Jilly Goolden
About
Jilly Goolden is a wine critic, journalist and TV personality. She is famous for her elaborate and abstract description of wines, and for 18 years she co-presented the Food and Drink television series, with Chris Kelly, Michael Barry and her good friend Oz Clarke.
TV Presenter
Jilly has presented two television series on antiques, The Great Antiques Hunt and Going, Going, Gone. She has travelled extensively as a regular presenter on BBC1’s Holiday programme. During 2003, she was presenter on BBC1’s Holiday – You Call the Shots.
She has also performed in The Vagina Monologues at the Royal Albert Hall.
In 2008 Jilly took part in a special of Wife Swap, swapping with Cynthia O’Neal, the wife of Alexander O’Neal.
Food Writer
Jilly Goolden started as a journalist, contributing to most national newspapers and glossy magazines published in Britain. As well as writing about wine, she has written about travel, women’s issues, sex, the occult and a wide range of things. She has written and contributed to books on wine and food as well as palmistry, which have featured strongly on the Sunday Times best-seller list.
She has co-written books which include five volumes of Food and Drink, Entertaining with Food and Drink and The Big Food and Wine Drink Book. As well as books on food and drink, Goolden co-authored Your Hand – An Illustrated Guide To Palmistry in the early 1980s.
Jilly appeared in the fifth series of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. In 2004 the Radio Times included Goolden in a list of the top 40 most eccentric TV presenters of all time.
Public Speaking
Jilly continues to delight after dinner audiences with her wine appreciation evenings. She supplies wine lists to suit the budget, and encourages guests to discuss each wine before guessing the price of each. Her other after dinner topics include travel, wildlife, antiques, gardening, ghosts, and of course life in the jungle.
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