Dominik Diamond

Dominik Diamond
Personal Information
Born	31 December 1969
Years Active	1992-Present
Robot Wars Information
Role	Presenter/ Commentator
Dubbed Series	1995 UK Open Competition

Dominik Diamond (born Paul Dominik Diamond) is a Scottish radio and television presenter and newspaper columnist. He was the host for the 1995 UK Open Competition.

Robot Wars

Dominik Diamond was selected to be the main presenter for the 1995 UK Open Competition, originally slated to be the pilot episode for the UK series of Robot Wars. Like Michael Meehan, who was the host for the original American competitions, Diamond's role was to introduce the audience to the show and provide commentary throughout the event, commentating on the battles and other competitions that took place. However, as there is limited footage of the Open Competition available online, it is not known if Diamond contributed to any other aspects of the event.

Diamond revealed in a tweet in July 2021 that he had hosted the pilot episode, but ultimately was not asked to come back to present when Robot Wars was picked up for television as the producers wanted a higher profile host. This role ultimately went to Jeremy Clarkson and later to Craig Charles, a move Diamond proved to be unhappy with as he felt that the time and effort he took to work on the pilot went largely unnoticed. Though this tweet was the first time this had been brought to public attention, it had previously been revealed in the inaugural Robot Wars Club newsletter that Diamond had hosted the pilot.

"1996? I spend tons of time and effort hosting a live presentation of a TV show for BBC execs.

Very {sic} tough live gig. Massive warehouse set. Lots of moving parts and people. I pull it off. Show commissioned. But they want a higher profile host.

Robot Wars. Jeremy Clarkson.

The end"

— Dominik Diamond on Twitter in July 2021

A clip of Thor vs The Master featuring Diamond's original commentary was also featured at the end of the American Robot Wars Final 1996 VHS, available to early Robot Wars Club subscribers as part of the initial membership pack. This is unique among instances of the battle's inclusion in official Robot Wars media, which otherwise presented it with an uninterrupted arena ambience mix and/or re-recorded commentary from eventual UK Series commentator Jonathan Pearce. Some of Diamond's lines from the clip also infer that he was joined by a co-presenter or co-commentator named 'Stephen', although no other publicly available footage of the 1995 UK Open elaborates on this. Very brief extracts of this version with the TV series theme were also shown at the start of Series 1, Heat A, when Jeremy Clarkson explains the core idea of Robot Wars to the viewer.

Outside Robot Wars

Dominik Diamond was born in Arbroath, Scotland and attended Strathallan School in Forgandenny, Perthshire, before graduating from Bristol University after studying Drama.

Diamond's biggest and most well-known role to date is as the host of the television show GamesMaster, which he presented from 1992 to 1998, though he was absent in the show's third series. He has also been featured on a number of radio shows, launching his own show The Dominik Diamond Breakfast Show in 2006. Diamond has worked on radio stations such as XFM Scotland and Talk 107, before joining stations in Canada such as Q107, hosting his own show The Dominik Diamond Show Mon-Fri 6pm-11pm, as well as 102.1 The Edge and Jack FM. Currently, Diamond hosts a live-streaming channel on Twitch.

Trivia

• Around the same time that Diamond was co-hosting the 1995 UK Open, a news segment on the original 1995 US competition was aired in the original run of GamesMaster, at the start of Series 11, Episode 5 (broadcast 30 November). An onscreen post address was added to the closing credits of this episode, encouraging viewers to take part in "a similar UK event" initially proposed for 1996.