Life

Townsend attended Harrow County School for Boys (became Harrow High School

Harrow High School

Harrow High School is a state secondary school in the London Borough of Harrow in the north-west of London. The headteacher is Paul Gamble. The school is a specialist Sports College. It is not to be confused with the independent school Harrow School, situated nearby at Harrow on the...

 in 1975) and the London College of Printing.

He became a journalist in 1979, working on Caravan magazine, then as pop music columnist at Today

Today (UK newspaper)

Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom, which was published between 1986 and 1995.-History:Today, with the American newspaper USA Today as inspiration, launched on Tuesday, 4 March 1986, with the front page headline, "Second Spy Inside GCHQ". At 18 pence, it was a middle-market...

. Has a humorous column in the Sunday Express, demonstrating a nice line in sarcasm - e.g. he once said that Cilla "The Bootle Nightingale" Black was a "powerful interpreter of Bert Bacharach".

In 1987, Townsend became a freelance reporter, but in 1994 was appointed showbusiness editor of the Mail on Sundays You magazine, then in 1999 was appointed editor of OK!

OK!

OK! is a British weekly magazine specializing in celebrity news. Originally launched as a monthly, its first issue was published in April 1993. In September 2004, OK! publishers Northern and Shell launched in Australia as a monthly title – the magazine went weekly in October 2006...

 magazine. During his tenure, he persuaded Anthea Turner

Anthea Turner

Anthea Millicent Turner is an English television presenter and media personality.-Education:Turner was educated at the independent St. Dominic's High School in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent....

 and Grant Bovey to pose with chocolate bars in their wedding photos, as part of a promotion.

Townsend married Jane O'Gorman in 1989. They have two sons and a daughter. In 2001, he was appointed editor of the Sunday Express.

In 2006, Townsend had a cameo role in the TV series Hustle

Hustle (TV series)

Hustle is a British television drama series made by Kudos Film and Television for BBC One in the United Kingdom. Created by Tony Jordan and first broadcast in 2004, the series follows a group of con artists who specialise in "long cons" – extended deceptions which require greater commitment, but...

 in which he, as editor of the Sunday Express, bought an exposé story from the con men regarding the unscrupulous editor of a rival (fictional) Sunday newspaper.

In 2007, Townsend published The Father I Had, an autobiographical account of his relationship with his father, who had bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...

. This won the Mind Book of the Year Award 2008.

External links

• Guardian May 2001