Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who came to Britain in the late 1950s. He grew up in Luton and spent five years failing to study medicine at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays including The Clinic, based on the lives of the photojournalists, Don McCullin and Tim Page. He joined the BBC in 1989 and worked as a script editor and producer of arts programmes on BBC World Service before joining the BBC radio Science Unit. He lives in Brighton.