Dick Strawbridge

Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Richard Francis Strawbridge, MBE (born 3 September 1959) is a British television personality, engineer and former army officer.

He is often referred to as "Colonel Dick".

The third of seven children of Jennifer and George Strawbridge, a worker in the oil industry in the Middle East and Far East, "Dick" Strawbridge was born in Burma, then raised and educated in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

He attended Ballyclare High School from 1971 to 1976.

To achieve his ambition of becoming an army officer after taking his O levels, Strawbridge enrolled at Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College before going on to Sandhurst.

Strawbridge received a commission in the British Army in 1979, after attending Welbeck DSFC (becoming head of college) and Sandhurst.

He joined the Royal Corps of Signals in January 1980.

Promoted to lieutenant in April 1981, and captain in October 1985, he became a major in September 1991.

He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1993 for his distinguished service in Northern Ireland.

He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in June 1999, and left the army in November 2001.

Strawbridge has appeared as an engineering and environmental expert on various television programmes, including Scrapheap Challenge.

He first appeared as a contestant on the team Brothers in Arms who became series champions and later, he became the main presenter replacing Robert Llewellyn.

He has also appeared on three series of It's Not Easy Being Green for BBC Two, the six-part BBC Two series Crafty Tricks of War of which he was the main presenter, Planet Mechanics, and as a regular guest presenter on Coast.

Following his switch of career to television, Strawbridge often refers to himself as a "telly tart".

Strawbridge began his career in television as the 'Yellow Team Leader' for six episodes in the first series of Scrapheap Challenge.

He has to date appeared in over 30 episodes of Scrapheap Challenge and Junkyard Wars, winning the Scrapheap Challenge trophy in series 3 with his two younger brothers, David and Bobby, as 'Brothers in Arms', and the Junkyard Megawars trophy in 2003.

In series 1, which was shown on 28 March 2006, the family moved to a new home in Tywardreath near St Austell, Cornwall and attempted to live as green a life as possible, using renewable energy and environmentally friendly resources.

Also in 2006, Strawbridge appeared as a one-off presenter on the BBC Two series Coast, examining the workings of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, a role he revived in the 2007 version of Coast, presenting a short part of the programme on the failure of Exercise Tiger.

The second series started in Spring 2007 with a different format: Strawbridge and his son James aided several members of the public in larger and smaller ecology projects around the country.

On 5 June 2008, it was announced that he would be returning to Scrapheap Challenge for its 11th series.

Strawbridge took over from Robert Llewellyn as the main presenter.

The series was shown on Channel 4 in 2009.

Strawbridge, along with his family, filmed three series of It's Not Easy Being Green for BBC Two.

In series 4 of Coast in July 2009, Strawbridge examined the terrain of the Normandy landing beaches.

In 2011, Strawbridge and his son James filmed a 20-part series, The Hungry Sailors, that was broadcast by ITV, in which they sailed around Britain's coastline buying local food and then cooking it.

In 2012, filming began on a second series of The Hungry Sailors around the Cornish coast, taking in the Channel Islands and the Isles of Scilly.

The series was broadcast from 1 July 2013.

In 2013, Strawbridge and his son James presented the ITV Food series Saturday Farm.

Filmed in America from March to July 2015, the TV series for National Geographic involved a 25 mi hike through the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, with Dave Canterbury and Johnny Littlefield.

This programme followed Strawbridge and his partner (now wife), Angel Adoree, through their purchase in 2015 and subsequent renovation of Château de la Motte-Husson in Martigné-sur-Mayenne, France.

A full nine seasons were filmed, with the ninth and final season starting to air in the UK on 30 October 2022.

The decision to cancel was made with the agreement of Dick and Angel Strawbridge.

The couple travelled to Australia and New Zealand in February 2023 with their Dare to Do It Tour.

The plan included a series of theatre and book signing events, from 12 February to 9 March 2023.

They had completed a similar Dare to Do It tour of the UK during February and March 2022.

This programme, first aired in 2018, followed Strawbridge and his wife Angel as they helped expat château owners restore and redecorate their properties.

In December 2022, the couple revealed that a new series would air in 2023, about their "new journey to seek the unexpected and the extraordinary and discover more about France's history".

The plan was for four episodes of one hour each, a joint venture of Two Rivers Media, Channel 4 and the Strawbridges' own company, Chateau TV.

However, in May 2023, Channel 4 announced that the planned series would not go ahead, and it would not work with the Strawbridges again.

"Following a review, we have taken the decision not to work with Dick and Angel on any new productions in the future," the statement said.