Daryl Ilbury is a highly experienced and authoritative thought leader on communicating science across print, digital and broadcast platforms. He is a former multi award-winning broadcaster and columnist, now a senior science writer, editor, and best-selling author. He holds a degree in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in science journalism from City, University of London.

Daryl in brief…

Daryl is a former multi-award-winning broadcaster and founder of the online resource for radio talent, The Edge. He is now a senior science writer with Research Outreach and Research Features and editor for the broadcast technology publisher Red Tech International. As a journalist and columnist, he has had over 500 bylines in a number of leading titles, including Financial Times, Sunday Times, Saturday Star, Business Day, Mail & Guardian, bizcommunity.com, Sunday Tribune, and Leadership magazine, where a lot of his focus is on the interface of science, the media and human behaviour. You can find a selection of his work under ‘Articles‘. He is the author of three books: Tim Noakes Chews the Fat, published by Mampoer Shorts, and A Fox’s Tale and Tim Noakes: The Quiet Maverick, published by Penguin Random House.

…and in case you need to know more…

In August 2009, Daryl ‘hung up his cans’ and walked away from a highly successful career in commercial breakfast radio to focus on his other passion: writing. It was a controversial move — his show on East Coast Radio commanded the bulk of the station’s almost 2 million listeners, making it the biggest English-medium independent radio station in Southern Africa. It would never again reach these figures. “Get out while you’re on top”, he would advise others.

His next step was even more puzzling: science journalism. Why? “Easy,” he’d say, “because it’s difficult”. The challenge of telling science’s story and getting people to listen was compelling. Besides, he’d had a passion for science since childhood.

Daryl had been writing since 2003 as a regular opinion columnist for the Sunday Times, Saturday Star, and Leadership magazine and as a guest writer for half a dozen other titles. But journalism demanded a whole new skill set. So, in 2011, he entered City, University of London, for a Master’s in Science Journalism. 

While at City, he was appointed Deputy Editor of the Journalism Department’s online magazine Elements. By this time, he was writing a regular column in the science lifestyle magazine Guru and, later, was offered the opportunity to write for The Financial Times. He later became a lead writer for the Health supplement of Business Day.

In September 2013, he was appointed the Media Coordinator for the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) in Pretoria. However, he found negotiating the notorious government bureaucracy intolerable and left after a year to concentrate on designing and implementing communication workshops for scientists and the media.

Chewing the fat

In October 2012, he was asked by Anton Harber to write a short (10,000 word) book about Professor Tim Noakes for Harber’s fledgeling digital publishing company, Mampoer Shorts. Daryl titled it ‘The Quiet Maverick’, but the editors decided on another title: ‘Tim Noakes Chews the Fat’. It sold well, very well in fact, for Mampoer, becoming its best-seller, but it was not sufficient to save the company, which closed in August 2014. Mampoer returned the publishing rights to Daryl, and it seemed the story would remain largely unknown to all but the handful who had read it.

Luckily, one of those was Marlene Fryer of Penguin Random House. When Daryl contacted her in March 2015 with the idea of publishing a selection from his varied newspaper and magazine columns, Marlene immediately arranged a meeting and asked him to write for her. The ink wasn’t even dry on Daryl’s first book with Penguin — A Fox’s Tale — when Marlene asked, “So what’s next?” By then, the HPCSA hearing against Tim Noakes was in full swing, and Daryl was sitting on a trove of original and unused information about Noakes. “How about a book on Tim Noakes?” Marlene agreed without hesitation; the result is Daryl’s third book, Tim Noakes – The Quiet Maverick.

The Quiet Maverick made it to the best-seller shelves in leading bookstores, but, importantly for Daryl, it vied with other titles under the popular category ‘Current Affairs’ — incredibly rare for a book about science.

In 2017, Daryl joined the team that founded Growing Foxes, an education and business training company specialising in developing strategic thinking in young people. He served as editor before relocating to the UK, where, in 2021, he was offered a position writing for Research Publishing International, publishers of Research Outreach, Research Features and ResearchPod, highlighting scientists’ research worldwide. He is now one of their senior writers covering various research topics, including genetics, behavioural science, philosophy, space science, health, STEM education, environmental science, engineering, and data science.

He is also part of the editorial team for Red Tech International, a global publication covering audio broadcasting technology — radio, streaming and podcasting. So, in a way, he’s back in radio. 

Amidst all this, he is also writing his fourth book but remains tight-lipped about it.

“You’ll have to wait and see”, he says.