Matthew Strachan

Matthew Strachan ( or ; born 11 December 1970) is an English composer and singer-songwriter. His best known work is the music for the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? written with his father Keith, and the BBC Radio 4 World War I drama series Home Front. He has also contributed music to film and television productions such as Extract, The Detectives, Question Time, Winning Lines, jingles for several television commercials, and scores for stage musicals.As a singer-songwriter Strachan is regarded as having a bittersweet style, often employing satire and characterisation to make political points about unusual subjects such as social networking and the media. He has remarked of his style that he is "somewhere on a spectrum somewhere between Dr. John and Richard Stilgoe". He has also noted that he is out of step culturally. "My sensibilities are retro-fitted. It took me a decade to realize U2 were a good band ... I was sitting in a hotel and said to my wife of a record, 'mark my words, that track is going to be big.' It had been a hit across Europe for weeks." As a composer of stage musicals he is noted for writing songs with a complete narrative arc.Strachan has won twelve awards from ASCAP (American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers) and in 2012 received the ASCAP Hall of Fame Award in recognition of ten consecutive wins for the soundtrack of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?He is also the creator of the comic fictional 1970's composer Klaus Harmony. In March 2017 Simon & Schuster announced that it would be publishing a series of crime fiction books co-written by Strachan and his wife, Bernadette Strachan.