Cerrie Burnell

Cerrie Burnell
Cerrie Burnell
Born 30 August 1979 (1979-08-30) (age 32)
Petts Wood, Kent

Cerrie Burnell (born 30 August 1979)[1][2][3] is an English actress, singer, playwright, and television presenter for the BBC children's channel CBeebies. She was born with a right arm which ended below the elbow.

Contents

Personal life

Burnell was born in Petts Wood, Kent, United Kingdom, and grew up in Eastbourne, Sussex.[4] Her mother is a dance teacher, and her father a telecoms manager.[5] She has one younger brother.[1] She was originally named "Claire", but started asking people to call her "Cerrie" at the age of ten.[5]

Burnell was born with her right arm ending slightly below the elbow.[2] Burnell's parents encouraged her to wear a prosthetic arm, but she resisted from the start, and stopped wearing one entirely when she was nine.[4][6] She says her disability did not hinder her from doing what she wanted, including "sports, swimming, windsurfing, singing in the choir or joining the Army cadets."[4] Burnell also suffered from dyslexia, which left her unable to read until the age of ten. She learned with extra tuition and the Letterland system.[7] As a teenager, she worked as a hotel chambermaid during summers, and travelled widely, working in a leprosy clinic in India, and volunteering in Brazil.[4]

Burnell is unmarried, and has a daughter, Amelie, born in 2008. Burnell's father, now retired, takes care of Amelie during Burnell's ten hour shifts filming CBeebies continuity.[4][6][8][9]

Career

Burnell graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University, where she studied acting.[3][10] She has performed in theatre in the UK,[11] where she received favourable reviews,[12][13] and in Brazil with the CTORio Political Theatre Company.[3] She has appeared in UK television parts in Holby City, EastEnders,[14] Grange Hill,[15] The Bill, and Comedy Lab.[3] She is the author of Winged - A Fairytale, a play about Violet, a one-winged fairy in a London inner city fairy community, which she also starred in when it was staged at the Tristan Bates Theatre, London in 2007.[16][17]

Besides acting, she has worked as a teaching assistant in a special needs school.[3]

CBeebies

Burnell joined CBeebies' presentation department on 26 January 2009, as a continuity presenter for Discover and Do and The Bedtime Hour, alongside Alex Winters.[3][8]

Within a month of her beginning co-presenting, she attracted controversy from parents complaining that the one-armed presenter was scaring children, and prompting difficult conversations to explain her disability.[9][18][19] She and the BBC have been defended by multiple disability groups stating that the problem was with the prejudices of the parents projected on to the children.[2][18][19]

References

  1. ^ a b BBC - CBeebies Presenters - Cerrie, Short CBeebies interview. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  2. ^ a b c "How do you explain a missing hand to a child?", by Tom Geoghegan, BBC News Magazine, 24 February 2009.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "CBeebies names its two new presenters", BBC Press Office, 20 January 2009
  4. ^ a b c d e "Why one-armed BBC presenter Cerrie Burnell was proud of the debate her disability provoked", by Helen Weathers, Daily Mail, 02 March 2009.
  5. ^ a b "Disabled TV presenter Cerrie Burnell beats the bigots", by Susan Swarbrick, 31 Aug 2009, The Herald. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  6. ^ a b "TV presenter's calm take on prejudice", by Ben Dowell, The Guardian, 28 February 2009
  7. ^ "I couldn't read until I was 10, says CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell", Tom Harper, The Evening Standard, 26 Sep 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
  8. ^ a b "Winters and Burnell named new Cbeebies presenters", 21 January 2009, How-Do.
  9. ^ a b "Parents complain that disabled TV presenter is 'scaring children'", Ellen Widdup, 23 February 2009, Evening Standard.
  10. ^ "MMU animator’s short film to be screened at Cornerhouse", Manchester Metropolitan University, 1 October 2007.
  11. ^ "Cerrie Burnell| London Theatre Database" Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  12. ^ "Mother Courage and her Children", The Stage, reviewed 2 November 2006 by Thom Dibdin
  13. ^ "The First to Go at Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh", The Times, 31 May 2008, by Robert Dawson Scott.
  14. ^ "Cerrie Burnell". The Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2337572/. Retrieved 20 June 2010. 
  15. ^ "Series 31 Cast and Crew". Grange Hill Online. http://www.grangehillfans.co.uk/episodes/31/cast31.php. Retrieved 24 February 2009. "Miss Greene CERRIE BURNELL" 
  16. ^ "Cerrie Burnell", Doollee playwrights database. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  17. ^ Winged, photos of the theatrical performance, May 2007, Neil E. Hobbs, Flickr. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  18. ^ a b "One-armed presenter is scaring children, parents tell BBC", by Liz Thomas, 23 February 2009, Daily Mail.
  19. ^ a b "One-Armed CBeebies Host 'Scaring' Children", Sky News, 23 February 2009.

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