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He tried his hand at a range of jobs – including door-to-door selling and van driving – but when he was offered a job in the Post Room at Â鶹ԼÅÄ Wales, he jumped at it. Initially his work involved checking post for suspicious material in an outside Portacabin during the height of the anthrax postal scares.

Within weeks the postal scares had died down, but Â鶹ԼÅÄ Wales kept him on as a porter, working out of the Post Room. His duties included moving equipment, sorting and delivering post, shifting furniture and making heavy deliveries.

He says: “Make no mistake I made a fine porter. My compact, durable frame is ideally suited to multiple bouts of heavy lifting. Like a tug-boat or a mini-digger. It’s still probably what I’m best at!”

During this period the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Wales consumer programme X-Ray fished him out of the Post Room to do a few weeks work experience as a researcher. He modestly believes they were desperate at the time. But something clicked and in October 2004 he was offered a permanent role as a researcher on the production, learning camera skills and picking up bits of directing as he went along.

He gained experience and four years later moved on to The One Show, directing short films with Presenters Dom Littlewood and Jay Rayner among others, and honing his self-shooting and camera ability.

Sometimes the items he directed needed to be sent in rough form to The One Show’s production base in London so they could make changes for the final version. Dan’s voice was needed as a guide-track. The bosses decided they quite liked it and asked to see what he’d look like in front of the camera… and with that a star was born and he started presenting films on The One Show.

In 2014 he was selected as a Presenter of the first series of Break-in Britain and has returned to front this, the second series. When not presenting he now uses his camera skills to shoot other observational series made from Â鶹ԼÅÄ Wales, where he is based. He lives in Cardiff.