Derek O'Brien (born 13 March 1961) is an Indian politician, television personality and quiz master.^[2][3][4][5] He is a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal and member of the AITC.^[6][7] He is the chief national spokesperson as well as leader of the AITC Parliamentary party in the Rajya Sabha.^[8] He has been suspended several times from parliament.^[9][10][11] Prior to his Parliamentary career, he became well known as the quizmaster for the Bournvita Quiz Contest and other shows.^[12]

O'Brien comes from an Irish family and can trace his paternal origins to an Irish soldier who came to India in the early 1860s and whose descendants married into the Bengali community. O'Brien is based in Kolkata and speaks, reads and writes Bengali as his mother tongue. O'Brien's grandfather, Amos O'Brien, was the first Christian to serve as head of the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, and also taught at Ravenshaw College in Cuttack.^[13]

O'Brien went to St. Xavier's Collegiate School in Kolkata and, for a short period, St. Columba's School in Delhi, and then spent two years at Scottish Church College, Kolkata.^[14] O'Brien is the oldest of three sons of Joyce and Neil O'Brien (1934–2016).^[14] Neil O'Brien worked in publishing and retired as the chairman and managing director of Oxford University Press India as well as leading the Anglo-Indian community for two decades.^[15]

He is married to Tonuca Basu, who is practising medicine in Brooklyn, New York. He was earlier married to Rila Banerjee^[16] and the couple has a daughter, Aanya.^[17]

O'Brien's first job was as a journalist at Sportsworld magazine. After a short stint there, he joined the advertising agency Ogilvy in 1984 and became its Creative Head for Kolkata and Delhi. Simultaneously, he embarked on a career as a quizmaster and quiz show host, having been introduced to quizzing by his father, Neil O'Brien, who had conducted the first open quiz in India in 1967.^[18][19][20] In 1988, O'Brien hosted his first all-India quizzes as a professional quizmaster: the Bata North Star Quiz and the Maggi Quiz for Schools. In 1990, he joined hands with Economic Times for the Brand Equity Quiz for business corporations. In 1991, he finally quit Ogilvy and set up his own knowledge, education and publishing company, Big Ideas – since renamed Derek O'Brien and Associates.^{[21][22][23][24][25][26]}

Derek O'Brien has conducted quizzes in the UAE (Dubai and Abu Dhabi), Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the United States. In 2008, he travelled to Pakistan to host a television quiz for schools from Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. For three years in a row (2003–05), O'Brien won the Indian Television Academy award for Best Host in a Television Gameshow.^{[27][28][29][30]}

O'Brien has spoken at, among others, Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities in the United States, as well as several Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, Hindu College, and Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi, and Loreto College, Kolkata.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36][37]}

He has served as president of the Dalhousie Institute Club.^[38]

O'Brien joined the Trinamool Congress in 2004, when the party was still in opposition in West Bengal.^[39] He later wrote that he was drawn to the charisma and personality of the Trinamool Congress leader (now chief minister of Bengal) Mamata Banerjee, and felt she was the only one who could defeat the then CPI(M)-led government in the state.^[40][41]

O'Brien is also an author. His books include the bestseller Inside Parliament: Views for the Front Row, Derek Introduces the Constitution and Parliament of India, My Way, a motivational book, Speak Up Speak Out, a compilation of elocution pieces, and several reference, quiz, and text books.^{[80][81][82][83]}