb.
In 2020, she criticised UK government period poverty measures and expressed support for the use of "old rags" as sanitary products.
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