The Olympic gold medallist Sir Bradley Wiggins and the actor Michael Sheen are among high profile figures who will take control of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme between Christmas and the new year.
Lawyer Miriam González Durántez, the wife of Nick Clegg, will also edit one edition, as will John Browne, the former chief executive of BP, the human rights campaigner Jane Campbell and the architect David Adjaye.
The station’s flagship current affairs programme will also for the first time have a guest business editor, the former No 10 adviser Rohan Silva.
Many famous faces have been guest editors since the tradition began in 2003, with the first raft including the author Monica Ali, Norman Tebbit, the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and Stephen Hawking.
The U2 singer Bono, the entrepreneur Richard Branson, Queen Noor of Jordan, Yoko Ono, Jarvis Cocker, David Hockney, the actor Colin Firth and Melinda Gates have also taken the reins over the 12-year period.
Last December, the comedian Lenny Henry, who has been a vocal critic of the BBC’s efforts on diversity, used his slot as guest editor to put the spotlight on the issue in the media and other areas of public life.
The show featured a presenting team made up exclusively of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, including the BBC World Service’s Nkem Ifejika, who co-hosted with regular presenter Mishal Husain.
Items included interviews with Sajid Javid, the first British-Asian cabinet minister; Diane Abbott, one of the first four black MPs; and Ukip communities spokesman, MEP Amjad Bashir.
The Mercury prize-winning singer PJ Harvey divided opinion with her guest editor slot in January 2014, which was slated as “unusual” by the Conservative cabinet minister David Jones for its leftwing slant.
The Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was given the slot on Thought for the Day, delivered from the Ecuadorian embassy, and was introduced by Harvey as a “person of great courage”.
The campaigning journalist John Pilger also drew ire from the BBC’s thenpolitical editor Nick Robinson, himself now a presenter of the Today programme, when Pilger criticised Barack Obama for paying tribute to Nelson Mandela when he had not closed the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Pilger always thought provoking but was he really suggesting that BBC ignore Obama's Mandela grief as he is a hypocrite? Or ....@BBCr4today
— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) January 2, 2014
Colin Bloom, executive director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, lambasted the show as a “trainwreck of a programme” and “incomprehensible liberal drivel”.
