David Prest is the founder and Managing Director of Whistledown. He began his radio career as a schoolboy reporter at BBC Radio Lancashire. In 1990, he joined BBC Radio 4 full time as a staff producer on a number of programmes, most memorably the travel show Breakaway. He also worked on a number of high-profile events and outside broadcasts, including the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. After nine years, he left to set up Whistledown, which, in 1999, became one of only a handful of “indie” companies registered to supply the BBC. 

He built up a reputation for landmark oral history programmes – working with American broadcaster Studs Terkel, and legendary BBC reporter Charles Wheeler before creating Radio 4’s The Reunion, presented by Sue MacGregor, and since 2019, Kirsty Wark. 

Over two decades, he has produced well over a thousand programmes for all of the BBC’s radio networks, and devised and developed series, formats, podcasts and features. At the helm of Whistledown, he has helped the company become a producer of branded podcasts for clients such as Ikea, Microsoft and Easyjet, and worked with organisations like the National Trust and Natural History Museum on podcast partnerships. In 2024, the company launched a slate of its own podcasts on Spotify, and has become an international supplier of podcast originals and formats in the US, Australia and, through its office in Berlin, into Europe.

Katrina is the Finance Manager at Whistledown – she’s the person to send your invoices to. She lives in Lancashire, halfway between our London and Glasgow offices and is a great lover of the county’s beautiful fells, forests and coastline.

Rebecca Guthrie is a producer at Whistledown Scotland. She’s worked as a producer on over 100 episodes of Feedback for BBC Radio 4 and led production on episodes of The Reunion with Kirsty Wark, including editions about the early years of the Eurovision Song Contest and 1991 film The Commitments. She also oversees Whistledown Scotland’s busy slate, including ventures with commercial clients, and aspects of company branding and social media. Outside of the office, she can be found at the cinema or spotting birds in Scotland’s wild landscapes.

Robert is Whistledown’s Director of Programmes, working from Berlin as a producer and executive producer across documentaries, formats and narrative series. He has created multiple hit podcast formats, and is the producer of the multi award winning series The Great Post Office Trial for BBC Radio 4.

Jill is a producer at Whistledown. She makes one off documentaries and series for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service and is passionate about using history to give weight and context to today’s stories.

Her work has included the series Amazing Sport Stories: The Black 14, The Reunion and the British Podcast Awards gold winning What’s Your Map? with Jerry Brotton. Her work on Amazing Sport Stories: The Black 14 was awarded Silver for Best Sports Podcast at the 2025 New York Festivals Radio Awards. She is based in Bristol.

Mark is a senior producer at Whistledown Scotland with over 20 years experience making programmes for BBC Radio. He has travelled the world covering stories, living with an indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon and covering language development in Bhutan. For Radio 4, he worked with Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka in Nigeria looking at the Biafran War, and has interviewed some of the great names such as Little Richard for BBC arts. For Radio 3, he has made many Sunday Features and Essays on a wide range of subjects such as Blood and Bronze on the life of Benvenuto Cellini. 

As well as international stories, Mark has covered life across the Scottish Highlands and Islands, producing lyrical poetry programmes from Iona to Shetland. Perhaps his greatest memory is working with sci-fi legend Douglas Adams, making a programme in which Douglas made predictions about the future: they proved very accurate!

Ilona is a senior producer at Whistledown, working on long-form narrative podcasts and managing pitches for clients in Germany and the UK. A specialist in biographical storytelling, she blends journalistic rigour with creative flair to craft innovative, people-centred narratives.

Her credits include The Reunion, Witness History, and her award-nominated series on pro-wrestler Bruiser Brody for the BBC’s Sport’s Strangest Crimes. She works in both English and German and splits her time between London and Berlin. Outside of work, she’s a Muay Thai enthusiast and a devoted Kylie Minogue fan.

Emily Uchida Finch (also known as Emi) is a producer at Whistledown. She has produced one-off investigative documentaries for BBC Radio 4 (Missing Pieces, The Big Mortgage Time Bomb) alongside factual series such as All Consuming for Radio 4 on the history of consumerism and marketing. A bilingual English and Japanese speaker, she’s made numerous Japan-based programmes for the BBC World Service.

She also prides herself on working collaboratively with commercial clients including the British Podcast Awards gold-winning What’s Your Map? for the Sunderland Collection and The We Society hosted by the journalist Will Hutton for the Academy of Social Sciences.