Donna Air (born August 2, 1979 in Newcastle upon Tyne) is an English television presenter, singer and actress.

Early life

She attended the Drama school at First Act in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. She went along with Jill Halfpenny, Ant & Dec and Dale Meeks. She is a former student of Gosforth High School.

Fame

She came became famous as an actress on the CBBC series Byker Grove and later became a presenter of several shows, including for a time, the Big Breakfast. She has also acted in an episode of BBC TV comedy Operation Good Guys. She has a reputation of being a vacuous blonde, not helped by her memorably asking Irish family group The Corrs how they met. She poked fun at this image by founding Airhead Productions. Air appeared in the movie The Mummy Returns and has presented on MTV. Air is currently filming a British independent movie called Bad Day[citation needed].

Personal life

She was engaged to Damien Aspinal, millionaire owner of Aspers (Entertainment eg Casinos etc), until July 2007. The couple had one daughter together, Freya.

She has a sister called Francesca who is a freelance fashion designer in London working for many top designers. Their brother is called Alex who is an up and coming DJ in the Newcastle dance scene.[citation needed]



Byker Groove

Byker Groove was in a similar way to that in which PJ & Duncan aka Ant and Dec were spun off from BBC 1's teen soap Byker Grove, Byker Groove were a female vocal group from the series.

Crush

Crush (or Crush UK) was a female pop duo from England, and which was a development of the Byker Groove band. It was founded with Donna Air and Jayni Hoy as members. They were signed to Telstar Records. Hoy later quit the duo after the first album, Teenage Kicks, was shelved in the UK by their record company, although it was released overseas. Luciana Caporaso was drafted as Hoy's replacement. Crush's second album, Crush was essentially a dance remixed version of the first album, retaining vocals from Hoy on 8 of the 12 tracks. The group enjoyed success in February 1996 with the single Jellyhead. The second and final single became Luv'd Up later that year. In 1997 the debut album titled Crush was released with a remix of the lead single, titled Jellyhead Motiv8 Mix was included on the tracklisting instead of the original due to the popularity of the remix. The remix was also released as a MAXI single in May 1997. The album achieved low sales and became the duo's only release.