Trevor Noah, the charismatic presenter hosting the Grammys for the fourth year running

The 2024 Grammy Awards will welcome Trevor Noah back to host the biggest night in music for the fourth consecutive year.

The former Daily Show star will return to the Grammys stage on Sunday (4 February) at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Noah’s return comes in the wake of Jo Koy’s calamitous hosting job at the 2024 Golden Globes, in which he made a joke about Taylor Swift that elicited a steely look from the pop star herself.

The 39-year-old South African comedian, however, is likely to fare much better, not least because he’s already well-known by the A-list stars expected to attend the ceremony.

“My job is just to be the host, to be the best host I can be. And to do that, I try and learn what everybody’s into, I try and learn my guests,” Noah announced in his opening monologue at the 2023 Grammys.

“For instance, I know that LL Cool J really loves breakfast cereals,” Noah said, adding that Cardi B “is obsessed with presidents”.

“And then this is one of the strangest things that I found out: the person that Adele has always wanted to meet but never has is Dwayne Johnson,” he continued before bringing out Johnson to surprise and meet Adele for the first time.

“Trevor is a first-class host who is not only extremely well-spoken and knowledgable, but he also has a way with the creative community,” Grammys CEO Harvey Mason Jr told The Independent.

“He’s a music lover. In between shots, I look over and see him dancing, talking to the artists he knows all the words to all the songs, and he just brings a level of respect for the craft and for the music to his role. I’m so pleased we have him back for a fourth year, we feel very lucky.”

Born on 20 February 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Noah was raised by a single mother, Patricia.

In his 2016 memoir, Born A Crime, he wrote about what it was like growing up during his country’s apartheid era, where his interracial birth was considered illegal.

“We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them,” he wrote in one passage. “If we could see one another’s pain and empathise with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.”

At age 18, he landed his first on-screen role in a 2002 episode of the South African soap opera Isidingo. He then hosted his own radio show, Noah’s Ark, on one of South Africa’s leading youth radio stations, YFM.

He officially relocated to the US in 2011 and made history as the first South African comedian to appear on The Tonight Show as well as The Late Show with David Letterman in 2013. He has performed several solo stand-up specials, including Trevor Noah: That’s Racist, Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark and Trevor Noah: I Wish You Would.

Noah later became a recurring contributor on late-night talk show The Daily Show in December 2014, before it was announced that he would succeed Jon Stewart as the official host in September 2015.

After seven years of hosting the popular Comedy Central show, he announced his “time [was] up” in September 2022.

“I’ve loved hosting this show, it’s been one of my greatest challenges and one of my greatest joys,” Noah said at the time. “I’ve loved trying to find a way to make people laugh, even when the stories are particularly s*****, even on the worst days. We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together.”

In the time since his Daily Show exit, he’s launched Spotify interview podcast, What Now? with Trevor Noah, where he speaks to CEOs, actors, entertainers and more. Previous guests have included Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban, Dwayne Johnson, singer Janelle Monáe and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Noah will host the 2024 Grammys on Sunday (4 February), which broadcasts live on CBS beginning at 5pm PT/8pm ET. It will also be available to stream on Paramount+.