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Michaela
Strachan trained at the Arts Educational School specialising in musical
theatre. She started her career in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
on national tour, in the West End and at the Alexandra Theatre,
Toronto. Michaela then moved into television to begin a successful presenting
career. She fronted a number of programmes on TV-AM including three
years on the award winning Saturday morning show The Wide Awake Club
with Tommy Boyd, Wacaday with Timmy Mallett, Wac 90, Wac Extra and
subsequently her own Saturday and Sunday morning programmes, Hey Hey
It's Saturday and Michaela.
Other
children's shows include Cool Cube, But Can You Do It On TV?, Go Getters,
Beetle Drive, I Want To Do That and, for the Children's Channel, Electric
String Vest, Ratkan II, Michaela's Map and The Summer Crunch.
Since 1990 Michaela has become more familiar to audiences for presenting
wildlife programmes - Owl TV for HTV and Channel 4 (four years), the
award-winning Really Wild Show (eleven series), The Really Wild Guide (two
series), The Web and The Animal Zone, all for the BBC's Natural History
Unit, plus Wildlife Rescue II for Anglia.
Michaela has also hosted: programmes on the Animal Planet and Discovery
Channels;
including five Disneytime
programmes for the BBC; two series of the family show Can You Keep A
Secret? on HTV; and Club Vegetarian for Granada Cable, Postcards from the Wild, Big 5, and Little 5 with Chris Packham,
with a yearly special, Adopt a Wild Animal.
To older viewers Michaela will be known for her four years as
"Her" in the late night music programme The Hitman And Her which
she presented with Pete Waterman. Michaela's guest appearances are too
numerous to mention but do include Visions (a religious exploratory
programme) and Naruhodo - The World, which she filmed in Japan as part of
the Japanese season on Channel 4. She has both introduced and guest
starred in the Children's Royal Variety Show.
In 1997 Michaela co-hosted Wildscreen, the wildlife film festival awards
which were screened on BBC TWO. Early in 1998 she co-presented The Fossil
Roadshow with Peter Snow, also for BBC TWO.
In 1998,
she presented Orang-utan Rescue, a moving and spectacular BBC ONE wildlife
special focusing on the plight of the orang-utans. In 1999, Michaela
presented the Really Wild Show - Tiger Special (which was nominated for a
BAFTA) and the Chinese Moon Bear Special, which has just won 3 awards.
She also completed a 50-minute documentary Shark Encounters which was
filmed in California and South Africa as part of a BBC Natural History
Unit Shark Season.
Michaela regularly does pantomime, appearing in Cinderella, Goldilocks,
Aladdin and Jack & The Beanstalk. She has played Dorothy in The Wizard
of Oz and has played Peter in Peter Pan several times. Michaela has also
recorded two singles, and contributed to various albums.
Michaela is
currently filming her 2nd series of 'Michaela's Wild Challenge' for Ch.5.,
whilst also filming a new series of the Really Wild Show. Michaela has
also recently
become a regular on Countryfile for BBC ONE.
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