Fred Dinenage

Frederick Edgar Dinenage, MBE (born 8 June 1942) is an English television host and newsreader.

Dinenage has appeared as presenter of many British television programmes (most of them produced by Southern Television and its successors TVS and Meridian), such as Tell The Truth, How and its successor How 2, as well as the BBC quiz show Pass The Buck and Gambit (produced by Anglia). He is also a well-respected newsreader, for many years presenting Meridian Tonight for ITV Meridian, alongside Debbie Thrower. He joined Meridian in 1993, though he was inherited as chief male news anchor of Meridian Tonight's predecessor programme Coast To Coast, on the TVS franchise which preceded Meridian. He co-hosted Coast To Coast alongside Fern Britton and Mai Davies, and Meridian Tonight alongside Natasha Kaplinsky, Debbie Thrower and Jane Wyatt.

Dinenage was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire. He spent a brief period in the late 1970s covering regional sport for Yorkshire Television. He also appeared as a relief presenter of the networked ITV Saturday afternoon show, World of Sport, something which earned him an appearance on the high energy, anarchic children's Saturday show Tiswas. He also has his own weekly column featured on the magazine of the Southampton local newspaper Southern Daily Echo.

Alongside his television career, Dinenage has written several factual books, including ghosting on autobiographies My Story and Our Story for the Kray twins. He is a keen football follower and was on the board of directors at Portsmouth F.C. for a number of years.

He was a team captain on the ITV game show Never Had It So Good, shown in 2002.

He also narrated Driver's Eye Views for railway filming company "Video 125", including Wessex, Connex Express, the Uckfield Thumper, the Royal Scot (Parts 1 & 2) & the Flying Scotsman (Parts 1 & 2).

Dinenage became co-anchor of a new pan-regional edition of Meridian Tonight on Monday 9 February 2009, presenting alongside former South East anchor Sangeeta Bhabra.

Dinenage was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.

Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook, a crime documentary series on 20th century murders was first broadcast on the Crime And Investigation channel in 2011.

Family
He married his wife Beverley Summers in 1967 and brought up three children, Caroline (born 1971) and twins, Christopher and Sarah (born 1982). His eldest daughter is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Gosport, elected at the 2010 general election with a 14,413 majority. His great-uncle Jack was a first-class steward on the Titanic and died aged 47 when it sank in April 1912.